The Lucretius Plan

Creative destruction

Exciting times are afoot in the Flores development industry. PT Jamasatira, the organisation for which I have been working all these months, has decided to spontaneously combust. The staff and I all resigned on mass this month, and have formed our own break-away entity called:

JPA - flores

This stands for 'Jaringan Perdagangan Adil - Flores', which in English reads as 'The Flores Fair Trade Network'. This has been in the planning process for some months, and we have already found support from Oxfam New Zealand, who will be helping us to set up the institution, define our first projects and develop the skill base of the staff.

The reason for this move is that the old company (Jamasatira) was weighed down by some legacy issues of incompetence and corruption that it has taken me months to even understand let alone attempt to tackle. Furthermore, Jamasatira was shackled to a network of Flores NGOs that, whilst well-meaning, have been unable to provide much in the way of support or leadership. Most importantly, the research project we have undertaken over the past few months has proved fairly conclusively that the original premise for the company - as an intervener in local commodity markets - was inherently flawed.

The new entity is an NGO (an LSM - lembaga Swadaya Masyarakat - in local parlance) rather than a trading company, which will clarify some governance issues and also make raising funds considerably easier. Today we clarified our vision, mission and basic principles, which I am proud to reveal are as follows (note: I am still working on the best translation, so this is a draft):

VISI - Vision (our guiding star)

'Ekonomi Flores yang adil dan kuat berlandaskan kecerdasan, kerjasama, mandiri dan kekayaan sumber daya alam'

A strong and fair economy in Flores based upon ingenuity, co-operation, self-reliance and the wealth of its natural resources.

MISI - Mission (The basis for our activities)

1. Menjalin kerjasama perdagangan dengan semua pihak - Create a climate of trading co-operation amongst all stakeholders

2. Menyebarkan informasi pasar untuk meningkatkan posisi tawar pelaku pasar - Disseminate market information in order to enhance the bargaining position of all market participants

3. Menolak korupsi, kolusi dan nepotisme - Fight against corruption, collusion and nepotism

4. Menjaga kemitrasejajaran gender - Advocate gender equality

Prinsip Dasar - Basic Principles (The values by which we will live and work every day)

1. Kerjasama secara demokratis sesuai asas kekeluargaan dan nilai-nilai budaya masyarakat Flores - Democratic co-operation commensurate with the principles of the family and cultural values of Flores

2. Management yang jujur, terbuka dan dapat dipertanggungjawabkan - Management that is honest, transparent and accountable

3. Tidak diskriminatif terhadap: gender, orang cacat, anak yatim piatu, suku, ras dan agama - No discrimination on the grounds of: gender, disability, parentage, tribe, race or religion.

We are all very excited about this new development, and over the next few weeks I hope to be reveal some more detail about our activities. We have a rather radical (and dare I say innovative) programme in mind which will assist farmers, encourage new entrepreneurs and upgrade the capacity of community groups.

It is hard to convey how brave the staff have been to participate in this piece of 'creative destruction'. It is extremely rare in Flores to resign from a job without your boss's permission, and setting up new NGOs is usually undertaken by a small coterie of elite development workers conversant with the whims of foreign donors. I am incredibly proud of what the team have done, and how they keenly they are working towards their own empowerment and autonomy.

Feel free to post any messages of support for the new NGO, and I will translate them and share them with the team. If you feel moved to make a Christmas donation to support our activities, then please click the button marked 'Change is Good' on the right hand sidebar of this page, which will take you through a very easy process, and allows you to make any donation of any amount, in any currency.

Selamat Natal (Happy Christmas) from JPA -flores!

Growth that matters

Beth was out in the villages again last week, this time in Magepanda, 50km to the west of Maumere. She was helping a government research team interview mothers of malnourished children, as part of a project to improve the identification and treatment of malnutrition. The picture shows the children gathering round the 'dacing' which is the suspended weighing scale. Each child is weighed every month and the data is recorded on a WHO growth chart. Underweight children are at higher risk of dying from treatable diseases, such as Malaria and Diarrhoea.

The development paradox

This post is an adaptation of an article I have written for the VSO Indonesia in-house magazine. It was in response to an article written by a very experienced development worker who was writing from his perspective from managing volunteers in Thailand for many years. The main thrust of his argument was that volunteers are no longer challenging and questioning themselves or achieving deep integration in their placements. This is partly because technology (such as e-mail and mobile phones) keeps them in touch with home, and because air travel has made it possible for friends and family to visit.

The foundation for his argument rests upon a syllogism. He suggests that from a Buddhist perspective, the path to the 'end of ignorance' is meditation attained through what he calls 'Noble Silence'. Before questioning this shaky premise, perhaps we should analyse if the opportunity for self-refection is truly being compromised by the trappings of the modern world.

