27.02.2015
Relationship Building Vital in Responding to Global Poverty – Bishops’ Appeal Training Day
Culture, context and building relationships are the key ingredients to any response to poverty, global or local. While these things take time, participants in a Dublin and Glendalough training day facilitated by Bishops’ Appeal heard that without these considerations, projects aimed at alleviating poverty could do more harm than good.
The seminar was hosted by Archbishop Michael Jackson in the Church of Ireland College of Education yesterday (Thursday February 26 2015). It was facilitated by Lydia Monds, education officer with Bishops’ Appeal with Emma Lynch of Tearfund and Linda Chambers of the United Society.
ENGAGING WITH CULTURE
In engaging with people in different cultures, Lydia explained that it is important to understand the different concepts and different understandings and to be aware of our own cultural bias which leads us to believe our world view is normal. Our world view is central to us but we have to be open to new perspectives and change, she said. She suggested that a good model to adopt is one of journeying together rather than standing at the end and shouting ‘we’ve arrived’.
POVERTY
Talking about the theory of poverty, Emma Lynch said that the major poverty was the poverty of spiritual intimacy. “Poverty is incredibly complex. Poverty is relational. Any approaches to alleviate poverty must start with us looking at our own poverty,” she said.
Lydia added that often descriptions of poverty focused on material lack and said it was necessary to broaden that definition. When poor people speak of poverty they talk about much more than material lack. They refer to deprivation, exclusion and powerlessness. “If we don’t observe that, we can exacerbate the powerlessness. We can be so solution based that we can forget about the relationship that needs to happen. We want to bring people to where we are rather than to go with people – this can make things worse,” she commented. The building of confidence and self worth is more important than the material issues, she stated.
BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS
If the person’s experience of poverty has been exclusion, then inclusion must be part of the solution, Lydia explained. Simply identifying a solution and providing it has been the cause of project failure all over the world, she said. For example sending clothes to a disaster hit region may result in damaging the local market when clothes are handed out to people for free. The better solution would be to identify a local source for the clothes.
A broken water pump is a familiar sight, Lydia said but asked if that meant that we should ignore the fact that 173 million people were reliant on stagnant surface water. Often a project fails because the community was not consulted – was there a sense of ownership of the pump? Who owned the land the pump was on? Was there access to it? Would people coming to the pump cause conflict? Was someone trained to fix it?
“You have to talk to people and that takes time”, she said. “If you get a mosquito net and you don’t know the value of it, you may sell it to feed your family today because tomorrow may not come.” She highlighted a project organised by Derry and Raphoe in which the nets were sourced locally, there was a huge amount of awareness raising locally and now the number of repeat malaria cases was falling. But she said the relationship had to be formed first.
Lydia stated that when we disconnect from relationships injustice occurs: transnational companies have more power than governments; there are more slaves in the world now than at the time of abolition of slavery, we want low cost food; we want cheap high fashion; we want the latest gadgets. We are part of that chain, she said.
WHO TO SUPPORT
Linda Chambers said it is important to acknowledge that the State has the primary responsibility for its people. After that it is important to conduct a needs assessment. “How do you assess need?” she asked. “It’s very hard from the outside. Who better to assess the need than the people who live there? I am a one person fan club for the Anglican Communion… I think it’s brilliant to be part of something that covers 165 countries – feel part of it and use it. That’s what it’s there for. If your partner is the local Anglican church then they will know the context, the local things that we don’t know.”
Linda also spoke of Dublin and Glendalough’s ‘Prepare a Place’ campaign for Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza. She explained that the Diocesan Council for Mission was looking for a link and spoke to the Archbishop who suggested his existing friendship with Archbishop Suheil in Jerusalem. The council, in partnership with Bishops’ Appeal, the United Society and Friends of Sabeel, made contact with the programme development officer in the Diocese of Jerusalem and within 48 hours she had identified two projects at the Anglican hospital in Gaza – the refurbishment of the on call staff facilities and the installation of solar panels.
ASSET BASED COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
Emma Lynch explained the different stages of poverty alleviation which include relief – the urgent and temporary provision of emergency aid as a result of crisis; rehabilitation – seeking to bring people back to where they were before the crisis hit; and development – building resilience into the community to lessen the impact of future crises. Development is not done to people or for people but with people, she said.
Tearfund’s approach is church and community mobilisation or asset based community development, she said. They look at the community, its people and assets and build on that. She said the key things to remember are: world view change is critical and takes time; community resources are better than external resources, leadership buy in and quality facilitators are vital; and it’s all about God.
Photo captions:
Top – Lydia Monds (Bishops’ Appeal), Archbishop Michael Jackson and Emma Lynch (Tearfund) at the Dublin and Glendalough training day on responding to global poverty.
Middle – Participants in the training day learned about engaging with different cultures by trying out some greetings used in other cultures.
Bottom – Linda Chambers (United Society) addressing the training day.
More photographs are available on the Dublin and Glendalough Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/DublinandGlendalough or simply click on the Facebook button (F) at the top of this page.