Will changes to the Canadian International Development Agency increase its effectiveness?

A few comments in the recent federal budget seem to indicate changes for the Canadian International Development Agency. Robert Shepherd of CBC News reports that speculation is running rampant in the foreign aid community after Ottawa indicated that it will seek to be among the top five donors in its core countries of interest and put more of their staff in the field.

This follows the model of the British Department for International Development (DFID), which chooses to place many of its staff in the field to allow effective bilateral engagement with receiver countries. Those opposed to the transfer of staff from headquarters to the field argue that this move will lead to larger administrative expenses but when combined with a focused plan more field staff could prevent the government from wasting millions of dollars of aid money due to increased accountability and efficient delivery of funds.

Time will show how these changes impact the government’s main vehicle for foreign aid. I think if Canada chooses to engage in a developing country they should engage fully rather than sprinkling a few goodies and moving on to the next place in need. It is only through sustained long term commitment that aid dollars can really make lasting change.

Why do South African leaders keep silent while Robert Mugabe throws his country into the abyss?

There is a fascinating tie that binds African leaders who struggled against colonialism. It binds them together long after colonialism has ceased to become a rational explanation for poor governance, lack of education, incessant poverty and economic decline.

A case in point in South Africa’s relative silence as the brutal dictator Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe ruins the lives of his countrymen. That bond of loyalty, which goes back to the days when the African National Congress and ZANU PF, fought against white dominated governments in their respective countries, seems so strong that South Africa’s current President Thabo Mbeki continually refuses to speak out against his colleagues lunatic behavior. This is despite the fact that nearly 3 million Zimbabweans have fled in recent years to South Africa! So much for South Africa as the model of economic prosperity and bastion of African democracy.

Is shopping a reasonable response to human suffering?

Recent news about the Red campaign (see the March 26th issue of Macleans) questions the effectiveness of fundraising through specially branded corporate products. Red was launched with great fanfare in January 2006, as a great way to get consumers to fight AIDS in Africa, by having corporation donate a percentage of profits from distinctly Red product to the Global Fund. While advocates, like Bono and Oprah Winfrey, sell Red as a triple win scenario for charities, corporations and shoppers; the tactic has produced a backlash by those who feel Red lacks transparency. Some such as Ben Davis, the cofounder of a website called buylesscrap.org, do not feel that shopping is a reasonable response to human suffering, and believe that people should be encouraged to give their money directly to charities.

Red’s CEO Bobby Shriver responds: “I think it’s thrilling if it (people giving directly to charity) would happen in the real world.” He says. “But I wonder if any of those guys who set up the website had ever donated to the Global Fund or even heard of it prior to Red.”

Shriver may be right that large scale consumer driven marketing campaigns like RED can effectively raise very general awareness about an issue but he should be careful about selling Red as an efficient or transparent way to give to charity. The danger is that consumers come away feeling that they have done their part and appeased their guilt without doing anything other than buying a red cell phone or pair of shoes. I wonder how many purchasers of empowe(red) gap t-shirts could even tell you that money from their purchase was going to the Global Fund.

CRASH

I recently watched the Academy Award winning movie Crash for the first time. The movie focused on racism. But I was impacted most by the concept that our choices not only impact the people we are close to but also strangers we have never met before.

We live increasingly in a society that values rights more than responsibilities. Many celebrate this as the result of a long hard struggle for acceptance. But I wonder if we have swung the pendulum too far. It is undeniable that our individual actions impact others no matter how influential we consider ourselves to be. In some way we impact our workplace, our community, our town or city, and maybe even our nation in ways we don't understand.

In an increasingly globalized society our actions in our tiny hamlet could easily influence someone in a completely different part of the world. Yet many of us continue to celebrate the new Age of Individual Rights under the pretense that our actions affect only ourselves.

A life cut short vs. A life well lived.

I have driven by two roadside memorials in the past months that have caused me to stop. Both were tragic deaths involving speeding cars. Both victims were in their twenties. But the difference between them was striking. The first was a shrine to a life of self pursuit. The victim's friends left pictures of drunkeness, talked about their great memories of getting drunk together, and littered the based of the memorial with empty bottles of their favorite beer. They littered their notes with expletives and spoke of partying together again one day. I didn't know the young man they toasted but I felt deeply sorry for him. What a wasted life. He died before anyone had the opportunity to point him in the right direction. The best way he will be remembered is as an out of control party animal. If the media covered anything beyond the accident it would have focused on the danger of drunk driving or the tragedy of a life cut short so early.

The other memorial belonged to a man similar in age but entirely different in life pursuit. In his short twenty-five years he had lived to serve other people. He had volunteered his time to serve people in Rwanda, invested numerous hours into helping friends, fed the poor, and committed his life to a cause greater than himself. The press who covered the accident were intrigued by his story and so they told it. What this man stood for was written about in the papers and talked about on news programs. Unlike the first case, there was no angle: a story on the growing number of cyclists hit by cars, the danger of elderly drivers, or the need for better road signs. The story was a life well lived instead of a life cut short. And the media had every reason to tell that story.

The Wallflower

The Wallflower:

My wife is painting a picture of a simple orange flower growing bravely out of a crack in a wall. The beauty of the small wallflower stands in stark contrast to the drab hard cement that hosts it. In a whole field of flowers it might not be noticed at all. It might even be plucked as a weed. But placed here, against the inhospitable wall, it gives the feeling of hope, courage, and new life.

The wallflower is a representation of the people of Rwanda. Out of the tough and dark circumstances of hatred, mass murder, and poverty springs new life. The wallflowers of Rwanda are the ordinary people who struggle on in faith that tomorrow will be better than yesterday. They are those who take the painful step of forgiveness and reconciliation because their very survival depends on it. They are the group of casual laborers who pool together a day’s wages in order to help their fellow worker. They are the widows of men killed in the genocide joining together with the wives of those who killed them.

When everything has been taken from you, and you live in a place where poverty can be a death sentence, than even the struggle for the next day and the next breath becomes significant. Out of that struggle for life comes a beauty such as that described in Isaiah 40: 18, 19. “See I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.”

Is teaching a man to fish really the answer?

One of the most popular development catchphrases is "Give a man a fish feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish feed him for a life time." It's a true phrase but it doesn't go far enough. My colleague Jeffery Komant likes to use the analogy of a village of hungry people located on a river. Obviously if we teach these people how to fish we will do better than doing the fishing for them. But he goes on to ask what happens when a company builds a dam upstream? Or a factory starts pumping toxins in to the water and the fish start dying off? How about if the people thrive and overpopulate so that the number of fish in the river can no longer sustain them?

"If you teach the people how to fish," says Komant, "you haven't actually addressed their real need. Their real need is to understand their world and how it works. And to understand that the river and those fish are just part of the answer to their problem. People need to be empowered with a lot more than just a skill set."

The rote based system of education that has been Rwanda's staple for many years is an example of not taking development far enough. It is a funnel system that focuses on giving students the information necessary to accomplish a certain task. The memorization based approach makes it difficult for more creative learners to succeed. But in order to thrive this tiny country needs thinkers, creators, inventors, and entrepreneurs. More Rwandan teachers are now starting to see the key role they play in making the transition to a system of education that can truly empower the next generation of Rwandan young people to find creative solutions to their own problems. That's something that "teaching a man to fish" just won't do.