Project Inspiration

Movies tell us stories, and one night they told Laura Spano (BA 2008, DipML (French), BA (Hons) 2009) a story called Hotel Rwanda. Laura wasn’t expecting that story to change her life. She’d only just returned from fifteen months living in Canada and was mainly watching the movie to beat her jet lag. However, two hours later, Laura began to google. She’d been planning to do an international internship, and the next morning she told her parents she was going to Rwanda.

Standing in a reconciliation village in Rwanda eight months later, Laura heard a different kind of story. She was speaking to a tall, kindly man who looked straight into her eyes as he told her how he’d killed six people with a machete. It was a shocking confession, but the truly extraordinary thing was that the man was not alone: next to him stood a woman, and she identified herself as the mother of the six people he had murdered.

Laura Spano in a Rwandan reconciliation village, 2008.

Reconciliation villages are communities in which both the survivors and the perpetrators of the genocide live side by side, a living demonstration that Rwandans could coexist in a spirit of forgiveness. Laura knew that high–minded ideas like this didn’t always match reality, but earlier that day she’d seen the man and the woman laughing together. At one point they’d even shared a friendly embrace. As far as she could tell, this remarkable woman really had forgiven the murderer of her children and was now his next–door neighbour. When Laura later wrote about her experiences she singled out this woman’s story as something that gave her hope.

After returning to Melbourne University, Laura created an internship with Never Again Rwanda (NAR) for twenty–five of her fellow students. ‘NAR is a local human rights organisation that aims to prevent genocide ideology and promote community integration through the encouragement of cross–cultural discussion,’ says Laura. Among many other things, a key goal of the internship was to combat what she calls the ‘danger of the single story’. Laura feels that it’s wrong for countries to be reduced to one simple stereotype and she continues to work to bring cultures together. Movies like Hotel Rwanda can tell us stories that are perfectly true, but Laura is living proof that sometimes the ones you hear firsthand can be even more inspiring.

The 1990s saw … a new emphasis on the need for people in the developing world to have a role in their own transformation.

This idea of competing realities applies equally well to the study of development in the last sixty years. In 1949 Harry Truman declared that America ‘must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas.’

In practice, says Andrew Dawson, Professor of Anthropology and Director of Development Studies at the University of Melbourne, development in the period mostly consisted of Cold War antagonists investing in client states. The study of these large–scale processes was largely confined to disciplines such as economics, economic geography and political science, but the 1990s saw development undergo a radical shift. In this postcolonial world there was a new emphasis on the need for people in the developing world to have a role in their own transformation.

‘It led to a whole array of approaches in development that amount to really the same thing: participatory development, grassroots development,’ says Professor Dawson. ‘Academically, disciplines such as anthropology, which were attuned methodologically to understanding how ordinary people impacted upon the world, tended to come to the fore.’

Fostering a lifelong commitment to community engagement

The University’s Leadership Involvement and Volunteer Experience (LIVE) unit provides a platform for students to get involved on and off campus in leadership, community engagement and volunteering activities in Australia and overseas.

An opportunity for students to develop an understanding of social, cultural and linguistic diversity as well as respect for the environment and human rights and dignity, LIVE experiences foster a lifelong passion for community involvement. LIVE welcomes enquiries from organisations able to provide volunteer opportunities for students.

If you or your organisation would like to provide a student with a volunteer opportunity please contact Theresa Li in the LIVE unit on + 613 8344 3378 or theresa.li@unimelb.edu.au.

Or visit the School of Philosophy, Anthropology and Social Inquiry website for more information on the University’s development studies programs.

David Lansley is the senior economist at World Vision Australia. In his experience the best strategy for economic development is to narrow your focus and do a few things well. ‘The whole process of development is unpredictable,’ he says. ‘It’s affected by a whole range of things which vary in different situations and it’s very difficult to pick why countries do develop.’

The first step is attempting to secure a position where offering economic alternatives and market opportunities becomes viable. Many developing countries are bedevilled by civil unrest and large numbers of internally displaced people, and, consequently, the best response may be high–level activity like lobbying governments or the UN to try to achieve peace.

Once relative stability is achieved, David sees World Vision’s economic development role as that of a facilitator. ‘You can do things like help people identify possible viable projects,’ he says. ‘And that’s where you need their knowledge.’

David nominates the Humbo Ethiopia Farmer Assisted Natural Regeneration Project as a good example of this consultative strategy. Once upon a time the Humbo Valley was covered in millions of trees, but short–sighted farming techniques left the region almost completly denuded.

The first consequence of this over–harvesting was that the valley’s inhabitants, who once relied on the forest for at least part of their livelihood, were now totally reliant on farming maize. To make matters worse, frequent droughts threatened the maize crops’ viability, continued soil erosion caused floods and landslides, and the valley’s sediment run–off became so extensive that it has caused the water of nearby Lake Abaya to turn red.

