The Ethical Dilemma of Internet Access Abroad (Article Link)

A good reflection and important question: http://glimpse.org/stories/view/ethical-dilemma-limiting-students-internet-access-abroad/.

New Video: Amizade's Semester Programs in Bolivia, Brazil, and Tanzania

Parties and Productivity II

The following photos will make a great deal more sense if you read this first, so I'm posting it again:

The photo I'm beginning with is from September 14 - Catorce de Septiembre - an annual holiday in Cochabamba celebrating independence from the Spanish and the city's official founding. Most of the city was off that day for parades, parties, and heaps of good food sold, given away, and pushed on revelers and passers-by.

On parties, the students' Spanish professor was recently discussing generalizations, saying each person has un nombre y un apellido - a name and a last name. Each person is an individual, she was saying, so much so that people should avoid stereotyping Bolivians or people from the United States. At that point our local coordinator interjected to say, si, but it's "a little bit true that people from the US work too much and Bolivians like to enjoy life more."

Last Monday we celebrated Catorce de Septiembre, this Monday we celebrated Dia del Amor (the first day of spring, students' day, and lovers' day, all wrapped into one), and one service-learning semester student and one volunteer just had birthdays - and each one was celebrated multiple times. Despite - or perhaps because of - all of this festivity we have been quite busy and productive.

The semester students are whizzing through Spanish and complaining to anyone who will listen that there's too much reading in the politics and history courses (that I teach), but we all took off Monday to serve with the current Amizade volunteer group. Eight people from all over the US - Colorado, Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, North Carolina, and New York - came to volunteer with us and are helping add an additional bathroom and some living space at the orphanage we've completed outside Cochabamba. Twenty-two children stay there, and at the end of a hard day of painting, ditch digging (for plumbing), plastering, and tiling, they gave home-made birthday cards to each of our celebrants, sang happy birthday, and proceeded with the very Bolivian tradition of then putting confetti in each person's hair. (The photo upload function is not working very well right now, so I'll put these pictures at the end).

This Monday end-of-work-day celebration followed a Sunday cake for Laurie and a separate weekend celebration for Hannah. The volunteer group protested our early work stoppage to no end!!! (Particularly those who didn't know of the coming children's surprise party). Those are the kind of volunteers that Amizade regularly sees on programs. These folks decide to give up some vacation or retirement time to support a community effort somewhere else around the world. While they're here we're sure to take them on some excursions, introduce them to local cultural events and opportunities, and do our very best to be sure they have a good time. But they see the community projects we're working on, they connect with the kids, and they learn about their lives - and they just want to work. That's part of the beauty in being here for an extended amount of time - it's possible to see all of Amizade's effects over the past twelve years of working with volunteers in Bolivia.

There is an entire orphanage that houses twenty-two children and their caretakers. Before the Amizade orphanage they lived in buildings constructed of corrugated tin and cardboard. There are five new school classrooms improving educational opportunities for kids in Viloma. We support an orphanage for newborns in Cochabamba called Millennium, and we also provide volunteers for a center for children with disabilities called Ceoli. All of these organizations struggle to build a better world, and all of them are strengthened through the goodwill of Amizade volunteers. It's great to see in person, again and again.

And of course, the volunteers are great and incredible people. The last photo I'll post is of Judy Haaste and Jim Williams, who reminded us early on Monday that you're never too old to work hard - and on a break reminded us that you're never too old to play hard either.

Amizade volunteers Judy Haste and Jim Wallace enjoying a break from their morning of ditch-digging.

Amizade open group volunteer Laurie Linnes-Bagley celebrates her birthday with children at the Hogar de Ninos orphanage in Vinto, Bolivia.

Hannah Caughman celebrating her 20th Birthday with the help of one of the local children in Vinto, Bolivia.

Parties and Productivity

The photo I'm beginning with is from September 14 - Catorce de Septiembre - an annual holiday in Cochabamba celebrating independence from the Spanish and the city's official founding. Most of the city was off that day for parades, parties, and heaps of good food sold, given away, and pushed on revelers and passers-by.

