Work it

Hey all,

I realized that many of my latest blog entries were kind of fluff material. Life is life, work is work, and I’m just kind of doing the thing. I’ve been enjoying myself, but nothing out of the ordinary has been happening. If I were speaking in Gambian state-the-obvious generalities, I would say “the sun is hot” “we are managing” and “its not easy.” those are three of my favorites. ;-)

The past few weeks I’ve been working with an chicken co-op, and its lead me to think a lot about money and its role in development, and how much to help or not help in other ways too. This chicken co-op has been in business for about 5 years now. They produce broiler chickens for meat. Originally, they wanted produce year-round, but they realized that they could not move the chickens fast enough to be profitable(chickens that don’t sell fast enough eat more food than the money they will sell for, and are then sold at a loss), so now they produce a large crop of chickens to coincide with major feast holidays, like Ramadan and Tobaski. However, this leaves the co-op idle much of the year, so they want to move into egg production. They don’t have the money to expand, because they need to fence the area to provide more security, dig a well, then buy the layer hens. We’ve been working on writing a grant together to cover these costs, which in general isn’t bad. Writing a grant is a good process for a business because it forces them to plan ahead, really think their idea through and defend how plausible it is. In that way, grants are much better than straight up donations or gifts…but its still just a gift, and I’ve seen other organizations abuse that.
I know a women’s club near me who donor-hops. They continually ask different donors and tourists for money so that they can make tie-dye, soap, and do sewing, none of which sells in the Gambia. Nonetheless, they’ve gotten plenty of grants, to continue making things that don’t sell, all in the name of “women’s empowerment” and they don’t see anything wrong with that. The money gets spent on materials, and on paying the women a daily or weekly stipend to continue to participate, and make things that don’t sell. No way am I going to go grant chasing with them, its not sustainable the way they’re using it. It just frustrates the hell out of me, that even if I don’t help them, a group of tourists will come through, the women’s group will dance for them and talk about women’s empowerment (indeed a worthwhile goal…also a catchphrase), the tourists will give them some money, and when that runs out they’ll ask for more. The same things happen with the schools. Ugh.
So I’ve just been thinking about all the money that gets spent willy-nilly around here, who needs it and who doesn’t, and how to tell the difference. I don’t have any answers. I trust the chicken group that I’m working with. They’ve handled money responsibly in the past, problem-solved, and are now looking to expand. They wrote their grant application themselves, and are very invested in their project. Then the question came up of how much to help them. They wrote the grant app, but it wasn’t written in a way that made sense to me, so I struggled wondering whether I should put things in an order that made more sense, present things more clearly, in order to give them a better shot, or should I leave it as is, and it would look better to the grant committee to see it written entirely by a group of Gambians, even if the writing isn’t as clear as it might be.

So I’m thinking about chickens, still working with the peer health society, still trying to help organize some environmental education, and just doing the thing. ;-)