The CRUCIAL ingredient for true village transformation is "ownership".
And it's the most difficult.
The megabucks of "aid money" thrown at the developing world has often created entitlement instead of empowerment, passivity over proactivity, greed instead of gratitude. And Hurso is a sad example. Several years back an international agency spent tens of thousands of dollars drillilng Hurso a water well. But they didn't involve Hurso in the decision about whether it was needed, where to put it, how it would be managed, etc. And Hurso (immaturely) responded by breaking the cap off the well and filling it with rocks. Add to that a previous bad leader in Hurso who three times stole poorly supervised aid money.. and eventually bought himself a car.
Needless to say, our biggest challenge with Hurso is getting them to step up to their own development and invest their own money and time first, before we multiply their investment with outside assistance.
But yesterday was a small breakthrough.
The TCD committee in the village had decided a key project would be to paint the three school buildings that were looking sorry (HGTV, come do a segment!). We agreed, and said if they would raise a small amount for the paint we would add a larger amount, get all the needed paint and brushes, and together make it happen.
Easier said than done. They dragged their feet and dragged their feet and dragged their feet.
We assured them over and over we would not steal their money, and asked them to please trust us with even a small amount.
And day before yesterday they finally raised the money!
So... yesterday our team arrived at 7am with boxes of brushes and gallons of paint. At the beginning it was only us, the "foreigners", who were painting. But within 30 minutes villagers were grabbing brushes and working alongside us. And within another 30 minutes more villagers arrived, and since there were no more brushes they took the brushes out of our hands and finished painting their school themselves.
Yeah. That's progress.
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