The Middle Ground

I have just finished reading the inspiring story of missionary pilot Nate Saint in the book ‘Jungle Pilot’. One of the first MAF pilots in the 1940s and 50s, Saint was a pioneer in the true sense of the word; he built airstrips, flew into areas never accessed by plane before, designed bucket drops to deliver parcels without landing, vastly improved the safety of small aircraft that has a continued legacy in missionary aircraft, and built houses, a hangar, mission hospital and school. His most famous legacy was being part of the team of missionaries who established contact with the notoriously violent Waodani people; all five men were martyred in the process.

Many have been inspired by stories of pioneers in whatever field of mission and development they are working in, but the next generations require different approaches in their more developed and urban contexts. Nate's son Stephen writes an epilogue in our edition where he talks about the challenges of establishing services run by and for the Waodani people, who Nate was contacting when he died.

I have been thinking about putting approaches to development into four categories; Emergency relief, short, medium and long term. Many development organisations, and the wider public, are familiar with the approaches required for the first two; we raise money for disaster relief, and ship out huge amounts of second-hand resources, we build schools, hospitals and dig wells. This has been going on for over a hundred years.

Medium term approaches have been more recent; sponsoring children to go to school, micro-enterprise and micro-credit. In the West, we are getting more used to buying products from these enterprises and even funding small loans for business start-ups (www.kiva.com). I have found that there is not much of a continuum from the short term still; training the teachers and management at the schools and hospitals that have been built, and facilitating the maintenance of wells in rural villages. Likewise, many of these small businesses or NGOs that offer training in a variety of skills and crafts are still run by expats, the products are designed according to western styles, and their markets abroad and access is facilitated by volunteers. Without adressing these issues, the short term solution has had little impact.

How do we as development organisations continue to make an impact in this middle ground? By building on existing infrastructure, by adding to and working within the infrastructure, by training those who are running social services and advocating for their contributions to providing those services outside of urban areas. This is the medium term approach with the aim of reaching long term goals of independence, sustainability, accountability and ownership.

In the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, the Pastoral Women’s Council has been working with the Pastoral and the District Councils to advocate for support for pastoralist girls’ education. As a result, these institutions are taking on education as a priority in their strategies, are sponsoring girls to go to school and are establishing a Pre Form 1 centre to support the transition from primary to secondary school. These projects are starting to change community attitudes towards education for girls, and making long lasting changes within the existing infrastructure. Much more needs to be done, and I feel there should be more dialogue around successful partnerships with government institutions and how we can best support them.

Many organisations also do not have an exit strategy. If there is no thinking behind making your operations defunct and unnecessary, there is no commitment to making long term changes. Instead we create further reliance on the support we deliver. It’s very hard to imagine yourself or an organisation being useless, and too many NGOs thrive on the notion of being needed, and in fact use that as a ‘selling point’ for support. We need to more accurately map out the landscape of the middle ground to consider a future where services are locally provided and sustained.