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Malawi, located in southern Africa, is one of the poorest countries of the world. Its average annual income per person is $230 – that’s just 63 cents a day. It also has an HIV prevalence rate of more than 13 percent.
And yet, along with eight other people from around the U.S. (including three from Missouri), I was able to see the glimmerings of hope for Malawi as I visited the program areas of Outreach International, a charity based in Independence.
Outreach is a rather unique organization in that it tries to organize communities to deal with problems of poverty themselves. In effect, it encourages people to take charge of their lives, creating long-lasting solutions to the myriad problems they face.
We visited several villages which, with the help of Outreach International staff, were starting small projects to improve their lives. While they were often humble undertakings we saw that people were proud of their small-scale efforts to make a concrete difference in their lives.
We saw schools which were providing education to orphans of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Villagers also showed us vegetable gardens they used to raise funds to take care of those orphans.
I met a farmer who proudly showed off his chickens, which he was raising according to new techniques he had learned through the community poultry project. Another man told me about how the Outreach-sponsored goat project was generating income that allowed him to send some of his kids to school. He had not had the chance to go to high school and was proud that some of his children would have that opportunity.
Having spent many years working in the developing world, I often feel quite discouraged by the immensity of the problems, and the inadequacy of many attempts to solve them.
Many community development projects seem grand schemes of social engineering but fail, or do great harm because they fail to take into account the needs, aspirations and opinions of the people who are most affected.
Sustainable change, however, will only come when the powerful truly listen to the poor and allow them to empower themselves.
Malawi, located in southern Africa, is one of the poorest countries of the world. Its average annual income per person is $230 – that’s just 63 cents a day. It also has an HIV prevalence rate of more than 13 percent.
And yet, along with eight other people from around the U.S. (including three from Missouri), I was able to see the glimmerings of hope for Malawi as I visited the program areas of Outreach International, a charity based in Independence.
Outreach is a rather unique organization in that it tries to organize communities to deal with problems of poverty themselves. In effect, it encourages people to take charge of their lives, creating long-lasting solutions to the myriad problems they face.
We visited several villages which, with the help of Outreach International staff, were starting small projects to improve their lives. While they were often humble undertakings we saw that people were proud of their small-scale efforts to make a concrete difference in their lives.
We saw schools which were providing education to orphans of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Villagers also showed us vegetable gardens they used to raise funds to take care of those orphans.
I met a farmer who proudly showed off his chickens, which he was raising according to new techniques he had learned through the community poultry project. Another man told me about how the Outreach-sponsored goat project was generating income that allowed him to send some of his kids to school. He had not had the chance to go to high school and was proud that some of his children would have that opportunity.
Having spent many years working in the developing world, I often feel quite discouraged by the immensity of the problems, and the inadequacy of many attempts to solve them.
Many community development projects seem grand schemes of social engineering but fail, or do great harm because they fail to take into account the needs, aspirations and opinions of the people who are most affected.
Sustainable change, however, will only come when the powerful truly listen to the poor and allow them to empower themselves.
