Reflections on helping I: sustainable development,capacity building and participation

This selection focuses on the useful sense of what “help” means in development context. “Sustainable development is the goal, in sum; this requires the building of both individual and group capabilities; and broad participation is the major vehicle underlying the formation of solid capabilities.

“If you have come to help me you can go home again. But if you see my struggle as part of your own survival then perhaps we can work together.”

-Australian Aborigine Woman⁽¹⁾ (Manila 1991, p. 217)

What does it mean to “help” a person like this Aborigine woman in Australia, -- or a community, or line agency in Nepal, the Philippines, Thailand, or here in Calgary? One response to this question might be in terms of the intended outcomes of my “helping”. A second response could be to consider the means I use to help the other move in the direction of their intended outcomes. A third view is to include the concerns for outcomes and process with an interest in the mutual influence of the helper and the helpee on each other during the life of the dialogue.

What are some important influences that shape my view of “helping” at this point, that is, in November 1992? Four forces immediately come to mind: 1) my training in the planned change of human systems, 2) my recently completed involvement for five years with colleagues associated with the Health Development Project in Nepal as we struggled to strengthen the capacity of the government's health-related institutions and rural communities to improve the quality of life of the rural poor; 3) conversations with colleagues at the International Centre like Sheila Robinson and Tim Pyrch who are passionate (and articulate) in their views about development and participation, and 4) my relationship with my wife, Tana, which provides an experiential context for struggling with the issues embedded in the Aborigine woman's comment which introduces these reflections. These forces -- and others which will go unmentioned but are known to those who wrestle with the mysterious undercurrents of life -- have led me to increasingly think of “helping” in terms of three ideas: sustainable development as the ultimate goal of development; capacity building as the appropriate vehicle for pursuing sustainable development; and participation of all appropriate stakeholder groups as partners in the pursuit of sustainable development.

This reflection will clarify several features of my emerging theory of development by getting the jumbled and often incoherent whispers of suggested ideas in my head down on paper.