His comments are familiar to my entire volunteer experience, from the training at VSO's Birmingham centre until now, which has been punctuated by world-weary comments from 'old timers' along the lines of: "Oh you lot have it easy today, back when I was a volunteer we didn't have telephones, or cars, or toilet paper. We had nothing in fact. We lived on grubs that we found in the forest, and we slept in elephant dung to avoid the mosquitos. No malaria drugs then. Or soap. Oh yes, laddie, we suffered, but by God we found it character-building! Made me the man/woman I am today! You lot today, soft puppies the lot of you. You wouldn't last five minutes in the forest with just a billy can and a giant sloth for company..." And so on, for many hours, nostalgia dressed up as wisdom.

My response to these people is this: It is indeed regrettable that these developing countries have, for want of a better word, developed. What a bore that they are now accessible by the wretched jet plane, and are festooned with mobile phone masts and satellite dishes. How disappointing that these honest sons of toil seem so eager to despoil their picturesque country with the trappings of the information age. It is almost as if all that volunteering over the years has had actually had - the presumably unintentional - impact of improving the lives of the poor.

"Science, technology, innovation and especially ICT can play a critical role in development and poverty eradication," observes Jose Antonio Ocampo, U.N. under-secretary-general for Economic and Social Affairs. "Networks of connectivity and infrastructure, both physical and electronic, are stabilising factors that lead to development, security and human rights."

To test this interesting idea, I recently did a test poll amongst some local colleagues. They all agreed that Maumere is a better place with handphones and internet access. No one I have ever met in Indonesia has seen technological advance as a bad thing, except volunteers and aid workers. They should be ashamed of themselves. I would contend that improved e-mail and mobile phone coverage in Indonesia is a significant opportunity for development professionals, rather than an unwelcome intrusion on their deep meditation and self-discovery. The transformative communications revolution which has dramatically enhanced interactions between members of the human race, and done so in a way that democratises infomation and knowledge, may be seen as many things, but to say (as the article in question does) that 'thanks to Yahoo volunteers can cling to their pre-existing ignorance' is an eccentric viewpoint to say the least.

Of course he cannot possibly mean that improved communication actually increases ignorance. I think he means that access to communication prevents the volunteer from making certain revelatory discoveries about themselves. He deploys Buddhism in the same way that some people deploy concepts such as 'motherhood', it is supposed to conjure up warm and fuzzy feelings that cannot possibly be denied. However, not all of us are Buddhists. In fact, it could be said the Buddhist quest for nirvana is an individualistic act of selfish exceptionalism, leaving little space for recognizing that as social animals we may better serve humanity by seeking grace in others.

Rather than seek 'noble silence', I feel we should be using our generosity to forgo isolation, and reach out to as many people as possible. In placement this means making new, local friends, and also forming friendships with the wider network of volunteers. However, there is also a responsibility to keep in touch with friends and family back home. This creates a web of relationships at different levels of intensity and familiarity, all of which create opportunities to see each other, ourselves, and our wider world differently. Furthermore, easy communication with home enables volunteers to advocate and inform. This is a crucial development role and I do not recognise the remark that incidents become 'merely fodder for gee-whizz anecdotes about inscrutable foreigners for the entertainment of the folks back home'. I sincerely hope that this web journal has not resorted to lazy stereotyping and objectification.

The notion that improved communication tools (such as e-mail) undermine a process of personal growth is predicated on the over-simplified 'Noble Silence' premise. Yes, feedback from friends and family is one way that we mediate our self-image, but to suggest that too much communication will compromise our ability to confront, analyse, adapt and absorb is to make an unsupportable generalisation.

Perhaps the heart of his position can be found in his belief that volunteers make little professional impact in their placements. He therefore sees the transaction as being one of mutual solidarity - the local partner gets a shoulder to cry on, and the volunteer gets nirvana. Some deal.

Is it too much to ask that we raise our sights a little higher? Can we not see ourselves first and foremost as development professionals, and our volunteer status as merely a chosen method of intervention (with many advantages to our partners)? The VSO and CUSO volunteers I know are all highly self-motivated to learn the langauage, customs and context of Indonesia, and are committed to achieving measurable development outcomes.

I consulted with my local partners to establish if they were happy with the idea of a VSO volunteer achieving little in their placement besides bearing witness to poverty and offering sympathy. They pointed out that you can't eat sympathy. And you can't send a text message with it.

The Facilitators have left the building

"Look at all these little pieces of card here, these participatory workshops are a real pain, why did we have to ask them what they wanted for goodness sake?"