‘We can assist to a degree ... but we could do much better if we were a little bit less ignorant.’ Beatriz Maturana

Determined to alter this crippling status quo, the Humbo Project is a collaboration between the valley’s local community, World Vision offices in Australia and Ethiopia, the World Bank and the Ethiopian Environmental Protection Authority. Where traditional methods of reforestation had achieved only limited results, the Humbo Project showcases a far more effective technique. The Ethiopian farmers had cut down trees at ground level, but the stumps and root systems they left behind often survived. Each living stump is capable of growing twenty new shoots, and with careful tending by the locals, at least two or three new trunks can be regenerated.

The result is that the Humbo Project pays multiple dividends. ‘It’s provided people with clearly more sustainable livelihoods,’ David explains. ‘They’re getting a mix of things that can provide them with income. It’s cheap and effective and people have shown it’s worked well.’

Beatriz Maturana, founder of Architects for Peace.

Best of all, the Humbo Project creates an opportunity for Ethiopians to play a role in combating climate change. Not only will the reforestation create 338 000 tonnes worth of carbon credits that can be sold overseas, it’s also literally changing the weather.

‘Apparently, this process of revegetation that we’ve been involved in, it’s even had a regional climate effect,’ says David. ‘It actually affects the rainfall as you start getting trees and vegetation coming back on a sufficient scale.

Beatriz Maturana (MUD 2004), founder of Architects for Peace (arch–peace), is particularly passionate about the need to tailor projects. ‘Each country is a different reality,’ she asserts. ‘And within those there are different realities. Unless we understand that, we are not really able to assist.’ She uses an example of a project in East Timor where arch–peace are involved in designing shelters for a community of weavers. The weavers have requested the project be environmentally sustainable and achieved with local techniques, and the arch–peace team are mindful not to let the drawings get too technical. ‘These are mainly very rural people,’ Beatriz explains. ‘They don’t understand technical drawings in the same way that I would.’

Unfortunately, this careful tailoring of a project to match a client’s needs isn’t always possible. Beatriz was excited when she read that the Victorian Building Commission had volunteered to organise a building code for East Timor. It looked like a wonderful opportunity, but upon investigating the project she discovered problems. The building code was promoting the use of brick veneer construction, which isn’t suitable for East Timor—even if the materials could be imported, they are impractical in an area prone to earthquakes. Relatively minor details were also off–key, with the commission specifying that all emergency signs be written in English. Beatriz explains that while English is spoken in East Timor, it’s a secondary language and its use is therefore disrespectful and potentially dangerous. ‘We can assist to a degree, and we have the best of intentions,’ she says, ‘but we could do much better if we were a little bit less ignorant.’

‘... children in the program have been attending school much more regularly since participating ...’ Polly Banks

Exemplifying the benefits of the grassroots approach is a program called Deadly Blokes and Kids, which is based in the far–north Western Australian town of Kununurra (a place where ‘deadly’ is slang for ‘cool’). Polly Banks (MDS 2009) is employed by Save the Children to coordinate the program. ‘Our development strategy grew out of the vision of Peter Brandy,’ she explains. ‘Brandy is a highly respected Indigenous elder and a talented musician who performs throughout the East Kimberley Region and the Top End. In 2006 he proposed a project where Indigenous men, particularly those men deemed "at risk" or "hard to reach" could interact in a positive and safe way with their children.’

The core theme of the strategy is music, with workshops being run every week to allow male caregivers and their children to write songs and practise music with each other. It’s a novel idea and Polly feels that it’s achieved a great deal in the community. ‘Participants in the program have developed the confi dence to perform to large crowds of people, with audiences of more than 2000 people at some concerts,’ she says. ‘Several adult participants, who were unemployed when they joined Deadly Blokes and Kids, have now found stable work.

Similarly, the children in the program have been attending school much more regularly since participating in the program.’ The scheme is so successful it’s even spreading into the surrounding area. A group from Wyndham (a town 100 km from Kununurra) have requested that Deadly Blokes and Kids expand to their area and recently the Ngnowar Aerwah Aboriginal Corporation also expressed interest in their clients coming along to the Wyndham workshops.

The Deadly Kids of Kununurra being filmed for a profile on Sky News.

There’s no doubt that working in development can be challenging. It can be extremely difficult to enact even a small amount of change, recognition may be scant, and the financial and emotional stresses can be gruelling. Despite this, when I ask my interviewees why they do what they do, they all emphasise the rewards.

‘The biggest reward to development is forming the human connection,’ says Laura Spano. ‘Learning about different cultures, other ways of thinking, being and doing.’ Laura now works for the World Federation of United Nations Associations as the coordinator of the Responsibility to Protect program. Although it’s a lot of work and an unpaid position, she insists she couldn’t be happier. ‘Not too many people can say “I love going into work and I love running three volunteer programs that means I work ninety–plus hours a week”,’ she says. ‘But I do.’

Meanwhile, back at Melbourne University there are plans to once again expand development studies beyond its traditional disciplines. ‘We’ve got a development studies masters degree, but now we also have a stream in gender, and I think it would be nice to have a stream in health and engineering,’ says Andrew Dawson. He feels that these new disciplines would be a good fit with the program, and although he emphasises that this currently represents ‘his dream world’, there are already discussions about how to achieve it. ‘That’s the basic line,’ he says. ‘Taking it out to the rest of the University is what we want to do.’