radiant[allusions]: April 2012

For this economical stove project, the designers and facilitators are the three Santa Lucian members of Alcance Nicaragua and myself. You might ask (in any number of whiny affectations), “Hey, if you’re so worked up about making the project a community project, how come you guys are doing all of the designing and not the community?” Well dear reader, that is a fair question and it deserves addressing.

While it is important for projects to be designed essentially for the community and to be carried out by the community, the design and development of the idea will most likely come from a source outside of the community. It is exactly the skills and confidence needed to plan, organize, and mobilize that the community lacks, otherwise the community wouldn’t need the assistance offered by such a project!

It follows then, that there are a few important qualities that designers/facilitators must possess in order to be effective in their community development work:

• Firstly, the designer/facilitator must be a leader who can make decisions, dole out responsibilities, and hold others accountable without becoming despotic (or more likely but just as deadly, a Debbie-downer).

• Secondly, the designer/facilitator must understand the socioeconomic and cultural situation that exists within the community and maintain real human relationships with community members.

• And thirdly, the designer/facilitator must have a knowledge and understanding of issues that goes beyond the level that exists presently within the community (in other words, there must be a vision for the future based on knowledge gained somewhere else).

If you’ll notice, none of these qualities necessarily rules out community members themselves in becoming designers/facilitators of their own projects. What seems to be the case however, is that many times community leaders lack the motivation to organize and the confidence to act, or they lack that one little inspiration that sparks an idea for a project…and they often don’t realize that they are in fact leaders!

So the involvement of organizations like Alcance Nicaragua and the Peace Corps can really get community leaders to come out of the woodwork and show themselves, but these organizations need to set the example on how to be designers and facilitators of projects before community members will take the initiative themselves.

I like to think of the relationship a designer/facilitator has with the community as analogous to the relationship that a good teacher has with his or her students. There is mutual respect and understanding, flexibility, and a focus on achievement. There’s discipline and rules but plenty of time for joking around too. Just like a teacher teaching a class and students learning from it, the designer/facilitator must be able to understand and explain all facets of the project using various methods and the community must be open to try out those new ideas.

NGO Alcance Nicaragua

For those who might be wondering, "NGO" stands for Non-Governmental Organization, and generally also means that it is not-for-profit. Alcance Nicaragua (a part of Outreach International) is no exception.

In Nicaragua, the organization has a presence in four communities. Two in Santa Lucía, Boaco and another two in Masaya, Masaya. In Santa Lucía (where I live) there are three people who work for Alcance:

Bayardo

Bayardo is a native of Santa Lucía and is the director of Alcance Nicragua on a national level (meaning he helps manage projects in Masaya as well). He’s a great guy, always smiling and making jokes, and it’s obvious that he really cares about his community and his country and works tirelessly to make it better. He lives in the community of Los García with his wife and kids.

Ricardo

Ricardo is the coordinator for the projects in Santa Lucia and my partner-in-crime. He’s the guy I work with most closely on a day-to-day basis. He’s originally from Diriomo, a town between Masaya and Granada known primarily for its witchcraft and black magic (according to Ricardo), but he’s been living in the town of Santa Lucía with his wife and two sons for seven or eight years now. Ricardo’s wife is a baker and pretty much makes every cake in the municipality, his son Bruno is in his first year of high school, and his youngest son Brandon loves robots and cartoons.

Luz Dania

Luz Dania is originally from Santa Lucía as well, and helps coordinate and facilitate all of the Santa Lucian projects. She spent some time in the U.S. a few years back and therefore speaks English, which is a huge help to Alcance when they get visits from university students from the States or the Outreach board of directors. Luz also types super-fast, is somewhat of a computer whiz, and has a super-cute little daughter.

Outreach International is the parent organization for Alcance Nicaragua. Or maybe it makes more sense to say that Alcance Nicaragua is one of the programs financed by Outreach International. Either way, Outreach is currently working in thirteen different countries worldwide, one of them being Nicaragua.

