shelves full of things no one reads

One thing about big international organizations is that they have trouble communicating what they know to the people that need it most.

Like here they do a lot of important research that mostly sits on our shelves. Some of the titles would get poor farmers interested, "Pro-poor financial rewards for environmental services", if they ever got to hear it or knew what that meant. I assumed when I came to do the video here, that there would be some kind of communication strategy as to what the purpose of me doing this was ( I mean why throw away $5000?) and a list of who we would distribute it to and why. And I also assumed that it would be part of a bigger group of communications, like radio and print, that would be made available to the farmers. At least some farmers. The people who are destroying their land and impoverishing themselves all because of lack of information. 800 videos will be pretty useless to them, when there isnt even electricity in many places. It doesn't take a scientist to figure out something is amiss with that plan.

But like I've heard about most organizations (for ex. Peace Corp), to actually make yourself useful in an org too big and too clumsy to pay attention to what its doing to do it thoroughly, you have to make things happen yourself. Aileen got her masters in Development Communication and before here, she used to design posters and come up with strategies on how to communicate information to illiterate and poor people. Considering they has a problem with doing exactly that, you'd think they'd find Aileen really useful. But instead they have her doing other work, like website stuff, when that isnt her specialty, she doesnt like doing it, and its for a website no one looks at. Go figure.

But that meant it was easy for me to ask for her help in coming up with a plan to make sure my videos get to all the right people and also make sure that we make other materials, like posters, for distribution to the people "on the ground".

After we did that, priced out what posters would take to make, I nervously pitched the idea to the man funding me. I HATE asking for money. Anyway, I think he said yes, but he was in such a hurry to leave on a business trip I couldnt really tell.

So we've been going forward with our planning and creating, whether he's paying or not. Sometimes you just have to go ahead with things and try your best to push them along. Because asking here can mean at least a week of waiting for answers and then there is probably some useless paperwork after that.

So yesterday I met with this American women who started a youth magazine business here called Young African Express. She had worked for the USAID for 10 years and then left when she realized they funded the wrong projects and weren't making an empact. We had fun ragging on the incompentency in the international NGO's here.



One thing she said summed it all up very well.
"Somewhere we lost the way because now development sustains us, we don't do sustainable development."

She has gotten some corporate and NGO sponsors to fund her magazine which she distributes to poor rural schools. To distribute one year's worth subscription is only $5, at one magazine a month. These schools usually have no textbooks, paper, pencils. Students just crowd into a little mud room and listen to a teacher lecture. There are usually 50-100 students per class.

So her magazines are very useful because they have environmental and health information, cartoons and stories, and even instructions on how to make things (like a compost bin or weave plastic bags- that are littered all over the place- into baskets). School even give them as rewards to students who do well and often do the activities in the magazines as school/class projects.

So I am designing with her 2 posters to go in 2 of her magazines. One on the "thirsty tree" issue and then another on the benefits of bamboo. One side will be a drawn, colorful representation of these ideas (ie, even an illiterate person will understand the message) and the other side will be a story and then facts so that they fully understand.

She says that her hope is to go into making television and radio shows, since most of what is on is American, S. African and Nigerian soap operas and music videos. I slyly interrupted with "I want a job after I graduate!". Not sure whether her "sure" was genuine or not, but I'll have to track her down in a few years to see.