Warning received

Development that has impact in the long-term is difficult to achieve. In my first week I saw a water supply system that only works for half the year.

I also visited a tsunami early warning system that no longer has any personnel or equipment – only the physical structure remains. So it’s just a useless collection of wood and nails. No warnings can be issued or received.

These NGO projects were almost certainly written up as successes within the relatively short project cycle, but have run in to serious trouble just a few years later. Warning issued and received.

It is very easy to find fault with other people’s work after the fact. Actually planning and implementing a sustainable intervention is much much harder. This is constantly at the front of my mind as we work here.

With ACTED’s programme we’re strongly emphasising building the capacity of existing local organisations and network; developing a range of relevant skills; and giving communities themselves the opportunity to choose the direction of the projects. I hope we’ll be successful.

But ultimately we, like many before us, will leave and forget. Only the communities themselves will really live with the consequences.

Contrasts

The contrasts all around can be very striking. For example, villages where families commonly own TV satellite dishes yet the children of the same families defecate in the open.

The philosopher Jagger once said that you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.

So what is intriguing to me about this example of development is that the opposite appears to be true. What they’ve got, television, might seem to us to be what they ‘want’; whereas what they haven’t, sanitation and hygiene, might be what we think they ‘need’. Water, sanitation and hygiene programmes have been done here, but they have perhaps not led to as durable a change as television has.

It’s clear to me that I have a lot to learn about how development works. But my stay here has only just begun and, as that philosopher also said, time is on my side.

Start

I’ve recently moved to the island of Nias, Indonesia. I’m interning for French NGO ACTED with support from British charity EWB-UK and I’m working on a disaster risk reduction (DRR) programme.

The island was affected by the tsunami in 2004 and then devastated by a massive earthquake a few months later. Our team is working with 10 villages to help them build their resilience to future disasters.

I’ll aim to post to this blog quite frequently with updates that will definitely be brief and will hopefully also be interesting. I welcome your questions and comments.