"What do we do now? SWOT or SMART?"

"There's only one solution. We just have to pull out the big one."

"Not the..."

"Yes. Release the Problem Tree."

"Can I get some more fried banana first?"

Parallel lives

While sitting in on the weekly Hospital doctors meeting last week I learnt that a women had died a few hours earlier due to complications after childbirth. This is not a particularly rare occurrence in Sikka but with the focus of my job on how to prevent this from happening in the field (most people give birth away from the hospital at local birthing clinics or at home) this was an opportunity for me to learn from this tragedy from the perspective of the hospital.

I followed the doctor back to the delivery room where the lady in question had died and where currently three more women were in various stages of labour. I was told that she had arrived at the hospital in a poor condition and it was basically an up hill struggle to save her and her babies. I say babies as she was due to give birth to twins, a fact not initially known to the hospital as the records that came with her were incomplete. She arrived with her husband but without her midwife, which is unusual and against procedure for a high risk pregnancy which this evidently was.

The woman, I’ll call her Olivia, was 32 years old and these were her sixth and seventh children. The fact that she was the same age as me and yet had died in childbirth a few hours earlier had a profound effect on me. I tried to imagine myself with five children and two more on the way, almost inconceivable and yet not unusual in this part of the world. It was another tangible example of how although we live here and feel part of the community our lives are still so very different.

Olivia was anaemic as are most pregnant women here, she was malnourished and had only received two prenatal checkups from her midwife. The pregnancy was traumatic by all accounts and there was an hour gap between the two births after which Olivia began to bleed profusely. This is the most common cause of maternal mortality and by all accounts she lost a significant amount of blood. The hospital had no available stocks of the appropriate blood group AB, so her husband frantically rushed around Maumere trying to find a match. They eventually stopped the bleeding but were unable to replace the fluids, as despite the husband’s best efforts no blood stock arrived. Shortly afterwards Olivia developed eclampsia, lost consciousness and died.

The good news is that the babies, a boy and a girl, were miraculously born alive and I went to visit them with the paediatrician at the hospital. They were both sound asleep inside their incubators blissfully unaware of the outside world and all that had happened.
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Eliminating Polio

You may have read in the news that Indonesia has had a problem with a re-emergence of Polio cases, and so decided to have a one-day blitz to immunize every toddler in the country in one day. Read about it here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4196022.stm

More than 750,000 health care workers and volunteers are involved in the initiative stretching across 6,000 islands in Indonesia, including Beth here in Sikka. It was a remarkable feat of organisation, and highlights one of the strengths of the Indonesian health structure, which is that it has a fairly good command and control system. Unfortunately it just doesn't have any resources.

Beth reports that the children took it all in their stride, which was brave considering that unlike us coddled kids in the west, here you don't get given the vaccine on a lump of sugar. This is ironic in a country where absolutely everything, including sugar, comes with extra sugar.

The picture shows one of the better rural health centres with mothers arriving to register their children and get the vaccine.

Nuts.

After more than a year working in Maumere, I spent some time this week taking stock and evaluating what has been achieved at my placement. My original placement description exhorted me to 'cut out the middleman' and embrace fairtrade. I was encouraged to consider the plight of the farmers and help these worthy sons of toil overcome the machinations of an unfair trading system, by empowering Jamasatira to intervene in the market, paying a fair price to the farmers and helping alleviate poverty on this desperately impoverished island.

It is therefore somewhat alarming to look back at the last 12 months and realise that the poverty is yet to be alleviated. Jamasatira has not traded a single bean or nut in the past 12 months. The hard truth is that not a single farmer could be said to have benefited from my contribution so far. In short, the report reads 'could do better'.

That said, Jamasatira was a bankrupt company when I arrived, suffering from a legacy of corruption and mismanagement. It is now slightly less bankrupt and systems are in place to ensure good governance in the future. The staff (who were on the point of walking out when I arrived) are now more committed and energetic. Their capacity has been built to the extent that they are more autonomous, and are getting better at organising their own workload. We have moved office from the rat and mosquito infested hellhole that greeted me when I first arrived, and now enjoy fairly civilised surroundings, by Maumere standards. The accounts system, previously a confusion of tatty cashbooks and unresolved balances, is now a proper double-entry system run on a brand new computer (kindly donated by the British Embassy in Jakarta). The truck has been repaired, taxed, and now plies for trade on the Flores highway. For the last six months we have been engaged in research project, funded by SPARK (don't ask me what that stands for) to establish the current market situation and build some baseline data on rural livelihoods. So, all in all, not too bad.

