Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Lessons from development - a sneak peek
There are 1000s of really misguided, misinformed, and potentially harmful programs going on in Malawi under the guise of development. Other programs have all the best intentions, but still the outcomes are unexpected and undesired. Today's example comes from the front cover of The Nation: "Mosquito Nets NOT For Fishing Says the District Health Officer." The article notes that people in the north, a region where over 30% of infant deaths are attributed to malaria, are using their free mosquito nets to catch fish. Nets are handed out to women in ante-natal care. Seems their husbands have better things to do with the health supplies than protect their families. Even a clergy person was quoted, "Better serve god by refraining from using the nets for fishing and instead to combat malaria." Of course, the trade off may be better nourished families or malaria-ridden families, a choice I would not like to make. Still, it makes me want to make some pun on the downside of teaching a man to fish, but I am too tired to think of a good one. Sigh.
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Oy, that's disheartening.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of a story on This American Life a few weeks ago - Act One of episode # 408.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/408/island-time
It was a story from Haiti about a local mango distributor trying to help local farmers understand how to better clean, store, and transport their mangoes for export. He went around to all the farmers giving them plastic crates only to return weeks later to find them being used as seating or incorporated into meager shelter. This episode was truly eye opening about changes that seem simply and small changes to us (with potentially huge impact) and how they can easily go awry in these types of communities.
Well worth the 99 cent download if you don't already subscribe to the T.A.L. podcast.
Funny, but sadly true. I am recommending to everyone the book Switch: How to change things when change is hard. Of course, applying the framework across cultures is the tricky part. I also live in a world of lots of well meaning but misguided programs, hence my continued passion (and yours) for evaluation and measurement. Miss you and would love to Skype soon.
ReplyDeleteI've seen that message about mosquito nets in Namibia too. Fishing seems an equally good use of the net other than that I worry about overfishing...and I guess that whole people dying of malaria issue probably isn't solved.
ReplyDelete