On parties, the students' Spanish professor was recently discussing generalizations, saying each person has un nombre y un apellido - a name and a last name. Each person is an individual, she was saying, so much so that people should avoid stereotyping Bolivians or people from the United States. At that point our local coordinator interjected to say, si, but it's "a little bit true that people from the US work too much and Bolivians like to enjoy life more."

Last Monday we celebrated Catorce de Septiembre, this Monday we celebrated Dia del Amor (the first day of spring, students' day, and lovers' day, all wrapped into one), and one service-learning semester student and one volunteer just had birthdays - and each one was celebrated multiple times. Despite - or perhaps because of - all of this festivity we have been quite busy and productive.

The semester students are whizzing through Spanish and complaining to anyone who will listen that there's too much reading in the politics and history courses (that I teach), but we all took off Monday to serve with the current Amizade volunteer group. Eight people from all over the US - Colorado, Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, North Carolina, and New York - came to volunteer with us and are helping add an additional bathroom and some living space at the orphanage we've completed outside Cochabamba. Twenty-two children stay there, and at the end of a hard day of painting, ditch digging (for plumbing), plastering, and tiling, they gave home-made birthday cards to each of our celebrants, sang happy birthday, and proceeded with the very Bolivian tradition of then putting confetti in each person's hair. (The photo upload function is not working very well right now, so I'll put these pictures at the end).

This Monday end-of-work-day celebration followed a Sunday cake for Laurie and a separate weekend celebration for Hannah. The volunteer group protested our early work stoppage to no end!!! (Particularly those who didn't know of the coming children's surprise party). Those are the kind of volunteers that Amizade regularly sees on programs. These folks decide to give up some vacation or retirement time to support a community effort somewhere else around the world. While they're here we're sure to take them on some excursions, introduce them to local cultural events and opportunities, and do our very best to be sure they have a good time. But they see the community projects we're working on, they connect with the kids, and they learn about their lives - and they just want to work. That's part of the beauty in being here for an extended amount of time - it's possible to see all of Amizade's effects over the past twelve years of working with volunteers in Bolivia.

There is an entire orphanage that houses twenty-two children and their caretakers. Before the Amizade orphanage they lived in buildings constructed of corrugated tin and cardboard. There are five new school classrooms improving educational opportunities for kids in Viloma. We support an orphanage for newborns in Cochabamba called Millennium, and we also provide volunteers for a center for children with disabilities called Ceoli. All of these organizations struggle to build a better world, and all of them are strengthened through the goodwill of Amizade volunteers. It's great to see in person, again and again.

And of course, the volunteers are great and incredible people. The last photo I'll post is of Judy Haaste and Jim Williams, who reminded us early on Monday that you're never too old to work hard - and on a break reminded us that you're never too old to play hard either.

So You Want to Change the World

Good. No matter how you define justice, there’s a great deal of injustice in our world today – 30,000 children dying daily due to largely preventable causes, 1.1 billion people living in extreme poverty. And working to somehow stand against injustice rather than just sit comfortably by is step #1. I’m writing this entry for the many people who regularly contact Amizade with questions somehow related to: “There’s a great deal of injustice in the world, what can I do about it?”

Most of the time, when people contact us, they’re asking about global issues. Of course, there are a great deal of social challenges and community needs in the United States. We actually have partnerships in the Navajo Nation and Washington DC  too. If you’re interested in service in the US, you should definitely check out the Corporation for National and Community Service (which has opportunities for people of all ages), if you’re a college student, see if there’s a service-learning office at your university, and if you’re at our partner institution West Virginia University, connect with the Center for Civic Engagement.

But if it’s social concerns outside the US that are calling you to serve, read on. First, of course, there is Amizade. We were founded and continue to serve as a dual-mission organization: we do community-driven development around the world, while also connecting people across cultures through service. Part of that second part of our mission – connecting people across cultures – ensures that we work hard to provide well-supported, deliberate, entry-level service opportunities for people who are new to working outside of their home countries. I once wrote an article for Transitions Abroad about three different ways for university students to approach international service, so I won’t elaborate further here. But suffice it to say that young people have many opportunities to either (1) go it alone internationally and take on all the risk, (2) go with a new student initiative and mediate some of the risk, or (3) go with an established program like Amizade, with a clear and strong safe programming record, and many years of experience working sustainably in the same communities. What Amizade frequently provides students is an entry point into what becomes a lifelong commitment to community development and social change.

