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Editorial, volume 4, number 1, 1994
Humanitarian agencies often describe their activities as 'people-centred', as distinct from the broader political or economic sweep of official or inter-governmental programmes. A cornerstone of development, as most NGOs define it, is that it involves women and men working for real and lasting changes in their own lives. Yesterday's landless peasant may be today's small-holder, or tomorrow's farmers' union leader. So, although the categories of oppression and deprivation may be unchanging, the individuals who fall within them are not.
The problem arises when agencies turn the real targets of their work - poverty and injustice - into labels to be attached to the women, men and children they aim to help. Determining 'target groups' can enable an agency to define its own focus, or to draw up its operational priorities. It can also bring the detail of specific situations into the foreground. But it is a misleading way to look at human beings, or at the complex ways that people's relationships with each other are embedded within the processes of social change. Sharing a cluster of characteristics does not turn a set of individuals into a group. People do not necessarily identify with others in similar situations, simply because outsiders think they ought to. This is as true within households as it is in the community, neighbourhood, workplace or wider society. Development and emergency work entails exploring the differences between people's needs and perspectives - at every level - as well as seeking and building on common perspectives.
The contributions to this issue of Development in Practice show the importance of recognising that specific sectors of a population - whether these are poor, rural women in West Africa or Nicaragua, or children of political violence in the Philippines, disabled people in Guyana, or HIV/AIDS patients in Ghana - are always part of a complex set of social inter-relations. They show that it is the invisible factors which often condition the ways in which people respond to particular development or relief initiatives.
Hans Buwalda describes a programme focussed on children caught up in the tragedy of low-intensity war: they cannot stand outside or change their context, and therapeutic work with them is undertaken in the knowledge that their situation may deteriorate. To assist such children means helping them to cope with an environment of sustained violence. Similar issues are raised by Margaret Mensah, reporting on her work with villagers infected with HIV/AIDS. Karen Schoonmaker-Freudenberger looks at the difficulties in reaching poor women through programmes to provide labour-saving technologies. Systematically, the economic, social and educational constraints on such women means that they cannot translate 'needs' into effective demands - and the technological infrastructure falls into disuse as a result. Brian O'Toole and Geraldine Maison-Halls look at ways of incorporating disabled children within the educational mainstream, as well as equipping families and communities to deal more effectively with their needs. However, in spite of extensive efforts to encourage broad-based support, they find that the self-selecting volunteer 'community' is almost always female. Sandiford et al review the National Literacy Crusade in Nicaragua, focussing on the longer-term impact on the rural women who participated in the adult literacy and education programmes. They compare the achievements identified shortly after the Crusade with women's functional literacy skills a decade later, and with the assumed link between maternal education and infant health. However, the article is also a valuable reminder that the beneficiaries of development assistance do themselves evaluate its impact in their lives in a far more thoughtful and holistic way than the targets drawn up by outsiders can ever hope to capture.
In this issue of Development in Practice, we are also publishing a summary of your responses to the survey conducted during 1993. We thank everyone who took the time to complete the questionnaire, as well as all those who have written to us over the past year. Your general feedback is very positive in terms of the range and quality of contributions. But many of you would like to see still more from Southern writers and practitioners. We share this wish, and Develoment in Practice welcomes contributions from any source, particularly from those who have direct experience of development or emergency relief work. We are keen to encourage new writers, and authors whose first language is not English. We are happy to offer advice and assistance to such writers, where necessary.
Deborah Eade
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