EWB-USA member Eric Dietrich poses important questions about community-driven development from his experience with the EWB-USA Montana State University Chapter.
by Eric Dietrich
How do you know whether your Chapter and your partners built a truly community-driven project?
This is among the most important components of the EWB-USA approach to international development. But an easy answer to that question doesn’t exist.
After all, the communities we work with consist of wonderfully complicated human beings driven by all sorts of often-conflicting dreams and values. We can’t boil their motivations and participation down to one simple, optimizable model. Our work abroad is too complex for that.
I’m going to resist the temptation to provide a technically precise definition of “community-driven.” I’m also going to avoid offering a checklist that the quantitative-minded among us will try to adapt to some sort of standardized metric.
Instead, we can use the three questions below to start a conversation. These questions were helpful in guiding decisions about challenges faced during my five years with the EWB-USA Montana State University Chapter (EWB-USA MSU).
- Who is in the driver’s seat?
When push comes to shove, who makes the most important decisions about a project? Consider things like where it’s located, where the materials are coming from and who is going to be responsible for operation and maintenance. Is this someone from the community, or someone from your team?
Do community leaders have veto power over a project decision they don’t like? Is everyone comfortable enough with you to provide critical feedback and ask questions about things that don’t make sense to them?
In the most successful projects I’ve been involved with, there was an ongoing conversation between the community and outsider partners about both major and minor project decisions (including technical ones).
- Who’s really participating — and how?
When I first became involved with the EWB-USA MSU Chapter’s project in rural Kenya, I made the mistake of assuming that the community was some sort of monolith — that whoever I happened to be talking to at the moment spoke for the majority. I also made the mistake of assuming that every community member was aware of our work.
Consider this example closer to home: If a group of outsiders came to our campus or community to build a composting latrine, how many of us would hear about it? What if they approached our government leaders looking to rally support? Would we feel like we had a voice in the process, and would we participate in the project?
Always take the time to ensure the people you are working with genuinely represent the will of the community at large.
- Who are we leaving out?
Who is too busy working, too hungry or too shy to participate in community meetings? And what perspective are we missing by not including their voice?
A common (and substantiated) critique of participatory development projects is that they tend to disproportionately benefit elites — community members who have the leisure time, education and resources to make it easier for them to connect with outside development workers.
As a result, it’s important to consider how fully the local partners you’re working with represent the needs of their community’s marginalized members.
Finding Answers
If you find this all somewhat discouraging — well, I’d agree. There are no clear-cut answers.
Conducting international development work ethically and effectively is immensely challenging. It requires attention to detail, mindful reflection and critical observation. It’s not easy to solve the problems associated with poverty abroad.
As I see it, this is where organizations like EWB-USA come in. It’s on us to work our way through these challenges, focusing our passion on the interdisciplinary problems that fall across our path.
About the Author
Eric is a humanitarian engineer and journalist, a long-time member of the EWB-USA Montana State University Chapter and a volunteer mentor guiding students involved in international service through the Omprakash Foundation. An MSU Civil Engineering Department alumni, he currently works as a newspaper reporter.