Yet Amizade is not for everyone, or perhaps you’ve already completed an Amizade program and are now considering next steps. I recommend taking some time to sit with and sift through the many jobs listed on Idealist, which is a massive clearninghouse of service-related opportunities. Don’t get discouraged immediately – you won’t have the qualifications that most of the organizations are looking for. Nonetheless, it's a great place to consider the kinds of jobs you may want in the future, look at what they look for, and figure out how to get there.

If you decide international development interests you, or even more local sustainable development, Appropedia is a wiki dedicated to sustainable development and appropriate technology. But if it's definitely international development you’re after, and you’re looking through graduate school options, the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs (APSIA) is comprised of member schools where it's possible to get a master's in something relating to development. APSIA’s website is pretty lackluster, but it gives you the relatively short list of schools in the US that are serious about development studies (Europeans tend to have many more options within the field of development).

Clark University is not an APSIA member, but it offers great programs relating to International Development, Community, and Environment. Moving away from broad development schools to more specific training, opportunities exist both within social work and public health. Social Work, to be completely forthright, is challenged to figure out its approach to the international realm. At least among social workers in the US, there has been a very strong attempt to standardize and clarify the profession, which has led to rather precise rules for what can count for a social work internship or field placement. Typically field placements must be supervised by another Social Worker, and there aren’t that many licensed social workers in the most poverty-stricken parts of the world. Nonetheless, there are a few innovate programs that are finding ways to engage in international social work. Boston College is one of the few programs to offer a real emphasis on international opportunities, along with Monmouth University in New Jersey. 

Public Health programs are also great entry points for working with international development concerns, and the Association of Schools of Public Health allows you to search by degree and focus area, so it's possible to create a list of master's level programs with an international focus. Some of the most interesting approaches to learning about community perspectives or engaging in community-driven research are coming out of Public Health. Though my Ph.D. focused on development (at the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs), I regularly find myself reading and drawing from public health approaches.

Finally, the Rotary Peace Fellowship program allows opportunities to earn fully-funded Master's Degrees in Peace Studies or Peace and Conflict Studies. I have a friend who did it and for him it was an incredible springboard into a breadth of good work. He's now had stints with the UN, Save the Children, and is currently working with a mid-size British NGO involved with development work in Afghanistan. 

This offers a bit of a start. There are also many good books relating to development, but I’ll try to address some of them over the coming months. The crucial lesson, from any text or whatever approach to development that one chooses to take, is to remember that many people have attempted development with far too much arrogance. When working across cultures around the world, it’s important to stop, listen, be patient, find ways to work together, wait, be patient again, remind yourself to be humble, and hopefully through this slow but important process, move forward together.

Futbol is Life

Jugarias en el cieolo - Moriria por verte. If you play [soccer] in heaven, I will die to watch you.


That was the message on one of the signs at the end of Wilsterman Stadium. And today all Cochabamba was rapt with concern for Wilsterman, the home team. A loss would mean dropping down a division, the equivalent of The Phillies (or more likely, The Pirates) bumping down to the minors.

Yesterday and this morning was a frenzy over tickets: who had them, how to get them, whether they'd be available. We secured seats in La Preferencia, the nicer section, and entered the stadium about 4:30 for the 6:00 game. Wilsterman wears red. Our two-thirds of the stadium was blazoned with their red jerseys, the track was red, and - as the day broke into evening, the sky went red and the mountains glowed in favor of Wilsterman.

Both ends of the stadium were filled with los fanaticos. They drummed, chanted, and moved the rest of us to swaying and rocking. Wilster. Wilster. Wilster.

When the team entered for the game, the place went raucous. Our songs repeated. We now knew them too. We chanted. Each end of the stadium shot fireworks into the air. Confetti dropped, smoke bombs exploded. And then we settled into the steady tension that is soccer. Wilsterman had more shots on goal. The first half ended scoreless.

