The Faces of International Development

The Society for International Development has done it again! Earlier this month, I attended their tremendous annual conference with notable and unforgettable speakers that make you leave the glimmering chandeliers in DC's Omni Shoreham ballroom thinking to yourself, what more needs to be done in international development? How can the end goals be achieved?

The conference convened approximately 600 leaders and advocates for international development. Above the clattering of China plates covered with hot stuffed chicken and long grain rice were conversations rich in stories, pursuits, and initiatives around the world.

I alone sat between a Peace Corps Manager and an independent IT consultant from the UK. The three of us -- including me, a Product Manager at Forum One -- engaged in a debate on whether the internet pages we see here in the United States can be accessed anywhere else in the world. Do these same sites appear the same to those in Ghana? Are we, and if so, how are we configuring our websites in the States so that people anywhere around the globe can see them? But wait, are people in developing areas, and even rural areas, even getting access to the web and/or to mobile technology?

While technologies are growing and becoming more influential, I realized that their priority in international development is still unsettled. Is the rapid growth of Information Communication and Technology (ICT) more important than the basic social needs of health, education, etc.? Can we really debate one laptop per child and mobile access when kids may really just need food, clothes and school books?

I guess I consider myself a "back to the basics" girl when it comes to international aid, admiring initiatives taken by the mountain climber Greg Mortenson (author of Three Cups of Tea) who saw villages of people with no schools and started his own personal campaign to raise money and build one school at a time in the remote mountains of Pakistan, see www.ikat.org. I love hearing such inspiring stories and participating in any development initiative -- my heart lies in the pursuit of helping others, but how you define that help and the priorities of those in need, have to be well assessed and taken into consideration.

Empowerment is key.

What the international development community should focus on is turning an eye towards helping the people to help themselves. Maybe it is not about how many NGOs or how many projects are in one country, it is about the quality of those projects and their mission. The question should not be whether to use technology just because it is more popular and it is the way to operate here and now. The real question is what kind of services and knowledge do people need and how can we help them to help themselves. If ICT is part of the practical and feasible solution -- even better!

Closing speaker Michael Fairbanks (one of the unforgettable speakers of the event), raised some eyebrows but generated huge applause when he stressed introspection and the importance of stepping back and re-evaluating "who you want to be as an organization" and "really evaluating what worked (in terms of projects) and what did not, and why?"

In the West, we are lucky to be the givers, but with that comes responsibility. As Fairbanks said, "What does every problem look like if all you have is a checkbook?" It is a known fact that over half of international aid never makes it to the actual people in need (only 20 percent of aid ever reached Rwanda during its recent genocide).

My conversation over lunch was imperative and revealing and it makes me smile to realize that our web discussion was just a tiny pocket of all the hundreds of conversations in the ballroom. Next to me, two women were discussing women's rights, and another group was discussing water projects in Africa. Everyone had a mission and wanted to achieve their end goal. It renewed my confidence that less privileged people would indeed benefit.

Congratulations to SID for encouraging empowerment and asking organizations to step back and really focus on where the heart of their international development pursuit lies.