The Value of International Development

When I first applied to go to Uganda, I was pretty excited to be able to help people. Now, I think I'll be happy if I didn't make anything worse. So what changed?

Well, I just read a transcript of To Hell with Good Intentions, a speech given by which Ivan Illich to U.S volunteers in 1968. It takes a pretty pessimistic view of the role of international service. Illich claims that volunteers cannot possibly understand the people they are working with. Furthermore, they can't help but imposing their middle class American lifestyle onto the locals. He offers the following prediction of international volunteers.

All you will do in a Mexican village is create disorder

So, is Illich right?

The long answer is yes and no. We all know about those one week international service trips: I was guilty of this too. In high school, I went to Tijuana, Mexico and built a house for a family over spring break. My high school does goes back to the same neighborhood every year to work on the same project for other families. But, I'm not sure if the one that we built still standing today or if future trips have done anything for that family. I do know that a lot of people on that trip got a new profile picture for a few months.

There are several implicit features of international service that I'm not comfortable with.
First is the idea of Western superiority. If we are comfortable sending unskilled volunteers to address unmet needs in Third World countries, what value do we expect them to provide? If they have no training, then the implication is that we expect them to succeed by the virtue of being Westerners.
Second, there is the mixing of tourism and volunteer work. It makes me cringe to think that people's poverty and life situation is the subject of another person's vacation plans.

However, I do believe that there is value in international service if it is done right.

What are the characteristics of helpful service?

• Make sure the work is sustainable. During the Amigos training, they showed a video of Engineers Without Borders and their Save an African Child Spreadsheet idea. Engineering service projects are broken a few weeks after they are started because the locals aren't given the resources to maintain them. Then another engineering team comes in and does the same project over again, not knowing that they could've just fixed up the broken one.
• Utilize an Asset Based Community Development Approach. This basically means utilizing local resources and local strength to promote development. With my project specifically, there are probably unique reasons why Water for Production technologies have not been implemented in Jinja even though they work perfectly well in the U.S. Each problem is different and therefore, each one needs a unique solution
• Learning as much as possible about the dangers of international service so that others' mistakes are not repeated.

So, to address the final question

Is there any value?

Yes, if done correctly.