How do we build sustainable projects?
This is the most frequent question any NGO or impact driven organisation gets asked: what happens when the organization leaves the community they’ve been working in.
Although important, there is a movement towards the concept of building community resilience (instead of sustainability). It’s less about making sure the same things keep happening, and more about equipping communities to adapt to new challenges as and when they arise.
What is a resilient community?
“A socially cohesive community which is better able to respond to, withstand and recover from external pressures and stresses; in ways which allows them to maintain essential functions and recover quickly, breaks the cycle of poverty, and strengthens them toward environmental, social and economic health and wellbeing.”
Traditional aid and philanthropic initiatives often approach communities with a “do-as-I-say” attitude, which determines when and how beneficiaries spend donated money. This type of mentality completely undermines the fact that no-one understands best what is needed in the community than the community members themselves. There is also a certain tone which is set when money has to be dedicated to specific things or activities. Often, there is an inherent judgement: that they won’t spend it responsibly; that they “don’t know what’s good for them”. Not only this, but it means communities don’t have autonomy to decide how and what to spend their money on, reinforcing their dependency on external organisations to lead them.
We need to turn this on its head. We need to reassign power to communities, so that once the do-gooders have left, they have the structures and means in place to take proactive ownership of their collective wellbeing.
How might we build resilience?
We need to stop placing conditional limitations on how money is spent. We could make use of community collectives such as co-operatives to administer funds, with the caveat that there are governance and voting structures in place which ensure transparency and a democratic process. In so doing, we promote civic engagement where community members are able to advocate for and prioritise the use of funds into public goods and services.
This means that when disaster strikes, the community-led structures needed to respond to it are already in place.
