20/10/2009 at 4:30 am

Change begins at the top

By Steve Hutcheson

Having been in a position over the past ten years where I managed programs that have distributed more than 200 million dollars, I have reached a conviction that a lot of what we do for the most part is simply not working and for very basic reasons. We are, and the Millennium Development Goals fall into this same trap, offering a band-aid to the consequences of poverty and disadvantage instead of actively addressing the root causes of it. Consider for example the case of a young man sitting outside the Stock Exchange anywhere around the world with a sign that says “homeless”. Dropping a dollar in his hat or whatever does not solve his homelessness nor does it offer him any opportunity to address the fact that he is homeless. We might feel good doing it but we are simply exacerbating his situation until the next stage of his perceived disadvantage arrives. It is easy to say we need to help however people also need to help themselves or to be given the tools so they can. The world cannot survive if are two group of people, one that help others and one that simply depends on help. The problem that unfettered charity and a handout mentality do is that it creates dependency instead of providing an atmosphere of self administered change.
When I was working in Kandahar in 2003 there was a refugee camp some 40 kilometers out of the city where 70,000 displaced people were living. They were being provided free food, free health care, free water, free accommodation, free clothing, blankets and the like, so much so that when the time came for them to return to their villages, they wouldn’t and would cite all sorts of reasons why they could not while the other 25 million people in the country could. They had simply become dependent on the aid and had lost the motivation to help them self.
Well intentioned Westerners seem to look at the situation of those people who live a lifestyle that has no possessions and few of the social values and human rights that they now enjoy and seek to create a change that mirrors a movement towards their own. They can however simply walk away when they fail to achieve those aims. I think of young western women in Afghanistan who worked for a period to see that the local women achieved rights and figuratively discarded their burkas. When they left, they also left these women to struggle without any support in a society that was not yet ready for their emancipation.
In another more recent example there is a tribe of people living in the Andaman Islands that have recently come out of the wilderness and are now starting to live on the fringe of “developed” society. Whereas on one hand they have no possessions or education or any of the trappings of development, they have a culture that is thousands of years old and rich in its own social tapestry. What will happen to them as we propose to “develop” them with the features of the basic Millennium Development Goals, they will become the poorest of the poor relative to our social viewpoint, living in shanties, with no sustainable economy to support them, no education to improve their lifestyle and they will become subject to all of the diseases and ailments that the developed world can offer them. From the lifestyle they have presently, they do not see themselves as poor since poverty is relative yet as we offer them development, we put them into a situation where they will move to the bottom of the new social ladder much like a school boy who transitions from the top of primary school into the bottom strata of high school. There are so many examples of undeveloped people around the world that we have proposed to develop into our image of what should be the norm that are now fighting for survival at the bottom of the social ladder. Much of the plight of Africa has evolved through a similar cultural and social development transition.
Charity fails to produce change, it is simply a stopgap and needs to be managed and applied as such and not always without contributory response from those receiving it. Assistance is best achieved by providing the tools necessary for these poor societies to grow at a pace they can best achieve. We readily will hand out food and build a new school, yet do so without considering the impact of what it is we do. Again in Afghanistan, I build more than 20 schools yet in areas of the country there are now hundreds of schools vacant due to a dire lack of trained teachers and poor security.
Where we fail to achieve success is in altering the economic conditions that keep these people in a condition of poverty. Non government organizations are well intentioned however they mostly have an underlying principle that beneficiaries should not profit from the assistance unless it is through a cooperative or collective. We provide them with a truly socialist model of assistance while for the most part we have arrived there to assist them from societies that have developed on the principals of entrepreneurship and capitalism and indeed profit. Consider the US and its role in Afghanistan. It has arrived at where it is economically on the basis of small government, small social welfare and assisted entrepreneurship yet it administers its programs in Afghanistan on big government, big social welfare and limited to no profit, and in a Pythonesque twist, all managed and administered by public servants.
Many countries are not failing because they are poor or are exploited, the fail because they do not have the necessary tools to change and we simply prop them up while all the while failing to address those root causes in a systematic fashion that suits us and not those we help. Development of the economy and small local industries requires capital and for the most part that is completely absent in most undeveloped countries. There is a crying need for venture capital that comes with high risk, a Social Risk Capital fund. Addressing it by providing a hundred women with a small micro loan to establish home businesses is less beneficial than providing one entrepreneur the technical and management assistance and the capital to employ those same one hundred people. Not everyone is a business person or is inclined to manage their own business. Micro loans have the capacity to keep people engaged at a cottage industries level and nothing more. Yes the funded entrepreneur will make a profit but like everywhere in the world, he will most likely use that profit to expand and employ even more people in a sustainable activity that is the cornerstone of development and economic stability.
The social welfare model of assistance that underscores the Millennium Development Goals are not sustainable and while addressing it from this direction is unlikely to have any lasting impact as is now evident when the MDGs are measured. All of the aims require unsustainable support until they are hopefully eradicated without providing a mechanism to ensure that can prevail. Poor people however are not going to be the harbingers of social change; they simply do not know how to do that. Education will create change over the lifetime it takes that person to become productive but not before. We fail to assist the people that can bring about change, the businesses and industries that are needed yet are absent for the shear lack of resources. We allow unfettered international trade to drive other societies into continued poverty simple because we fail to build up these same industries where they are being used.
Unless we work towards creating an economic stability and provide communities with the capital tools while supporting entrepreneurs and fighting corruption and over-government we are failing and will forever be obliged to provide basic support to those in need. Social change begins at the top and it is where it needs to be addressed.

Steve Hutcheson is the Chief Executive Officer of Redcoat Development Sdn Bdh and is an Australian Engineer now living in Georgetown. For the past decade he has been engaged in reconstruction work in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Aceh following the tsunami as well as construction experience Australia, Nauru, Thailand and now Malaysia. He has worked as program manager for non-government agencies, the UNDP in Afghanistan where he filled the role of Senior Advisor to the Ministers for Urban Development and Minister of Rural Reconstruction and Development as well as Aceh and more recently with for-profit organizations under contract to the US government. He has managed programs that have seen more than 1000 buildings rehabilitated in developing countries and crisis zones with budgets of more than 200 million US dollars. In 2005 he was awarded the Pride of Australia Peace Medal and is presently on the panel of Civilian Experts for the British government Stabilization Unit with specialization in Livelihoods.