At half-time the vendors reappeared. The game is too important to interrupt. Early in the second half one of our strikers was cut down by Oruru's goalkeeper. We had a penalty kick. Oruru contested it for five solid minutes. They placed and replaced the ball. Finally, our player moved forward, shot, block. Oruru's fans went wild. Fireworks from their side. Chanting - a sea, one-third of the stadium, all blue and white.

Ten minutes later though, our moment came: a shot to the left side of the goal, past the keeper's dive, into the back of the net. New songs, more chanting. We are incredible. We are euphoric. We are Wilsterman.

Bienvenidos a Bolivia!

"Simply superlative - this is Bolivia. It's the hemisphere's highest, most isolated and most rugged nation. It's among the earth's coldest, warmest, windiest and steamiest spots. It boasts among the driest, saltiest and swampiest natural landscapes in the world." 




Thus begins Lonely Planet: Bolivia and thus began the semester for my students and me, as we dropped into La Paz's airport at 13,325 feet. Our plane landed higher than most US residents will ever hike. The air was cold and clear. Mt. Illimani loomed on the horizon, snow-capped and stark, hovering another 8,000 feet above the capital itself. We soon transferred to our flights on BOA, Bolivia's state-run airline, which has good service and fantastic rates. 

Jean Carla Costas, Amizade's Bolivia Site Director, greeted us at the airport in Cochabamba. Cochabamba is a beautiful, temperate city filled with avenues of palms and ringed by mountains. It's population is near 600,000, making it roughly similar to Baltimore for a US comparison. But Cochabamba has a different pace.  


Yes it has its hardworking professionals and many others bustling about, but there is an unmistakable emphasis on friends, family and warm relationships. The students learned that soon after we dropped them off at their homestays, as their whole new families and many members of the extended families were soon home for lunch. Life is distinctly different when every member of the household returns each day for a family lunch meal, followed by a nap. 


Bolivia is of course a developing country, but that category itself is so broad as to be meaningless. Much like life in a developed country - in New Orlean's 9th Ward or in New York's Upper West Side - has substantial variance, so too does life in a developing country. The students are staying in North Cochabamba, a section of town populated primarily by professionals. They are pleased with their accomodations and enjoying their new families. 

At left, an Amizade Homestay room. 


The homestays are the bases from which the students will go out to take Spanish classes, learn more about Bolivian development, history, and politics, experience the energy and diversity of Cochabamba, serve with an orphanage and center for children with disabilities, and perhaps - get involved with environmental initiatives, hike an Andean peak, and visit one of Bolivia's many natural wonders, whether jungle or salt flat.  For the moment, they're just getting their bearings, and I'm working to share those bearings with you.

Cochabamba is at once modern and traditional. Quechua people, the indigenous group descendant from the Incan Empire, regularly sell vegetables and other goods at local markets and stalls. Quechua and Aymara traditions predominate in the rural areas, exist in parts of the cities, and have recently been influential in the government of President Evo Morales, Bolivia's First Indigenous President.


The picture at right is from the intersection at the opening of El Pando, an area bursting with young professionals, students, and the attendant happening bars and restaurants. Two Quechua women are in the foreground, selling flags to pedestrians and stopping cars. Immediately behind them is a large moon-sliver statue, commissioned for a summit of the Americas held in Cochabamba in the late 1980s, and looming in the background - one of El Prado's less happening restaurants.






Like in the United States, wealth and poverty tend to fall along class lines here. Also like in the United States, a representative of a historically under-represented group has recently assumed the Office of the Presidency. Nonetheless, the poverty within the city is mostly located in the predmoninately Quechua South. And the experience of the campesinos - the mostly indigenous rural farmers - is profoundly different from what exists in Northern Cochabamba. 


The average Bolivian makes $900 a year. Of course, the professionals I've been referencing don't hover anywhere near that rate. The upper twenty-five percent of the population, in terms of income, averages about $6,000 per year. I don't have the data for the upper 5%, which is no doubt much higher. There's a middle group, about thirty-five percent of the whole population, that has an average annual income of about $3,600. It includes rural and urban people working almost exclusively in the informal economy (also called the black market). 


