What does it mean to invest in people?
Peace Corps volunteers are often told the ideal role we can play is that of “capacity building,” That is, rather than working our own butts off to change things, we should be motivating and inspiring others–Malians from our communities, and for health volunteers particularly health workers–to shake things up. This philosophy is great and makes perfect sense in principle. Of course, Malians can do health work in a Malian context better than we ever could, no matter how good our language skills may be. We started as, and to some extent will always be, outsiders. What most of us are able to bring to the table is something of a knowledge of how things should be done, the ability to connect people and organizations with different kinds of resources, and, perhaps most importantly–energy and enthusiasm, a certain tirelessness of spirit that transcends cultural boundaries and is the je ne sais quoi of the Peace Corps legacy. We don’t come with the promise of big money, like other NGOs, is the message. We bring ourselves, our knowledge, and our creativity, and we are here to invest in people. It all sounds great. I believe in it, or I never would have signed on for my two year service.
But….as with many aspects of life on the ground here, the reality often doesn’t match the rhetoric. Host country expectations of what we are here to do often differ vastly from what we are taught to believe we are here to do, and the priorities that the community sets, based on a history of working with other NGOs long on cash and short on oversight, are often not the ones that the volunteer feels capable to, or wants to, address. Add to that the pressure that volunteers feel (a pressure that, admittedly, we largely put on ourselves) to have some sort of funded projects at the end as a tangible way of showing we “did something,” and you’ve got a formula for a lot of frustration on the part of both the volunteer and the community.
I feel very fortunate in the sense that, as there is almost zero NGO presence in Marena, I have not had to deal with a barrage of requests to find money to fix this, build that, buy us a new x. Volunteers posted in bigger towns or in regions with a heavy NGO presence often regale accounts of being treated like the perpetual Mr(s) Moneybags. The people of the Bafing area have more limited experience asking organizations for things, and I’ve generally felt from the beginning that for the most part they understand and accept my goals in working here. But even I’ve had to fight against my own nagging need for tangible accomplishments; funding is tempting as a “legitimization” that I’ve been putting real effort into my time here, when of course I shouldn’t need that in the first place.
My constant reminder to myself is that I’m here for the everyday things that the community can and should be doing to promote the health of its people: the infant growth monitoring, the vaccinations. the sensitization on family planning, malaria prevention and STIs. For the one-to-one counseling, the group education sessions and for finding new opportunities for information to be shared and quality of lives thus improved. These are activities that many of us are doing on a regular basis in our health centers, and for me, more than big funded projects, represent the essence of what I want the legacy of my service to be. By taking on these ‘everyday’ activities with a strong sense of purpose and some level of urgency, the volunteer can be a catalyst to helping Malian health workers see the importance of things that don’t have dollar signs attached to them. (That’s when that whole complicated ‘capacity building thing’ can start to happen).
Great. So why isn’t it enough to be the volunteer that works really hard her entire service to educate, inform and inspire without spending a dime? Do we need to build a maternity or do a major well repair project or get funding for a community garden to justify our existence, given that we don’t have distinct “9 to 5″ type jobs?
The answer, I have to keep reminding myself, is no. Of course, volunteers have done all of these things and done them well, and countless communities have benefited significantly from funding obtained through Peace Corps for various projects. But the principle is that it shouldn’t be about that. The implicit assumption is that volunteers possess the qualities needed to help the community to recognize and address its own needs over time. That it’s part of our job to help them realize that they can do it themselves.
It’s something that I aspire to, although I certainly had no sense before I started how difficult being the spark can really be. Even once the language and cultural barriers are more or less overcome, even once it seems your co-workers have started to respect your contribution and your input, there’s still that tricky task of getting them to take it on for themselves, or to see it as their responsibility to make sure this work happens whether you are there or not. Everyone’s happy as long as the volunteer is doing the leg work, but getting others invested is a more difficult task. I’ve learned this through my experience trying to regularize baby weighing at my health center; for a long time the center staff saw it as “my thing” and if I was absent, it rarely happened, even though malnutrition monitoring is part of the minimum activities package all centers are required to be doing (this is something I’m trying to motivate the midwife to take more initiative on, and it has improved in recent months). You rarely get as tidy outcomes investing in people as you do throwing money at something; a lot more headaches seems to be the price to pay for achieving long-lasting change.
I guess that there is nothing magic about the process of capacity building, that’s it’s not so much about personal magnetism or exceptional qualities as it is about a quiet persistence and a willingness to work through the setbacks (and, ok, occasionally a high tolerance for petty politics helps). If I can see the potential in one person and bring it out, however long it takes, that’s a mark that I’ve made that money couldn’t have bought.
If I can change one just person’s mind….it’s something.
