Categories: uncategorized
Date: 20 June 2005 20:50:36
I've just listened to a programme on Radio 4 presented by former Blue Peter presenter Simon Groom (OK so that really ages me!) reporting on Cambodia 25 years after the Blue Peter appeal in 1979. I'll definitely have to listen to next week's conclusion. Aid vs/as well as development are issues which push all sorts of buttons with me (given that my MSc is in Development Management and that's the area I'm wanting to eventually move into career-wise). Somehow I can't help thinking that next week's programme is going to be too depressing - I hope I'm proved wrong.
This is an issue where I think people like Bob Geldof are on the right lines. Whatever you think about the calls to march on Edinburgh or sail across the channel (and that last one in particular just had me shaking my head in disbelief), I really like the fact that, unlike Live Aid, Geldof is explicit that Live8 is not about the money (who can forget Live Aid's "give us your ****ing money"). Of course the issues are too complex, but I'm more and more convinced that it's structural change at every level (including structural change here in the west in terms of how we do business with and relate to developing countries) that is one of the most crucial keys to addressing the gap between rich and poor. Not the only key, of course, but a pretty big one.
Having said all that, it's really easy for me (due amongst other things to personal experience, which I will probably blog about some other time) to slag off "aid" - throwing money at problems without changing the causes of those problems. But then if programmes such as Blue Peter, or other charities which are involved in the direct provision of aid, encourage those of us in the comfortable west to examine our lives, realise how well off we are and think about what we can do for our neighbour (whether literal or metaphorical) then that is surely a good thing? For me, the debate is whether the ends justify the means, and to be honest I have to take each case on its own merit. One of my problems with the aid/development scene (whether local NGOs or multilateral funding agencies) is the "one size fits all" mentality. One of the common themes emerging throughout my MSc course was how messy development is - messy work, messy problems, messy relationships between communities and interested parties, just messy. It would be so much easier if the sticking plaster of aid or development did the trick, and what worked here would also work there, but it's just the start.
When I do my PhD, although I'm looking at a specific area concerning health care, it's this whole issue of development - changing structures, working with structures that work, changing myself - that will be underpinning my research.