The informal economy is massive in developing countries. Today a Bolivian business person told me about buying un-copyrighted computer programs on the streets (or DVDs or CDs). He said that less than three percent of Bolivian businesses use copyrighted Microsoft programs. All the rest are knock-offs. That is one small, incredibly meaningful, indicator of how much business - and at what levels - does not pass through the official radar. 


Forty percent of the Bolivian population survives almost exclusively in the informal economy, largely engaging in subsistence farming. Most of that group lives on less than $1 per day (This, the data above, and much more come from Dunkerly's Bolivia: Revolution and the Power of History in the Present).  Amizade's service partnerships support community organizations working with that lower seventy-five percent of the Bolivian population. We've built an orphanage, supported children with disabilities, cared for children in orphanages, added classrooms onto schools, and much more. 

Visiting Amizade's Bolivia site right now are Martie and Marvin Wachs, two retirees who have been working with Amizade in Bolivia for more than five years. They've helped complete the Hogar de Ninos Orphanage, started a program supporting a Center for Children with Disabilities by selling fair trade greeting cards, built school classrooms, donated furniture to furnish the orphanage, and otherwise dedicated substantial time and resources to support and empower many Bolivians. 

 

That's Marvin Wachs at left, laughing with Margaret Roche this afternoon at a barbecue for the Wachs at Jean Carla's house. Margaret is a student at the University of Massachusettes, and has joined Amizade and West Virginia University for this semester program in Bolivia. The Wachs keep a website to update friends and family about their travels. You'll see that soon after they began traveling, they decided to commit to Bolivia through Amizade. 




The Wachs are eagerly anticipating an upcoming Amizade Open Volunteer Program, where additional volunteers will join them on another community-driven construction project. The students are acclimating to the area, appreciating the mountain views and good weather, and preparing to attend tomorrow evening's vitally important regional soccer match before beginning classes this week. For the moment, I'll leave you with a few scenes from the Cochabamba streets, which are as indicative of the enticing culture and severe class differences as anything I've written above. Pictured below: a typically festive public bus, a party leaving a recent wedding, and another fairly common scene - a family on a motorcycle (but in this case only 3, not the normal 4). 

 

Why are people raging about the G-20?

Pittsburgh, beautiful city that it is, is about to host the G-20. No one – protestor, policymaker, nor politician – seems able to provide a clear articulation of what this meeting is about and why it matters so much. I’m going to work to clear it up here.

First, the G-20 says (and news agencies frequently repeat directly) that it is a group of twenty “systemically important industrialized and developing economies” that “promotes open and constructive discussion” in an effort to “strengthen international financial architecture,” and thereby enhance global economic stability. Translation: Especially rich countries that were part of the G-7 noticed that their largest corporations took some hits during the financial meltdown of the late 90s, so they invited thirteen newbies to the table and said ‘we’ll let you roll with the big kids if you put some safeguards in place, because we all know that the best form of capitalism is the form that socializes risk and privatizes profit.’  

In fairness though, there are many other positive things that may come along with government measures that enhance global economic stability. Things like ensuring financial transactions are transparent and therefore traceable (this helps combat things like terrorism and tax evasion, and therefore supports the possibility of public goods).   We have a globalized economy. There’s no doubt about that. What we don’t have are safeguards to prevent abuses with the money and resources flowing rapidly around the world. Any smart business person wants as much clarity on their investments as is possible, hence the G-20.

The protestors come for a whole set of perfectly logical reasons. First, the most powerful people in the world are gathered together. Really, it doesn’t get any more knights-of-the-round-table than this. And if you are advocating for peace, supporting environmental protections, or fighting for the rights of workers, you want to remind the most powerful people in the world that you exist.

