The Way To Help -- New Internationalist

The Way To Help

new internationalist 111 May 1982

SPONSORSHIP

The way to help

[image, unknown]

The way to help
If you want your personal contribution to the Third World to have a lasting impact, here are three questions you should ask – below are some examples of positive projects currently being supported by Western voluntary agencies.

1 Whose idea is the project? Does it come from the donor agency or from a local group – so will anything survive when the money stops?

2 Is it a ‘non-political’ programme – which will actually be absorbed into an unjust local power structure? Or does it face up to the local social and political realities?

3 Will it help powerful individuals become more powerful and thus increase inequality? Or is it aimed at raising living standards for the whole community?

Click illustration to enlarge

INDIA
A group of stonebreakers have formed a co-operative, bought their own tools and freed themselves from exploitation by a contractor.

MAURITANIA
A farming improvement scheme is being based on traditional agricultural methods – rather than the high technology approach that often drives small farmers into debt.

AUSTRALIA
A bi-cultural aborigine school is being financed – the government refuses to fund it because the local community will not relinquish control.

MEXICO
An illegal squatter settlement that is a constant thorn in the side of the city authorities has set up its own community enterprises and workshops.

BANGLADESH
A health programme is training paramedics from village people to give health care in rural areas where doctors refuse to work.

PARAGUAY
A legal programme helps Indian communities get a secure title to their land so that it can’t be taken from them by commercial interests.

COLOMBIA
An advice centre provides factory workers with up-to-date information on labour legislation and on government health and safety regulations.

HONDURAS
A women’s chicken project is improving levels of nutrition and allowing women to organize themselves and achieve more independence in a male-dominated society.

INDIA
A harijan farmer organization is pooling one-acre plots to farm co-operatively and breaking their dependence on the moneylenders.

FIJI
A programme is supporting community opposition to the damaging cultural and economic effects of nuclear bomb tests.

MALAYSIA
A research centre investigates multinational corporations and runs education programmes so that Malaysians become aware of the ways in which the companies effect their lives.

MALI
A group of women, mostly of polygamous marriages, have set up their own cloth production co-operative to give even the poorest of their group an independent source of income.

BRAZIL
A scheme is helping fishermen and women cut out exploitative middlemen by marketing their own produce – and helping them influence government policy towards the fishing industry.

UPPER VOLTA
A village health scheme is setting up its own pharmacy to sell basic medicines and break the hold of local monopoly traders and drug company salesmen.

PERU
A nutrition and health programme in the capital’s slums has also helped organize the communities to obtain basic services from the city authorities.