Posted on August 27, 2008 - by Frank

Emergency Aid and Community Development

When many of us picture aid and charity to developing nations, I think we often picture the heady times of the 80’s and the aid that poured into Ethiopia due to the work of people like Bob Geldof and Live Aid. We were bombarded with images of poverty and rightly the world’s heart was moved, resulting in one of the biggest outpourings of aid and charity that the world has ever seen. Aid in the forms of food and supplies poured into the starving region, alleviating much need.

At that time it filled a gap, but some would argue that it was also somewhat naive in that it failed to address long term issues and simply created dependency. The ongoing problems of that are being seen now, with the effects of the latest Ethiopian famine destroying the lives of many and the nation being ill equipped to cope without depending on a large amount of outside assistance. There are clearly internal issues that need to be addressed, with Ethiopia having a large army that uses much resource, but it cannot be denied that the dependency on aid has somewhat crippled the nation.

It is this problem that many have in mind when they speak of it being futile supporting NGO’s (Non Governmental Organisations) working in and amongst communities in developing nations. But it is here that we can highlight the difference between straight aid and community development.

Let’s use TEAR Fund New Zealand (part of the global network of Compassion International partners) as an example of a healthy model.

TEAR Fund New Zealand engages in emergency aid in crisis situations as a part of what they do, with an eye for long term stability and development where such crises have had an ongoing detrimental effect, but by far their greatest work is in ongoing community development and long term advocacy.

The TEAR Fund model is built on partnering with local churches and projects in poverty stricken areas to equip, empower and resource indigenous groups to solve their own problems. Indigenous groups are encouraged towards problem solving that leads to long term stability and eventually, independance that sees them no longer needing the services of organisations like TEAR Fund. It is a long term strategy where child sponsorship programmes that equip an up and coming generation, and micro-enterprise schemes that give a hand up to local entreprenuers are a central part of that development.

The community development model is a very different aid strategy than the emergency aid that flooded into Ethiopia in the 80’s. Community development has become a science that looks to move communities towards independance rather than third party dependance. Good community development takes into account the social intricacies of that which it is partnering with. No longer can we rest back and use the wrong assumption of irresponsible aid as a reason not to give. Whilst such irresponsibility continues in some organisations, there are many organisations involved in the sort of community development we would endorse.

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Image in post: CC Some Right Reserved. Original by Carf.