50 – Where Improvements Have Taken Place

Any analysis of conditions in the developing world will necessarily focus on the difficulties which persist throughout the region. The disparity between conditions in developed and under-developed nations is simply too stark to ignore. But nor can we ignore the fact that the trillions of dollars in bilateral aid transferred from north to south have not brought about significant improvements in poverty reduction in those countries.

Looking at the factors which banks and other credit rating agencies use to evaluate the strength of economies, then the situation throughout the south has only become worse in the past twenty-five years, the time I have been working in their field. At first glance, it is a very dispiriting situation. The reason I still have some optimism about what is happening in the countries where I have worked is because my focus has not been on government-funded programs but rather on the work of the non-governmental sector.

It is not difficult to see that improvements have taken place in the south, but it is intriguing to note where they’ve taken place. Many of the most significant ones have been brought about not at the national level in developing countries, but at the community level. The improvements which have occurred in education, in food production, in immunization have largely been community-based.

And in fact, it is improvements such as these–improvements in the quality of life at the community level–which are most important to ordinary men and women. Generally people are not particularly concerned about their nation’s current international credit rating. What they care about is the quality of their lives: Are their children healthy? Do they have reasonable access to a decent standard of living, to food and shelter? These are the things that matter.

And it turns out that the majority of resources and money which has gone to promote this kind of development has come from the people of the South themselves. They’ve been the ones who have identified the needs of their communities and have sought effective ways to address those needs. It doesn’t take large amounts of money in order to bring about significant improvements in the way people live.

Many of the difficulties which ordinary citizens of the South face are matters which small, locally based cooperatives or Non-Governmental Organizations are quite capable of dealing with: improving nutrition, improving sanitation, providing basic health care and primary education, insuring that people have adequate housing and access to safe drinking water. These are the areas which are most likely to have the greatest impact on the lives of ordinary people.

Obviously there are major challenges facing many developing nations which are beyond the capacity of its citizenry alone to address. However, the reality for people living in places like Maquiteria is that they are used to the failure of their governments, local, region, and national, to respond to their needs. So they have time and again found ways of working collectively at the community level to seek ways to improve living conditions and the quality of their lives.