Second, and related, history suggests that economic agreements precede agreements on human rights and environmental protections. It takes people a long time to realize that their capitalistic self-interests often lie with cooperation with a broader community, but they tend to come around to it (Check out the Olson book at right, Power and Prosperity). In the United States we were agreeing to drop tariffs between states long before we were agreeing to recognize real nationwide equality; Europe had the European Coal and Steel Community a half century before it got into labor and environmental agreements with the European Union; and if you check out T.H. Marshall’s review of rights developments in Britain, you see three centuries of steady march from civil (e.g. right to work), to political (e.g. right to voice in governance), then social rights (e.g. a right to an education). This history makes me believe that as our economic linkages become clearer we pave the way for addressing important social and environmental issues. And many of the protestors believe it to, and they have to be in Pittsburgh to speed that process as much as they can. (Side note: Yes, some protesters are just anarchists who aren't looking for cooperative solutions - and unfortunately, they tend to get a wildly disproportionate amount of the press - but for the most part these are smart and civil people with good ideas).   

Protest matters because it does have a strong history. Its history includes ending slavery in the British Empire (again, economic incentives were important first, with a boycott of slave-grown sugar), advancing civil rights, and advancing environmental protections and labor rights.

I’m writing this on my Amizade blog for two primary reasons. First, we work directly with the people who see no immediate benefits of enhanced global economic stability. Benefit may – and I even suspect will – come over the long term. But children in developing countries who have no access to clean water or education today will not be helped during their youths by sound G-20 fiscal policy. Protestors call attention to the 1.1 billion people in the world who are mired in destitute poverty (Check out Collier's Bottom Billion). Some of those people are my friends (See "African Innovation and Entrepreneurialism" on my Amizade blog). They are innovative, smart, independent, and they would have staggeringly better possibilities for human flourishing if basic government structures existed to stabilize markets, reduce corruption, and provide basic public goods.

The photo above is from a town in Bolivia, a beautiful place with incredible people that also happens to be the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

The second clear connection to Amizade is that all too often economists (and, by extension, finance ministers) are functionally clueless to the real world, as Paul Krugman recently argued in the New York Times Magazine. The extent to which this is true is astonishing and staggering. Protestors call attention to real world issues. I’d like to take the finance ministers out of their air-conditioned offices and invite them to join me on a course on community and international development, where they not only recite the meaning of informal economy, but also bargain for business with me on what are frequently the wildly capitalistic dirt roads of Africa. In some ways, there are few freer markets than the markets in developing countries.

Of course, corruption by government is a huge problem in many of those countries, and government alone is no solution to many of the issues above, but these big fish will be fried in later blogs. For now, future finance ministers ought to take advantage of the kinds of courses that deepen their understanding by putting them in contact with the places and people our concepts and policies affect.  

In Search of a Solution – En Route to East Africa

We’re bound for Kayanga, Tanzania: departing Pittsburgh for Altanta, then Amsterdam, and finally Uganda’s Entebbe airport before 8 hours over road to our rural village destination. As is the case with allAmizade experiences, we go in search of a solution. The solutions we seek are partly informed through service and somewhat illuminated through learning. On this program the service includes working with a sustainable development organization, Family Alliance for Development and Cooperation (FADECO), as well as a women’s rights organization, the Women’s Emancipation and Development Agency(WOMEDA). These local organizations have already created a set of beautiful solutions for the issues they address. We simply work to support their efforts.

In a region where 25% of the local crops were spoiling before reaching the market, FADECO developed a set of value-added post-production processes, drawing on simple and affordable local materials. Regional farmers now also sell dried fruits. Tomatoes are shipped as far away as Sweden, where pizza shops can advertise Tanzania sun-dried tomatoes among their toppings. FADECO was central to educating and empowering farmers about these possibilities, and also central to bringing internet and radio to the region. As FADECO’s Director and co-founder Joseph Sekiku so clearly knows, education and information are central to success.

WOMEDA, simultaneously, has worked to ensure women are afforded the most basic legal protections and rights. Within recent generations, the situation in respect to women’s rights in this region was so poor that effectively one half of the population was not allowed to learn, to grow, or to meet its potential. Still today, women frequently farm, take care of the children, fetch water, harvest the crops, and sell the crops, only to be forced – at the threat or eventuality of abuse – to turn any small proceeds over to their husbands. The husbands frequently use the money to drink, to leave briefly, to do anything but support their families. In this context WOMEDA helps ensure young women have the right to schooling, women have the right to hold property, and – in the case of any disputes – women are permitted legal standing in court. WOMEDA advances basic respect and rights for women.