However, the challenges that remain are significant. A recent examples serve to illustrate this:

Jamasatira was recently asked to help a local organic cashew nut project that has been initiated by a couple of international NGOs. Four villages have set up an Internal Control System (ICS) and obtained organic certification (approximately 400 farmers in all). As the cashew nut season starts these farmers expect a 30% price premium for their harvest. However, the farmers are certified only as far as the farm gate, beyond that a certified trader needs to collect the produce and export it to India, where it will be processed. If any link in this chain is handled by a non-certified agent, then the certification for the crop will be lost, and the price will fall to the prevailing market rate.

Unfortunately, the company selected to buy the produce does not have the capacity to handle more than 25% of the crop. Another company has been found to buy the balance, but they need to have the crop delivered to the harbour. An opportunity therefore exists for Jamasatira to become the middleman, collecting the crop from the farmers, checking and bagging it, and delivering it to a container in Maumere. To do so we would need to obtain organic certification, and we had already negotiated an inspection fee of Rp 5.500.000. Jamasatira has the potential to become one of the very few organically certified trading companies in NTT, and help out 400 farmers.

The snag is that we do not have the cash for the inspection fee. We have tried to obtain a grant, but NGOs do not usually give money to businesses, regardless of any social objective. The banks in NTT will not even give Jamasatira a loan secured against our assets (a plot of land and a truck). So, for the lack of approximately $500 Jamasatira will be unable to participate in this particular project. If no other firm steps in (and it seems most unlikely that any will) then the total loss to the farmers will be around $30,000, as the crop is sold as non-organic. This, in turn, is a loss to the Flores economy.

It may seem astonishing to those of you who have seen the G8 announcements about increased foreign aid to developing countries that development projects at a grassroots level still come down to the presence (or absence) of just $500. One of the problems is that grant-giving organisations do not like to give what they see as 'seed capital' to commercial organisations, even if those organisations are, like Jamasatira, set up to help the community. I often think that NGOs forget that farming is a business, and that farmers are basically entrepreneurs. NGOs seem to believe that treating farmers as passive victims of an unfair system is somehow more empowering than encouraging them to develop their skills and improve their businesses.

Fortunately Jamasatira has some other ideas to pursue, and with at least 12 months left here I am sure that eventually we will get around to actually buying (and perhaps selling) a bag of nuts, and maybe even make a profit.

squeezing the tip

Last week saw me demonstrating to the midwife supervisors from all over Sikka how to use a condom. They are responsible for counselling on contraception and safe sex as well as treatment. Quite how I was tasked with this I am unsure. It was part of a week-long training session on sexually transmitted diseases which are on the increase here along with a small but significant rise in HIV and AIDS cases. There have been a handful of confirmed deaths from AIDS in our local hospital and this was an opportunity to educate the midwives about these and the range of STDs and treatment. We also discussed the importance of changing local behaviour before the HIV/AIDS situation in S E Asia follows the exponential epidemic pattern experienced in Africa.

There are currently two people being cared for in Maumere hospital with HIV, a number of others awaiting test results, including a baby born a few weeks before her mother died from AIDS. These are not high numbers but Maumere is not a very big place. According to a local doctor, a specialist in communicable diseases, screening of donated blood has found a quantity to be infected with the virus.

So, hence my talk on the importance of wearing a condom. Condoms are very rarely used here to the extent that on trying to do some fact finding with my colleagues about why condoms are so uncommon as a method of birth control or safe sex, they all collapsed in laughter saying they had never used them and couldn't discuss the subject without falling about giggling. It was at this moment that I realised I had an uphill struggle.

If you look closely in the photograph you can see the prop that was used in the demonstration, bought from the local market, so each midwife could practice applying the condom, and if she was hungry eat as a snack afterwards. I never knew fruit could be so useful.

The new regime

Last Friday saw me at the office at 6.30, dressed in sportswear feeling a little sorry for myself. The arrival of the new Head of the Health Department last week brought new rules, some of which I am still coming to terms with. The new daily start time has moved from 8 am to 7 am and Fridays are to begin at 6.30 am with compulsory exercise.

As I crawled out of bed at 5.30 and had a very cold mandi I was feeling very hard done by. Now I am not opposed to exercise per se and as the weather here is so hot I reluctantly acknowledge the logic for getting up early whilst it is still cool, but nothing could have prepared me for what was to come. On arriving at work I realised I had stumbled into the twilight zone, which is saying something in Maumere where every day is a venture into the surreal.

There we all were, the staff of the Health Department, the division heads and the new boss all doing a very bad dance routine next to the main road. A dance routine that no one seemed to know very well and accompanied by appalling music. Some of us were going one way, others stepping forward, others stepping back, some had given up and were simply doing their own thing. Part of me wanted to scream, 'I got out of bed for this?' but the rest of me knew that to miss this would have been a crying shame, it was hilarious.

