That NGO Addiciton

The other day I picked up an Utne Reader magazine and started reading it. I found an interesting article called ´The New Colonialists´ talking about NGOs and what they do for the people of third world countries. I`ve read before about aid shipments of clothes, grain, and infrastructure collapsing local economy on those three levels, effectively creating a dependency overnight. The article correctly said that while the effects of NGOs´ work can be horrific, it has saved millions of lives. By saving all those lives, they take authority and the need to be competent away from their host government. This makes the government weak and since it has fewer responsibilities and expectations, more likely to be corrupt. The people lose confidence in their government, making a situation of civil unrest more likely to happen. It was a fascinating article, really, considering that I work for an NGO.

What made it even more fascinating was that I was reading it in La Campa´s municipal building at a meeting of representatives from all the local NGOs with political and community leaders from La Campa and its villages. And who was invited but wasn´t present? Take a guess. La Campa´s mayor. It seemed like the people who were united were the de facto municipality officials, yet no elected government officials were there (but a mayor candidate for the coming elections did showed up). The next day they had a similar meeting in San Manuel, but there the mayor and local government officials showed up.

Whether or not the NGO workers in the area are aware of the political and dependence issues that could come out of their work, what they were doing in La Campa and San Manuel had the possibility of stemming those issues. That would be achieved by uniting local NGO-empowered community leaders with each other and with local government, to effectively do whatever work that needs to be done, without relying on foreign donations to NGOs.

The goal is to empower people, something I feel like we do with CASM. Sometimes though, dependence rears its ugly head. A couple of times when I have visited communities, people ask me what I brought for them. Sometimes it feels offensive, but then I remind myself that its true, I have access to more money and more resources than they do and I am here to serve, so why shouldn´t I help them? The biggest challenge is to work for sustainability, to ward of dependency. Luckily, my work is focused on building leadership in youth and in communities, something that is directed to diminish dependency.