The compelling need and the opportunity for a village to have a well and clean water of its own sets the table for the more critical task of coaching villagers, mostly illiterate, in the techniques of organizing for permanent management responsibility. The well and clean water is a recognized need while the development of the local civic capacity to manage responsibly is not a need well recognized here in rural Haiti. The concept, as well as the method, of responsible, transparent management is totally lacking. As a result, the material resources directed to local communities are not well-used or sustained. We patrons of the poor in Haiti have trouble dealing with this. We see a need and respond to the visible need without regard to the less visible need for an organized management structure based in the community to make sure wells, schools, medical clinics, tree farms, etc. are serving their community over the long haul. That is what sustainable community development is all about -- building management capacity along with new community assets.
In this little church near St. Raphael, Haiti meetings are held regularly to prepare the way for a community well. I was there twice this week.
These people, along with their community organizer, are are getting ready to govern the maintenance and use of the well and of the water according to their own enforceable regulations.
These children are among the hundreds of people who need this well and clean water.
If there is to be a well that works for this community permanently, it will depend on a community management council with the capacity to operate it permanently. That's the story from Haiti Outreach.
--kjl
I imagine that, in many "third world" countries, the need to prioritize personal survival, a drive to maintain or advance in individual social status, and a culture of economic and political corruption, all combine to work against the kind of community-minded stewardship you seek. Not that all citizens there have those attitudes, but the ones who don't are - for want of a better term - victims of those who are. One more good reason to pray for the people of Haiti and the people who minister to them.
ReplyDeleteYou are on the mark, John. As I look as some of the dystopia here, it looks familiar. Where, for good reasons or bad, people put themselves ahead of their community, even if it as small a community as a household or village, things go bad. It is an old story.
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