O que vou postar e um pequeno texto sobre o que o meu chefe me pediu para escrever assim que cheguei ao escritorio.
Quando cheguei as 9:02 min da manha ele chamou-me e enquanto fumava um cigarro perguntou-me:
I would like you to tell me what is your current perspective about bangladesh development sector?
Tudo isto porque no inicio fui extremamente duro no que lhe disse, especialmente pela minha experiencia na ONG em que estive antes. Sera que mudei a minha piniao?
My perspective about Bangladesh development sector (brief subjective notion)
Bangladesh development sector is a big sector. BRAC is the biggest NGO in the world with operations in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan or Indonesia and the European Commission gives 25% of its help to Asia to Bangladesh.
Big, medium, small NGOs seem like a must in any Bangladeshi village, that reminds me the post offices in Portugal. It is almost a “development flag” to have an NGO in a village.
My first approach to this was very critical, with a frustrating “billboard NGO” as first experience. All the idealistic perspective that there are people trying to help other people just vanished. Instead, exists a big industry that lives from the billions that “developed” countries inject in the country believing they are doing the “good”. But not being responsible about its impacts.
Than you have a whole middle class (and not so middle) that lives from this industry. This is not necessarily bad but lets look at it deeply.
In a simple way, a company that works in a “normal” industry receives money from their clients according to the product or service they deliver. So, in a competitive market with multiple players they have the incentive to understand and sophisticate their own approach and the client is, in the end, are better off.
With the NGOs the money doesn’t come from the same place where they deliver the product. So, what happens is that most of the NGOs have leaflets in English, with a copy paste from Millennium Development Goals and their “clients” don’t count for the NGO sophistication.
The real problems are just not problems... the millennium development goals create constraints to this country development. Also they create false problems that all the NGOs just multiply workshops about that not so important issue concerning the real problems of that village.
Look at this graphic. In a country like Bangladesh with so many problems, HIV for many different reasons is one of the least problem, and is insignificant compared with people that many times don’t have nothing to eat. Amazingly, in many NGOs I visited they have a program about HIV. And what they do is a workshop with some people about the ways of contamination etc. Strange...
But, isn’t it in the Millenium Development Goals!?!?!
(check it in wkipedia)
If there is a need for “development” than it should be something created in the communities, in the families, in the individuals. They have the power to say what they need.
Don’t create the poverty stigma on people!!!
There is, instead, a need to give the tools to make people dream and help people to achieve those dreams. It seems simple but it is not.
On the other hand it is easy to continue to apply development measures designed in NY or Geneva and legitimate the growth of the millions of NGOs that exist in the world. I think this designers should live in Dhaka or in a developing city.
Monon said, this is like a child: when it falls on the floor, if the mother is around he will cry until his mother comes and picks him up, but if there is no mother around the child just stands up cries a bit and continues.
What I believe is that there is a need to understand how all the NGO industry is working and understand what can be done to create platforms that really help them in their own needs. The "unleash" word.
I don’t want to put all the NGOs in the same basket but this is my general feeling about most of the professional NGOs. Anyways there are good projects, ideas, and even people that continue to give their lives to causes.
Development sector is a complicated thing by definition. And there is a big and intelligent work to do . It needs to be close to the peoples needs but for that it needs to understand who are these people, who are the poor people. Maybe the way is to drop this concept and try to start empowering people that have primary needs that cannot be fulfilled. Assuring that you are not creating a dependency system. This will take time but can be done.
Hope I have heaps of comments!!!
Obrigado andre pelo incentivo ao blog!!!