It is these organizations that create the solutions. We support them by helping a breadth of efforts: English language tutoring, grant-writing, English writing and brochure development, conducting interviews with local women as part of creating a base-line survey, and assisting with the installation of gravity-based water harvesting systems to help ensure more families have water access. We do these things and more, always at the direction of our local partners. Yet we still search.

While in many ways FADECO and WOMEDA help us identify and implement some solutions, the scale of the challenges here is so great and the immediacy of the issues so overwhelming, that our work with them really only catalyzes our efforts to better understand. This program is part of a course offered through West Virginia University. The course focuses on International Development. We therefore read from and review many of the important, frequently oppositional, voices in the field such as Columbia’s Jeffrey Sachs andNew York University’s William Easterly. While Sachs writes with contagious optimism and suggests we have the power to end poverty in our time, Easterly heaps a similarly persuasive scathing disdain on people like Sachs. Easterly is appalled anyone might think poverty will be rendered obsolete through careful planning and guidance from above; he insists relief will come only through individual ingenuity and drive, and that there is no reasonable place for Sachs’ initiatives such as the Millennium Villages.

My students and I drop into the thick of this debate, but unlike many students or established economists (Easterly and Sachs both), we will consider these questions in the context of their application. We will dialogue with local people about the solutions they develop, the challenges they see, and the perspective they have. We will, no doubt, see kernels of truth and fallacy in both Sachs’ and Easterly’s approaches, as we cede the easy approach of aligning ourselves with one or another theory in favor of the much more challenging effort to better understand development as it works, in real life, on the ground.

But first – across the Atlantic, into Europe, over the Mediterranean, witnessing the desiccate brown of the Sahara distant below, and flying over increasingly lush and verdant Africa before touching down in what Winston Churchill called the Pearl of Africa - Uganda.

African Innovation and Entrepreneurialism

I’ve reconnected with two old friends here in Kayanga, Tanzania. Together, they’ve reminded me why we’re here and shown me (again) the strength of local growth and innovation. Most people have missed it, but the vast majority of Africa has actually experienced steady growth over the past decade. That’s particularly true if you remove the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Darfur region of Sudan from the analysis. Two friends here exemplify this trend.

Joseph Sekiku is the director and co-founder of FADECO, the Family Alliance for Development and Cooperation. Since FADECO’s founding in 1993, he has identified challenges, innovated, struggled, gathered scarce resources, and developed countless solutions. A few years ago, he received one of the highest global honors for social entrepreneurship when he was named an Ashoka fellow. Over the past four years, we’ve been privileged to help support some of his efforts, through some funding and through some direct labor.

In the early 90s he realized his region wasn’t food self-sufficient. He educated landholders on sustainable farming techniques. Output exploded. Suddenly they needed markets. He helped develop a solar fruit-drying program to ensure goods had greater chances of getting the whole way to a market without spoiling. He realized sharing information was key to development, so he developed a newsletter for farmers. Then he figured out how to devise a satellite connection to get internet access to the region. Suddenly, people had information access – and soon additional internet cafes followed. He saw other NGOs were spending large amounts on educating community members, so he developed a radio station through innovation and accepting some donations. 

He built his first transmitter and rigged together the first radio tower out of sections of rebar. These local radio broadcasts - used to educate people on farming practices, positive water usage and hygiene habits, women’s rights, and health concerns – are now heard by more than four million people, extending well beyond the immediate Karagwe region. 

Joseph is keen on preventative and proactive efforts in community development. He applauds the US Government for its recent emphasis on providing treated anti-malarial bed nets and placing an emphasis on indoor spraying in homes. These practices, in his mind, are far superior to providing drugs or healthcare only after people have contracted malaria. In the region this year, the number of malaria cases dropped from previous years.

