development

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Is Development Human?

Once when we lived in Burkina Faso, I made a trip to a rural area. After my arrival, I was told that another westerner had visited earlier that day. He was evaluating some development projects in several villages. If I remember correctly they were water projects, wells perhaps. Anyway, he had left his air-conditioned room in a nearby city with the idea of quickly stopping at each village and being back in his comfortable room the same evening. But the villagers where the projects were located had been other ideas. To express their joy and appreciation, they had prepared food and cultural dances. The man knew that if he stayed to eat and celebrate with the people at each village he could not visit all the villages in one day. So, at each village, he excused himself from the celebrations prepared for him and continued to his next stop. The villagers were devastated.

In Ghana a few years ago, I was in a meeting where a Ghanaian man was talking about the development project he had been hired to lead. It had been designed by a university in the US to improve the soil in northern Ghana, a region of chronic food shortages, so that crop yields would increase. It sounded really helpful. But he said that after being hired he read the entire description of the project – its goals and methods with all the technical details. He found that it contained no component to involve the farmers it was designed to benefit. Their knowledge was not solicited, nor was their feedback on the findings and proposals the project would make. The project was all bout the soil and not at all about the farmers. The Ghanaian man hired to lead the project said that he immediately wrote the farmers into the proposal and got the revision approved.

These experiences and others cause me to ask questions – is it legitimate to “help” people in a way that excludes them from celebrating the help; or from giving their opinion or feedback? Would we want someone to “help” us while they remained oblivious to the impact (good or bad) their “help” really had? Doesn’t the Golden Rule apply? In addition to it being right and good to involve those we try to help, it is also often more effective. A study in the US found that church programs are more effective in reducing homelessness because those involved get to know the homeless personally. Research into the impact of Bible translation has found that it is greater where local people have greater input into decisions about the translation.

Also, if we do help a group of people, shouldn’t we plan to share their joy and recognize their appreciation? If they are Christians, shouldn’t we praise God and celebrate his goodness together? If we send a person to evaluate the help, shouldn’t we plan that they have the time and spend the time sharing the joy (or other reactions) of the people being helped?

Ladies reading a new translation to see if it communicates

Bible translation, and other attempts to make the world better, should never let things or techniques crowd out the people, unfortunately it is not uncommon that they do.

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Literacy and social mobility

Korle-Bu teaching hospital and medical school, Ghana

Some time ago, I had an interesting conversation with a Ghanaian Christian doctor. He told me about a young doctor he met. When he learned that the young doctor was from the Upper West Region, he asked him if his parents were literate. He asked because Upper West Region has significant poverty rates and low education levels. A young person from that Region only becomes a doctor or other professional is he or she comes from educated parents.

The young doctor said that his parents were not literate. This was was surprising, so he pressed the young Doctor further. He learned that although the young man’s parents had never been to school they did read the Bible in their language. They had attended an adult literacy class run by the Ghanaian organisation I work for.

What this shows, my acquaintance told me, is social mobility through the Gospel. Uneducated parents who have learned to read in their own languages send their children to school and can help them succeed. I know other cases like this. So we are now seeing young professionals in unprecedented numbers from the most disadvantaged parts of Ghana and, unexpectedly, from families where the parents themselves never received an education.

Photo: GILLBT, Rodney Ballard

My acquaintance and the young doctor are both faithful Christians. For the young doctor, this is due on no small part to his parents becoming Christians through reading the Bible in their own language. For my acquaintance, this shows the power of the Gospel at work. He believes that the development of his country does not come through building things, but rather through creating faithful, servant-hearted citizens through the power of the Gospel. That’s why he volunteers his time to help translate the Bible into all Ghana’s langauges.

“If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, I will send you the seasonal rains. The land will then yield its crops, and the trees of the field will produce their fruit. Your threshing season will overlap with the grape harvest, and your grape harvest will overlap with the season of planting grain. You will eat your fill and live securely in your own land. – Leviticus 26:3-5
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Development by giving hope

The traditional approach to development work has been to provide things for people. If people lack education, we build them schools. If they are unhealthy, we build them hospitals. If their children suffer from repeated bouts of Malaria, we give them bed nets. If they don’t have clean water we drill a well. Providing things is always appropriate and necessary following disasters. But simply providing things in other cases can fail to truly transform. Today, few who are serious about sustainably improving the lot of the poor think that giving things is enough or even primary.

But to define development as an improvement in people’s well-being does not do justice to what the term means to most of us. Development also carries a connotation of lasting change. Providing a person with a bednet or a water pump can often be an excellent, cost-effective way to improve her well-being, but if the improvement goes away when we stop providing the bednet or pump, we would not normally describe that as development. (From an article What Development? by Owen Barder)

The key to development that ends poverty resides in the capacity of human beings to create lasting, positive change. It is therefore crucial that they believe that they can change things. Indeed, every time we provide something, we may be sending a subtle message to the recipients that we believe they are incapable of providing for themselves. By only providing things we may be reinforcing an inferiority complex among the poor.

Good development organizations understand this. Along with providing some basic resources that allow children to progress farther in school, Compassion International’s child-development efforts instill aspirations, character formation, and spiritual direction. In short, it tries to make actors and givers instead of passive receivers. The best development creates an environment where people solve their own problems.

Some laugh at the idea of giving poor people the Bible in their language, saying that what  they really need is concrete things. This criticism reflects a simplistic understanding (misunderstanding actually) of development. Many of the poor know this. They do not define their poverty strictly in material terms. Furthermore, the Bible brings hope. It encourages people to act in faith that God is with them. Without the hope that things can change, people wallow in passive fatalism – in poverty of hope.

    An evaluation of the literacy and Bible translation programs of the Ghanaian organization I work with, GILLBT, demonstrates that those who read the Bible in their own languages are more likely to take initiative, such as starting new businesses, than those who do not. Why? Because they have new hope and confidence. They believe God will bless their efforts. That kind of development is so much better, so much more sustainable, so much more affirming of them as persons, than just giving them things. Want to support efforts to reduce poverty that are centered on empowering people? Then support Bible translation.