Michael J. Carter
SEATTLE, Washington, Nov 13 2008 (IPS) – Working for sustainable development in Kenya, which ranks 148th out of 177 countries on the United Nations development index, is a daunting task. The country not only has a 6.1 percent rate of HIV/AIDS infection among its 37 million people, but nearly 60 percent of Kenyans live on less than two dollars a day.
Children gather in front of the newly painted and expanded Rabuor Nursery School. Credit: Rabuor Village Project
So how does one work for the betterment of this population s health and livelihood? Village by village, according to one woman.
We recognise that the communities are the experts. We use expertise in the community and enhance what they are doing well, said Loyce Mbewa Ong udi, a native of Rabuor and founder and director of the Rabuor Village Project (RVP), which she operates from Seattle in the northwestern United States.
Her approach relies on close relationships with community members who are involved in every level of planning. The community decides its priorities and highlights problems and solutions.
RVP began as a reaction to local children orphaned by the sweeping AIDS epidemic which had devastated the community. Mbewa Ong udi began sending extra money back to Kenya to help efforts undertaken by her mother, Rosemell, who had been feeding local children left without proper care.
We realised the problem was huge, said Mbewa Ong udi. Fewer women were available to care for younger children. They had no time to get water and food. Those who were ill faced grave danger.
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Not only were there women s issues to think about, but when a local clinic started providing AIDS medications and testing, basic problems emerged. The sick and malnourished had problems ingesting them, or had trouble accessing the clinic due to lack of transportation.
In response, RVP created local testing booths. The village formed a committee to disseminate health and development knowledge, and has trained 50 men and women in basic health care knowledge.
Focusing on more than just the AIDS crisis, RVP is concentrating on developing local industries such as brick-making, sunflower and oil production and raising dairy goats in addition to a micro-lending programme.
Its myriad of other programmes include accessibility to clean water and educational opportunities for children and youth.
[These models] are a very low overhead way of delivering services directly to places where there are good relationships, said Susan Bolton, an adjunct professor of civil environment engineering at the University of Washington.
We don t have experts coming in. Most of the funds go directly to the project. We hire local experts, Mbewa Ong udi said. A little goes a long way.
The model has gained some powerful believers. In 2004 the United Nations launched its Millennium Village Project (MVP), which espouses similar philosophies of the RVP. The U.N. project seeks to eliminate extreme poverty by working in the poorest regions in sub-Saharan Africa in order to reach the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
The first Millennium Village was started in western Kenya in Sauri in 2004. The U.N. boasted that after only two years under the project, the region went from chronic hunger to tripling their crop production, also noting that the people of Sauri were able to sell their produce in local markets for the first time in years.
MVP has since expanded into 12 locations throughout sub-Saharan Africa.
Some experts believe that bridging cultural gaps and understanding local priorities are keys to establishing sustainable development.
In my work in Bolivia with Engineers without Borders, it is critical to find out what the community thinks its needs are and to help address those needs in a way that the community can maintain and operate new systems, social or physical, said Bolton.
Shana Greene, founder of the Village Volunteers aid organisation also based in Seattle, shares similar beliefs.
We work with self-sacrificing leaders who understand their communities, she said. Basically for our hands-off approach, the empowerment of people has more to do with the opportunity to come up with their own solutions rather than us telling them what we think.
Loyce has a very holistic approach to addressing AIDS in her village and has a deep understanding of all the intertwining threads that need to be a part of the safety net that will release her village from the grip of HIV/AIDS and poverty, said Tim Costello, founder and director of Slum Doctors, a non-profit organisation working towards improving lives of victims of AIDS in Africa.
Costello, a friend of Mbewa Ong udi, is also a financial supporter of the RVP, paying for meals for preschool orphans. He goes to Rabuor every year and is impressed with the progress he sees. But Costello believes the ultimate goal should be to alleviate the need for donors.
I think this type of development will only work when the communities truly see themselves as the ones who can really make the changes in their own lives and communities and that donors are merely a small leg up until they can get to an economic level that can begin to carry them forward, he said.
Ultimately, Mbewa Ong udi would like to see her type of model used elsewhere, as she believes the challenges of poverty are similar in other developing countries.
Village Volunteers, which operates in 10 locations throughout Kenya, also operates successful programmes in India, Ghana and Nepal, perhaps offering some hope.
Village Volunteers has meant the world to us, said Emmanuel Tasur, one of Greene s collaborators in Kenya. We have had over 72 widows given heifers and they are now milking and providing for their households, we ve been able to begin the construction of a quality school that, and that just means the world to Maasai children.
