Empowerment

I have to admit that I like to work with my hands.  I derive satisfaction from a finished project.  And if tasked with a project of tearing something apart . . . well, I've taken pride in work like that since I was three years old.  Last week when I was in the village, I noted that a neighbor was tearing down a house with nothing but a crowbar!  I was a bit jealous.  But I wasn't the only one.  A seven-year-old also helped out with his hammer.

As a toddler with Lincoln Logs I thought the repeated cycle of building and toppling was great fun.  And seemed that the parents wholeheartedly approved, pointing to abstract child development principles like autonomy and empowerment.

In arenas where ideas and solutions to poverty are discussed, the topics often include notions of empowerment, which usually means that individuals and communities have been granted autonomy to utilize resources according to their own preferences.  Building a new house with your own hands, after first tearing down the old one with your crowbar, gives evidence of an empowered people who can shape their own destiny.

But doesn't the picture of the man with the crowbar also reveal vulnerability?  After all, whatever can be torn down with a crowbar can also be demolished with a small earthquake.

With regard to processing mangos in village areas, if empowerment was the only objective, we would have designed the dehydrator, devised the systems, trained the farmers, . . . and then left.  Doing so would have granted them autonomy, leaving them with the resources to shape their own destiny.  But both the group leader and the village participants have unanimously voiced an appeal for continued involvement with us, who are village outsiders, tackling the matters of process improvements, product development and marketing.

I have received both criticism and commendation for our continued collaboration with the farmer group.  On the one hand, I have been criticized for insulating the village workers from challenging matters like marketing.  On the other hand, I have been commended for the ongoing improvements to the production process.  But no one has mentioned the matter of vulnerability, which I think is the matter most on the mind of the village participants, who have indicated that all production would completely stop if we ceased our involvement.

I don't blame them.  Food manufacturing is a complicated undertaking that requires knowledge, skill and care in all aspects of production.  Understanding the magnitude of the risks, the farmer group would choose to forego production, opting instead to return to the menial tasks of small-scale farming and gravel-making.

As I "build people to build a nation", my objective has shifted away from the granting of resources that can bolster a fragile sense of empowerment.  Instead, my aim is to address remaining areas of vulnerability, like technical competence and management capability.  More than just increasing assets, meaningful community development has to do with improving human capabilities that reduce vulnerability for individuals, families and communities.

You probably didn't think that a bag of dried mangos contained abstract ideas, like empowerment.  The next time you taste the sweet, natural flavor of the slices in a bag of Java Bite dried mangos, know that the product was produced with a view to building the people who made it.