Developing CHE - 4 Greatest Hits

My internship group learning the most efficient way to use
drip-line for growing onions.

The best way I’ve heard to explain CHE is to compare it to a water tower. A water tower carries life-giving water, but it can only do what it’s meant to do if it’s legs are solid and working right. The legs of CHE are the concepts that it can’t stand without. The first leg is making sure you're doing “Development not Relief.”

What it is: Using drip line hoses to water a profitable garden by minimizing the water used, and then teaching other people how to do it as a business when they’re interested. Establishing a fish pond to sell fish to supplement farm income but also deposit natural fish-waste fertilizer in the water you’ll give to specific crops. The main issue with both of those development ideas is they might take too many non-local resources. Lots of other agricultural ideas can mimic them if they add value in locally based ways and then allow for bigger undertakings that bring better profits and health. Establishing savings groups with clear rules and benefits is another great example of something that doesn’t take outside money but after it develops the capability of people to manage larger amounts of money to make profits, it ushers in opportunity to get larger loans from the outside responsibly.

What it isn’t: A few years ago some of our neighbor kids came to us with a small bag of books, and gave them to us saying, these are white people’s books some group was handing out, so we thought you’d like them. Some charity had given English Bible story books that had gotten handed out to these kids who can’t read in their own language let alone the national one or English, so the books were easily dispensable to their beneficiaries. It’s a tired story in so many countries, but we see the relief money or supplies that are brought in by different groups wasted by people who don’t share the same vision or understanding for what is important to do with them. (And worse yet the forming of a mentality that these things will just keep coming as long as it appears the problem continues).

Take away: Real development happens through ideas and teachings that use local resources to carry out plans that have local ownership to increase the economy, capabilities, health and education of a community. This kind of development is tricky because sometimes it is necessary to add some kind of input into a community, but it’s effectiveness is largely based on if the community is ready to receive that thing and clearly has ideas and motivation to use it. This sometimes takes prior capacity building in smaller forms. We can’t help solve many problems by giving out money or things that serve as temporary relief to the problems. Because the problems come back immediately after the money is spent or things break, and a mentality has formed that the best someone can do is to get more “relief.”

-- El Padre