talking about stuff.

Last week I finished up a month of trying to not buy anything that I didn't need (I don't know if it was cheating to buy dinner with friends, but... I may have done that - that's filling a certain need though I think) as a way to evaluate what I really need and to help me value what I already have. It was kind of freeing to know that certain things were off-limits. In the same vein of "things we don't need" (sort of) I want to take a look at this issue from a different perspective.

You may have heard the term "SWEDOW" - stuff we don't want. It's used to refer to donations that are unnecessary and even harmful to those to whom they are given, usually under the pretense of aid. A classic example of this is World Vision's donation of Superbowl t-shirts, branded with the losing team.

Every article I read on this topic had this photo, so I thought I'd throw it in too.

Donations of 100 000 free t-shirts can inefficient at best, and harmful at worst. The main reasons for discouraging SWEDOW are:

• the financial cost to ship the products over. Donating something you already have may seem handy, because you have it, you don't need it and other people [seem to] need it, so it seems to follow that you should fill that gap. However, this isn't as simple as dropping off some clothes at your Goodwill downtown. Shipping, packaging, customs -it adds up. But it's not even as if all that is somehow worth it. Typically donations of this kind are items that are readily available in a given country anyway, so all the money spent on bringing over the donations is wasted.
• Even more, this is money that could be invested into local suppliers. What if you had a coffee shop, but then someone decided to fly in and start giving out free coffee right in front of your shop because they wanted to help. Bringing in a bunch of free stuff can be pretty damaging to a local economy.
• It's really just sloppy, and disrespectful to people's real needs. If everyone had enough shirts for a year, there would still be big issues. It feels good to treat a symptom for a while, but ultimately you're doing more harm by not addressing the illness. By not even taking the time to understand the issues at play in a developing country we are acting in ignorance and blatantly disrespecting the people we claim to care about.

Probably one of the most dangerous things about SWEDOW is that it makes you feel like you're helping, when really you are not at all. Your conscience may be temporarily salved so you don't feel a need to enact any real change. This concept is articulated by philosopher Slavoj Zizek in his compelling (and in this link, animated!) lecture, First as Tragedy, then as Farce.

Don't get me wrong - there are certainly times when it is important to intervene and provide free "stuff" that people need. I'm not saying let people go naked and hungry while we wade through red tape and sort out policy and systemic issues. But of course, the costs (I don't mean just financial) and benefits must be weighed, and the time and place for this type of intervention must be carefully discerned.

P.S. In the interest of keeping this a balanced discussion, I'll link to World Vision's defense of its donations.

a different kind of victory garden.

There is something really exciting happening in Hamilton! Hamilton Victory Gardens are in their second official year of operation, and I am so excited to be involved.

For one thing, I am looking forward to digging my hands into soil again - I had a garden when I was younger that ended up with my dad taking care of it and a cucumber takeover. More importantly though, this is an amazing model for holistic community development.

Hamilton Victory Gardens is an urban gardening project where the harvest goes to food banks as well as the surrounding community. It involves people who live in the neighbourhood as well as those who use the food banks so it is a real community effort. I went to the first meeting of the season last week and I was truly impressed with the mission of this organization. One of the things that I was most taken with was their emphasis on having this be a truly communal effort; one of the speakers was a man named Carl, who was a patron of the Good Shepherd food bank and became involved in the Victory Garden in order to contribute.

That is something that really makes this project stand out. Rather than simply providing people with handouts (although they are much fresher and healthier handouts than typical food bank fare!), the gardens allow people to take ownership of their situation and provides autonomy and a sense of purpose for those in need. A project like this has the ability to change the tone of a community – people feel like they are involved in something, and they are also reaping the rewards of their work. The garden is in the north end of the city, and of the things that the speakers noted last week was that they had never encountered any problems with vandalism or people interfering with their crops. It seems people appreciate having empty lots turned into useful, beautiful areas.

It is such a simple, exciting idea! And there are a ton of ways that this can grow and really make an impact, including evolving into a business endeavor for those in the community, and a community event center (see Hill St. Community Garden for the potential that urban agriculture has!)

This isn’t just a good idea for addressing poverty though.  As a culture, we are very separated from the food that we eat - where it comes from, how it is made, what it is made of. The ability to grow your own food isn't just a useful skill for those who are short on it. When I go to pick up groceries I often marvel at modern, Western conveniences. Around the corner I can get Mini-Wheats at ANY hour of the day or night. And I do. In the scope of all the people who have lived, and all of the people on the planet now, our way of life is incredibly unique – it has to be, it’s not very sustainable.

This year, Hamilton Victory Gardens plans to add six more locations, and provide ten times more produce than last year - so there is plenty of room for helping hands, both clean and dirty!

a glass half empty? a look at microfinance.