(Also if you’re confused, Alcance means “outreach” in Spanish so it really does make sense…)

I recently had the opportunity to meet three of the highest-ups in Outreach International when they came to visit Santa Lucía. I met and talked at length with the President and CEO Kevin Prine, Board of Directors Chair Harry Ashenhurst, and Director of Field Operations Dennis Labayen.

Outreach International

We went to Ricardo’s house for lunch and discussed our visions for development work in Nicarauga, as well as our ideas on how to design an effective project. I also told them about why I enjoyed working with Alcance and the difference I’ve noticed between the kind of work Alcance is doing in the community, and the kind of work other NGOs seem to be doing.

One of the things I really like about Outreach International’s work is the process they’ve developed after thirty years of experience with community development projects. They call it the Participatory Human Development process (or Desarrollo Humano Participativo, DHP, in Spanish). This process really seems to work and takes into account the fundamental human relationships that always exists with successful projects. I’ll put a few links at the bottom of the post where you can find more about the philosophy of Outreach, the DHP process, and the various projects they’re working on worldwide.

More about Outreach International
More about the Participatory Human Development Process

Me the Peace Corps volunteer

Alright, so obviously I am a part of the designer/facilitator team in this project along with Bayardo, Ricardo and Luz, but what exactly is my role? Well, I seem to be doing a couple of different things within the scope of this project.

One of these is helping to develop the capacities of Alcance as an NGO. And what does that mean? I'll give some examples.

For one, I was able to help Alcance find an appropriate stove design for the people of Santa Lucía by drawing upon the resources and contacts that I have as a Peace Corps volunteer.

Back in July of last year (2011) I brought up the idea of a modest stove project with Ricardo. He told me that he too had been thinking about pursuing some kind of improved stove venture, so we started figuring out how to get the ball rolling. I had heard a bit about a stove design that Peace Corps was promoting and I knew that a few of my fellow volunteers had recently gone to Honduras for a workshop and a training, so I called a few of them up to get the low down.

My friend Jessi showing off her stove

It turns out my friend Jessi, after going to Honduras, had already built a model stove at her house in her site (El Prado, Matagalpa), and was working on a larger project for 35 or 40 stoves. I coordinated a visit to Jessi’s site so we could all learn a bit more about the stove design, its particularities, and Jessi’s experience so far.

From left: Pedrito, Bayardo, Luz, Jessi, Me. Photo by Ricardo

So in August, Bayardo, Ricardo, Luz, Pedrito (a member of the community with a lot of construction experience), and myself went to visit Jessi to see her stove. We asked questions, took measurements, and talked to a member of the community in El Prado who had helped with the construction.

I also helped Alcance sift through and analyze all of the stuff we’d learned after the visit to see the stove. We started to identify the real advantages of the design environmentally, health-wise, and economically in order to understand what kind of effects a larger project might have on the community. During these discussions we developed our ideas for the community workshops we would hold later on.

We also wrote a rough budget for one model stove with some numbers I had found from Peace Corps and Pedrito’s extensive knowledge of materials and costs. This budget eventually led to the construction of the first stove model of this design to be built in Santa Lucía, and the first material step of our project.

In addition to my role in offering ideas and support in order to develop the capacities of the NGO, my other role in the project is as a facilitator for our activities within the community.

For example, during our first community workshop, I gave a presentation about the environmental consequences of high firewood consumption, focusing on the importance of trees in the ecosystem. Then I led a discussion with community members about their experience and understanding of the importance of trees and linked it back to the consumption of firewood.

So my role in the project can be said to have two basic aspects. One is working with the NGO Alcance Nicaragua to develop as an organization, and the other is working with the community itself.

I think it’s important to mention here at the end of this section also, that I truly feel that I’ve learned just as much or more than the people I’m working with. I had never written a budget or designed community-based workshops before this project, so I feel incredibly grateful for all of the things I’ve learned working with Alcance and the community. In no way is this project a one-way transference of knowledge. It’s a conversation and an ideas exchange that benefits everyone involved.