Then, as I was beginning to wonder just how long we could keep this set piece going, an older gentleman strides up to us wheezing heavily in between puffing away on a cigarette. I was worried for him not only because of the state of his health but as the new Head had decreed the Dinas a No Smoking zone and had so far proved to be pretty tough on compliance. So we were all sniggering about what would happen to him until he introduced himself as the aerobics instructor.

An Appeal

Recognising the fact that we are working out here to alleviate poverty and stimulate development, many people have asked us what they can do to help our efforts, and whether we can accept donations.

We have therefore set up two funds from which you can choose, or perhaps you may even feel compelled to give to both.

The PT Jamasatira Appeal

Dominic has been working for nine months at PT Jamasatira, which was originally set up to help farmers by paying them a fair price for their commodities. Currently farmers are at the mercy of rapacious middlemen and the vagaries of world commodity prices. This year the rains failed, and the corn crop is a disaster, also the price of vanilla (an important local crop) has fallen by 80% since last year. These events will lead to malnourished families and a degraded environment.

By alleviating the impact of these problems PT Jamasatira hopes to help farmers earn a fair price for their exertions, so they can earn their way out of poverty and invest in their future.

However, changing the way the commodity market works on a mountainous island over 400 km long presents many challenges. Furthermore, the company is starved of funds and has very limited access to capital.

PT Jamasatira has recently launched a website: http://riot.typepad.com/fairtrade where you can learn more detail about the company's plans and how it has a revolutionary new concept that will transform the lives of thousands of people on Flores.

As Dominic is organising an urgent appeal for funds, it is likely that some of you will receive an e-mail from him about this, and we would encourage you to use your contacts to see if corporate donations can be organised.

Beth's Education Fund for Girls

The education system in Indonesia is not particularly indulgent towards the bright kid from a poor family. Schooling here is not free (though some help towards fees is available from the government and various charities), and large families face difficult choices. Often this results in the eldest son being sent to further education and the remaining kids - especially the daughters - being advised to lower their expectations.

We have identified a very bright teenage girl whose life chances will be significantly enhanced if she has the chance to attend university. The family is supportive and aware of our efforts to secure funding for their daughter's education. To protect confidentiality we cannot publicise details about the individuals concerned on this website, but we will share more information with donors.

The cost of sending someone to university is approximately 10m rupiah, which is 560 pounds sterling, and if we raise more then this then we can include other children in the process, perhaps also funding secondary education (many children leave after primary education). We need to raise the first tranche of money before June 2005.

Why make a donation?

Most volunteers are encouraged to do some form of fundraising before they leave the UK, but this is to raise money for general VSO funds to cover the cost of recruiting and training volunteers. It usually takes the form of 'sponsorship', similar to when people climb Kilimanjaro or run a marathon. We did not engage in this because we wanted to get to our placement and assess what the needs were on the ground.

The advantage of donating cash direct to our projects is that VSO makes no deduction for administration costs, so 100% or your donation is available for our projects. In fact, with gift aid even more than 100% is available!

Also, you would be astonished at what can be achieved for quite small amounts of money, though clearly we are hoping that you will find a way to give quite large sums of money!

How do you give?

All donations are handled through VSO, so the easiest way to donate is to visit the VSO website:

https://www.vso.org.uk/giving/donate.asp

Fill in the form and in the box marked 'what brought you to our website?' write the following:

"Donation for project of VSO Volunteer Elizabeth Elson, ref: 729705"
or
"Donation for project of VSO Volunteer Dominic Elson, ref: 714400"

Most importantly, remember to tick the box for Gift Aid, as this adds basic rate tax relief to the contribution, which we will receive in its entirety. If you are a higher rate tax payer remember to include the contribution on your tax return, as you will receive higher rate tax relief (12%) through your tax rebate, so you may choose to take this into consideration when judging the size of your donation!

Alternatively, you can download and fill in this form:

Download donation_form_tcm8-705.pdf

and send it to:

Emma Turner
Fundraising Department
Voluntary Service Overseas
317 Putney Bridge Road
London
SW15 2PN

For the question 'Where did you hear about VSO?' write the following:
"Donation for project of VSO Volunteer Elizabeth Elson, ref: 729705"
or
"Donation for project of VSO Volunteer Dominic Elson, ref: 714400"

Any Questions?

There is nothing we like more than talking about our work out here and our projects, so if you have any questions, or would like to establish the destination of a particularly chunky donation, then just drop us an e-mail.