Jorge Silva - Development

One Child per Laptop

February 26, 2007

Say you are a very eager professor with a lot of time and money in your hands. Say you work in a random university (uh.. MIT?). Say your fame and fortune has tricked you into thinking you know more about the world than you do in reality. Say you understand computers like no other human being and, “just ‘cuz”, you build your dream machine: a $100 dollar laptop that takes your breath away. Say you get the brilliant idea to make one billion of those babies just so, like you, a billion children around the world can be blessed and enlightened with your magnificent creation. There is just one problem: where do you get the children from? I know! from developing countries! of course! why didn’t I think of that? They just love having overdeveloped countries tell them how they should live their lives so they too can waste their resources!… heck! they’ll take anything we give them!

Approaches to working with people in need

November, 2006

This table was presented by Anamed at the ECHO Annual Agricultural Conference in November, 2006. There are many ways to engage with people in need, but the know-it-all, pitiful approach of the overdeveloped world often ignores important contextual constraints, disrespects local communities and ultimately recycles the processes of exploitation that maintain people ‘poor’ and ‘needy’. Ultimately, recipients of ‘aid’ are politically constrained to accept what is given to them without criticism. As a result, ‘aid’ organizations grow distant from the communities they claim to support and ignorant of their real needs. So, are you really committed to help, or do you just want to feel good about yourself?

	*to take advantage of* people in need**	*to work for* people in need**	*to work on behalf of* people in need**	*to work with* people in need**	*to work one step behind* people in need**
People in need	are a market.	are ill.	suffer illness, are under-developed.	have been made poor and ill.	are good people. They have a different culture.
The problem is a result of	people not participating in the global market.	fate.	under-development.	the same unjust political and economic structures that are also causing poverty in our countries.	being born into a situation and culture that is different.
*The feeling of the helper* is one of**	delight.	superiority. They are less fortunate, less well educated, less intelligent.	sympathy.	solidarity.	empathy and friendship, and being in a position to learn a lot.
The way to give help is to	sell products.	give money.	support development.	tacke the causes of injustice.	respect their way of life and to learn from them.
The practical action of the helper is to	set up a local company to market products.	provide (to feed or to heal).	teach people how to be teachers, doctors, engineers.	campaign together. To share available resources so that, together, we achieve something better.	share the available material and human resources to help them do what they want to do.
Helpers look at people in need from	behind the sales desk.	above.	in front.	their side, we stand together.	a little behind them, waiting for them to take the initiative.
As a result of what we do, we expect	to take money.	gratitude.	gratitude, an enthusiastic response.	to give and receive mutual support.	nothing.
Our relationship is	business.	benevolent.	teacher / pupil.	partner.	friend, learner, enabler.
Example from the world of health:	Companies sell toxic mercury soaps, cigarrettes, breast milk substitutes, vitamin pills, etc.	We provide doctors, medicines and hospitals. We meet their basic health needs.	We teach people how to be good nurses and doctors.	Together we challenge the rules of the WTO, we campaign against patents on plants.	We work together to learn more about medicinal plants and natural medicine.

Taken from Anamed. See also Approaches to working with Disabled people.

The Overdeveloped World

October, 2006

A couple of years ago, I read in the IEEE Spectrum magazine that Dave Irvine-Halliday, a University of Calgary Physics professor, had come up with a clever and sustainable idea to provide artificial light to communities that do not have access to this resource. Given my interest in the discourses of development and sustainability, and my background in engineering, I was immediately drawn to the piece. The article went on explaining the evolution process of Dave’s ideas from design to implementation, but what really struck me was the use of the term “overdeveloped world”. This was the first time I had heard that term, but it made so much sense that from that point on, I declared myself Dave’s admirer.

The are a couple of reasons why the use of the term overdeveloped world is important. In order to find solutions to particular social issues we first must be able to identify them. This may seem like an obvious step but, actually, it may be the hardest, and coming up with a term that summarizes the concept already goes a long way. On the other hand, for many years, we have focused on problematizing poverty and underdevelopment as issues that only concern those who have too little. Thus, from the perspective of western capitalism, it is only in the interest of the poor and underdeveloped to overcome their own fateful condition. This type of discourse also places us, the developed and “not-poor”, at a safe distance from the problem by trivializing our politically charged role in the management of poverty. Thus, by using the term overdeveloped world, we shift some of that focus back to us by problematizing affluence as yet another symptom of the same problem. In other words, by using this term, poverty and affluence are defined as two sides of the same coin.