I was reading a great blog post about making a real life team to do education programs around the world, starting with Sierra Leone (
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/evokation-seed-the-outlin...) that made me think about how much we can influence abroad and whether this is ethic or not.
World Bank and IMF have been criticized for using a the same set of politics all over the world without considering enough local conditions (for one example of this
http://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/item.shtml?x=320869). While the positive intentions are clear, adjusting the help to local context is critical to make positive changes according to the
local population, which I believe are the only ones who could actually evaluate the benefits of a helping program. The Evoke storyline seems to promote these kind of approaches where people from "outside" just come and use "their" ideas to improve local people. However this could cause important changes in local culture and as such might not give the desired result.
So I wonder what should we include in our projects to help abroad to make sure we don´t impose our own point of view of how they should live, but that we actually make important positive changes in the eyes of the people we're helping. (although I'm open to discussion I'm strongly opposed to think that developed countries know the answer and should teach it to everyone else, I'd rather think everyone has some good and bad ideas and that we should share and learn together)
I guess using participatory tools and working with the local people can help to do this, but as we can see in the Evoke story, doing things by our own is faster. Is it better tho?
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