Development is...

In a session during orientation sometime late last month, we were asked in groups to define the term "development." As someone who has worked in that field, the concept was somewhat familiar to me. Nevertheless, we came up with three wildly different definitions, and this is a testament to the word itself, especially when you consider it in the context of "international." So now as I enter the third week  of work with my NGO, I will try to explain development and my connection to it and to India. Most of you want to know what I'm doing here anyway, right? (see pretty drawing below)

IT IS AUGUST 2008 and the yearly monsoons have brought massive flooding to the Bihar province of Northeastern India. Among one of the hardest hit areas is the Kosi region where the Kosi River overruns its banks wiping out hundreds of thousands of houses and displacing over one million people. This is a common occurrence in India, especially in that region of Bihar, although flooding on this scale has not happened in decades...

COINCIDENTALLY, 6 MONTHS PRIOR to the flooding, my NGO had spearheaded the first ever collaboration on ODR, or Owner-Driven Reconstruction, a process by which the people (owners) are intimately involved in the reconstruction of their own houses, post-disaster (flood, earthquake, war, etc). They work alongside artisans and other advisers and are taught the best and most efficient disaster-proof ways of (re)building houses in the region. The process also attempts to utilize locally available and appropriate materials for reconstruction, ie. wood, bamboo, brick, etc. This all combines to promote sustainable and eco-friendly, resource conservative policies pertaining to post-disaster reconstruction. My NGO has utilized its experience through past work in Aceh, Indonesia after the 2004 tsunami, and in other regions such as  Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq after war and natural disasters...

AND NOW, an ambitious program has been launched. Our collaborative consists of 8 organizations, including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and boasts a hefty goal of rebuilding 210,000 homes within 5 years, led by the new technical guidelines of the Owner Driven Reconstruction Collaborative (ODRC). But first, we have trained our sights on Part 1: Build 30,000 houses before the start of the monsoon season, June 2010...

WE HAVE 6 MONTHS. That's 5,000 houses per month, or about 165 houses per day. Everyday. From January to June. We are employing 300 artisans to advise and assist the owners with building. We are formulating technical guidelines by which houses should be built, and are treating and using materials native to the region (mainly bamboo) for the use in building these houses. We must complete it. Because when the monsoon hits, it hits hard...

MY ROLE in this endeavor is to establish, design, pioneer a completely new, from the ground up, management information system to track project physical and financial progress. I will be developing a system to monitor budgets on a day to day basis, among the 8 organizations and the dozens of people they each employ. It will be a large complex undertaking, aka, I will be making a pretty Excel spreadsheet and syncing it with a Googledocs sheet online. Sounds very simple, but the design has been 1 week in the making and the end is still out of sight. But, most of all, I am beginning to realize that this is where my expertise lies. I DO know how to do this better than anyone here --to use new and innovative software programs in conjunction with project management-- and it is great that I have found this niche within the organization. There is a strong chance I will be traveling to Bihar in January (2-3 day train ride each way) to personally monitor the projects. Better get on that Hindi...

THIS IS THE FIELD in which I am working, and this is just one tiny example of my role in international development. Other fellows in my program work with public health, needle users, HIV/AIDS, TB, nutrition in slums, women's empowerment and promotion of local artisans and their livelihoods, rights for sex workers, natural resource conservation among tribal areas, and land ownership rights for the Dalit (untouchable populations) of India. And those are just a few more areas included under the vast umbrella that is "international development." We are spread out among 6 cities, towns, villages, population ranging 20,000 to 20 million, separated by thousands of kilometers, spanning two Indian states, with locals speaking countless regional dialects...

DEVELOPMENT IS a complex term. It is loaded. It is social justice, human rights centered at times. It is simple aid giving, but hopefully more than that. It is training of local people in a sustainable manner, to aid them in improving their own livelihoods. It encompasses public health, humanitarian aid, construction, reconstruction, civil society promotion, democracy promotion, economic promotion, human rights promotion. It is run by non-profits, grassroots NGOs, multilateral international organizations (World Bank, UN), national governments, even the for-profit private sector. It is hard to say it is one thing or another, but, we CAN say that it is various elements: sectors, people, countries, and institutions, united together to work towards the elimination of poverty throughout the world.

Oh, forgot to mention, I also update the NGO website. =)

(Note: second new post below)