The first time I encountered the idea of microfinance was at a church conference, and one of the interviewees was a co-founder of Kiva. "This. Is. Amazing," I thought. So simple! So effective! And above all, not paternalistic in the least, pointing toward long-term development that is actually effective. I was definitely smitten.

For the uninitiated: microfinance is the idea of making small loans to people in developing countries (either through community groups or a bank established for this purpose) to help them start a small business or endeavour of a similar sort. This is meant to help people to gain workable skills and establish themselves in a sustainable manner.

Microfinance has made great gains in popularity lately, and certainly seems to have a lot of the answers that people are looking for in terms of addressing poverty in a meaningful and effective way. The idea of mere financial aid is one that is often met with a healthy amount of cynicism; people are disillusioned from seeing money go to developing countries only to be mismanaged, get lost in inefficient government systems, or to go to something that doesn't actually benefit a community in the long run. The more we learn about poverty it seems that the obstacles are that much greater, and it seems like there is not that much that can be significantly accomplished.

Microfinance takes a different approach, and there are a lot of good ideas here: dignity of the poor, cultural sensitivity, the whole "teaching a man to fish," thing, and it inspires a reciprocal relationship between the donor and the receiver, rather than dependence on handouts and encouraging the weird power balance that so often accompanies aid. I think though, that microfinance is more complicated than it initially seems - it is certainly not the messiah of the developing world, as it is so often esteemed. Some of these cracks in the surface are starting to show, such as violence and shame surrounding pressure to repay loans. Impatience with faulty development strategies might hasten someone's dismissal of microfinance, but this should not be the case. By looking critically at the benefits and drawbacks of microfinance we can better assess how to apply it, and how to avoid these pitfalls.

Food for thought and related reading:

"How Microfinance Changes the Lives of Millions," Shweta S. Banerjee. Foreign Policy. October 26, 2009.

"India's Looming Microcredit Crisis." Sanjay Kumar. The Diplomat. October 30, 2011.

Microfinance and its Discontents: Women in Debt in Bangladesh, Lamia Karim

Banker to the Poor, Muhammad Yunus.

A glass half empty?

Unfortunately, one of the things that I am best at is seeing the negative side of a situation. I used to chalk it up to 'critical thinking' but I do have a certain bent toward defeatism. This has been something that I have struggled with in learning more about development and poverty alleviation. The more I read, and especially when I traveled to East Africa, I was bombarded with hopeless sentiments - does anything we do actually make a difference? What say do I even have to try and change the way someone lives? Thoughts of cultural barriers, language barriers, corruption in policy and government swirled around my head. How could anyone do anything to make a real change, much less me? My first instinct was to throw up my hands - it is easy enough to numb oneself to the realities of the world in middle class North America - but as I interacted more with people and saw more of what was being done in the few organizations we visited, hope stirred in me. I still feel cripplingly helpless in the face of certain obstacles and defeatist thoughts creep into my mind often enough...but I stubbornly hold onto the idea that we can't not do something...so now what?

There seems to be a lot of cynicism surrounding poverty alleviation, much of it well-earned. Television commercials are saturated with commercials asking for donations, depicting the poorest of the poor, their dignity forgotten. The United Nations is known for its thick red tape, and perceived as largely ineffectual. We hear rumours of inefficient or unaccountable relief organizations. There is even skepticism surrounding the effectiveness and intentions of the previously untouchable Mother Teresa. It seems that no matter what avenue is taken that the causes of poverty run so deep than any effort is thwarted, or at least a staggering step forward.

The problem with addressing poverty is that since it is often very complex and requires a great deal of long-term investment, without a holistic approach the efforts that fall short of this are often more harmful than if nothing had been done. This idea is fleshed out in When Helping Hurts, a book that emphasizes the importance of long-term development, enabling communities with good stewardship skills, and most importantly the dignity of the poor and mutual respect and cooperation. The model that is laid out in this book reveals poverty alleviation to be a long and arduous process. The goal here is not material results (improving crop outputs, building x number of schools) but restoring relationships. This takes personal investment and involving the poor with the work. This of course is an incredibly arduous task. Even for myself, thinking of what actually has to be done to work effectively with communities fills me with dread.

I am going to endeavor to explore different ways in which poverty is wrongly addressed, why harm is done, and if there is anything worth redeeming from these ideas. Just because a task is daunting, seemingly insurmountable, and those defeatist thoughts seem to be all there is, just means we're going to be that much more creative, that much more understanding of where people are coming from, and learn that much more about our abilities. Not to mention all that is to be learned from those in the majority world. In taking time to learn from those we are trying to help we also greatly enrich our own lives. Once we realize the richness of the mutual benefits that are possible, why would we want to go about it any other way?