Joseph achieves all of this through a unique set of gifts and circumstances and also by being consistently innovative with the scarce resources he has. His family was originally from this region. His father was the region’s only doctor, but in Joseph’s youth they lived in Uganda. At the time, the schools were substantially better there. Joseph focused on his studies until he had a university degree in agriculture sciences, which he thought would give him more opportunity to help than a medical degree like his father’s.

Joseph’s biggest obstacle through the years – he says – has been community members and visitors who don’t believe improvement is possible. He recalls pointing toward bare hills that could be forested, declaring that fruits could be dried and sold, and beginning to build a radio tower – all to the sound of laughter and disbelief. Like any innovator, he has been forced to hold steady in his commitments and efforts despite the gathering community condescension.

Fortunately for Joseph and for the region of Karagwe, this area has seen steady growth. Joseph has had the chance to not only see the success of the efforts he spearheaded, but he has also seen the number of secondary schools, in just two decades, go from three to nearly forty.

During the four years I’ve been visiting the area, cell phone networks have appeared and become consistent and reliable, a water system has been installed in town (36% of people in the region now have access to water), an ATM machine has been installed at the bank, and – thanks to Joseph and others – local radio is available and multiple internet access points are possible. The harbinger of things to come: my friend Deo loaned me a Vodafone Tanzania wireless access point for my computer, meaning I should be able to pick up internet wherever there’s a cell signal. The signals aren’t consistently quite strong enough yet, but – next year.

And another friend, Peter Lazarus, is an inspiring innovator of another sort. Three years ago he had less than nothing, but a clear will to succeed and ideas for a business. Through work, smooth talk, innovation and serious effort, he’s now a very small business owner in town. Of course, he has ideas for growth. More about him – I call him Lazaro – next time.

Growing a Business: Nothing to Something in Kayanga, Tanzania

When I first met Peter Lazarus he could barely communicate in English. That was three years ago. Sunday he showed me the room in which he keeps the materials for his screen printing business. He explained how he found clients, where he got t-shirts, how he created stencils or drawings, where he did printing, and how he was hoping to expand.

My first interactions with Lazaro, some call him Laz, came during a course I taught in the summer of 2007. He quickly won over the students with a broad and enthusiastic smile, a warm personality, and a clear, compelling, and keen interest in the world and learning more about it. He practiced English with anyone willing. He took us on hikes around Kayanga. He began to speak of his interests and dreams – he wanted to have more schooling on art and design so that he could open his own sign-making and screen printing shop. Now he has.

His shop developed through a great deal of his own fortitude, the kind donations of some former Amizade students, and now the proceeds of his initial clients are helping him move forward. He visits schools, shows him the t-shirts he can make, and gets their preferred design. He then writes out the letters for the school name and draws the school crest by hand. After these things are done, he uses great care with the finest point of a utility knife to cut out stencils for the words and the crest. From these stencils he then prints the shirts. He can get some shirts six miles away in Omurushaka, but if he has a large order or wants high quality t-shirts he must do business an hour and a half away in Bukoba or sometimes across Lake Victoria (one night’s ferry ride) in Mwanza. The finished t-shirts sell for about 5000 Tanzanian shillings each, or a little more than $4.00 US.

Laz is still smiling, still working hard, and still focusing on the future. He wears the same clothes all the time, must do all of his work out of a shared room about eight feet by four feet wide, and walks daily through the poverty-riddled and dust-chocked streets of his hometown Kayanga. Lesser souls would quit, but he is soaring. His newest business initiative is directly related to his current work. He is trying to find the funding or donations to buy a laser printer and a digital camera. With these tools he’ll take orders for photos from the kids in the schools he’s working with. All students who make it to secondary school want a school photo, and he has his eye on that market.

The life expectancy here in Tanzania is scarcely more than fifty. Nearly two-thirds of people don’t have access to water in their homes (Laz doesn’t). These conditions make opportunity rare, and initiative and innovation difficult to imagine. People like Peter Lazarus triumph with the assistance of some small help and donations. People like Joseph Sekiku demonstrate the empowering quality of a good education and clear conscience. Organizations like Amizade support the good works of community organizations like FADECO and WOMEDA, and organizations like Amizade help form the relationships that promote friendships across cultures and can be deeply enabling for people like Laz.