Teorema de Erd˝ os-Szekeres en R d

The ideal advocated in development today is the bottom-up approach that ensures ‘empowering’ participation as a means of building capacities. As revealed, however, it is difficult to match theory with reality. Development interventions have moved considerably since the 1950s, and yet in some ways they have barely moved at all. Top-down measures, even if motivated by the best of intentions, continue to dictate how communities will be assisted and what will occur. Having few options available to them, poor communities can rarely refuse. A bottom-up approach is advocated as the better option. As ‘the ideal’, this approach appears to offer communities a voice in the development process, but even under this scenario people are left out. Development is not easy.

Traditionally, organisations working in development have preferred to downplay ‘failure’, particularly as most are answerable to donors. There has been a recent push by some, however, to increase the sharing of information, including where things have gone wrong. Recognising the difficulties in development, initiatives such as the ‘Admitting Failure’ website and the Institute of Brilliant Failures are advocating that, rather than downplay ‘failure’, it should be embraced and shared in order to increase learning and to avoid duplication of ineffective initiatives:269

The progression from ‚new idea‛ to ‚lasting change‛ is one of prototypes, failures, learning and the eventual scaling of innovations

268 _{Lane, ‚Non-governmental organisations and participatory development,‛ 187.}

269 _{Admitting Failure, http://www.admittingfailure.com/about/, Accessed 8 August 2012 and}

Institute of Brilliant Failure, http://www.briljantemislukkingen.nl/en/the-institute/, Accessed 24 August 2012.

that work. Yes, success is occasionally achieved on the first try, but more often, it requires a process of failing forward <*Successful innovations+ < required risk tolerance, a desire to innovate and transparency in sharing results.

By admitting our failures < *by+ sharing what doesn’t work, we collectively accelerate the process of finding what does.270

Not only is the concept behind the ‘Admitting Failure’ website offering a valuable platform for development workers to share experiences, but it is also a useful resource for locating examples of what didn’t work in development. One experience shared on the website is from the Promoting Education, emPowering Youth (PEPY) organisation working in Cambodia.271 _This example is pertinent as it reveals that even when an organisation follows the processes advocated as the ‘ideal’ in development, things can and do go wrong.

PEPY is an educational development NGO that has been working in Cambodia since 2005.272 _{The founder, Daniela Papi, uploaded the PEPY story} to the Admitting Failure website. PEPY has been working in partnership with local communities under the ‘Saw Aw Saw’ (SAS) program which aims to improve Cambodia’s government primary schools. As a part of this program, they have sought to establish long-term sustainability via a small business development component. The idea is for schools to generate additional income to facilitate their further development beyond what can be achieved through the support received from the government.273

An idea raised and implemented by one of PEPYs partner schools was the start up of a small mushroom growing business. Initially the business did well. Mushrooms were selling well because the school was the only local

270 _{Admitting Failure, http://www.admittingfailure.com/about/, Accessed 8 August 2012.} 271 _{Daniela Papi, ‚Failing: A story of forgetting our own lessons at PEPY,‛ Admitting Failure,}

http://www.admittingfailure.com/failure/daniela-papi/, Accessed 8 August 2012.

272 _{PEPY, ‚What is PEPY?‛ http://pepyride.org/about-us/what-is-pepy, Accessed 24 August}

2012.

supplier of mushrooms. After a time, however, the business had to cease because they were finding it difficult to source mushroom spores. The following year, two schools decided that rather than grow mushrooms they would grow and sell mushroom spores. The idea was that mushroom spores would generate a higher net profit, as well as provide affordable spores for families to grow mushrooms at home so that they could increase their nutrient intake. As Papi critiques, PEPY

< rushed into the program to try and get it started before the end of the school year. We didn’t do enough research, or support the

community with the tools and networks to do this themselves and we also didn’t have the in-house technical expertise to understand the threats to this agriculture program.274

As a result, mistakes were made. First, Papi notes that PEPY sent community representatives from the two schools to a training course on mushroom growing. Out of this, two errors were made. First, PEPY did not receive any financial support from the schools for the program but instead went against their own policy and paid for everything in full. Second, they did not send any of their own staff to the training. These two errors culminated in the ultimate ‘failing’ of the enterprise. After the training, PEPY purchased the equipment needed to grow spores. As it turned out, and something they would have discovered had staff attended the training, was that one of the key tools for growing spores is a sterilization device that is powered by electricity. PEPY ‚had sent two people who live in remote communities with no electricity to < training about how to use an electronic instrument, just because they had asked.‛275

The first lesson to come out of this experience is that not enough research had gone into the initial idea prior to implementation. PEPY had accepted the idea on face value rather than investigating it further before committing support. Consequently, they made their second error by providing the financial

274 _{Papi, ‚Failing: A story of forgetting our own lessons at PEPY.‛} 275 _{Papi, ‚Failing: A story of forgetting our own lessons at PEPY.‛}

support for the project without requiring any financial commitment from the community. As Papi notes, this went against PEPY’s usual policy. PEPY recognises that without financial investment from a community, there is little incentive or concern from the community if there is financial waste. ‚If *the communities] had been making decisions with their own funding, it is much more likely that the decisions would have been pushed by impact rather than interest‛.276 _{The schools have now returned to the idea of growing mushrooms} and are currently searching for a reliable source of mushroom spores.277

This example highlights that errors can be made by development workers even where there is a wealth of expertise on hand, gained over years of experience working alongside communities in the pursuit of development. What is encouraging, however, is that organisations are beginning to recognise the importance of sharing their experiences with others to reduce similar incidents in the future. By learning from the errors of others and, as a result, changing the way development initiatives are implemented, there is greater likelihood of positive change and the ultimate goal of ‘development’ reached.

Conclusion

Part One of this chapter has focused on the complexity of development. What is clear from the discussions that have taken place is that even though there has been a concerted global effort to improve the living conditions of the most vulnerable, progress is limited. The path to a developed state is fraught with challenges. Over many decades governmental and non-governmental agencies have engaged in development initiatives, yet, many of these initiatives have failed to reap the results sought. This is not to say that progress is not being made. The professionalisation of the development industry and its move towards learning from the errors of the past, encourage optimism for the

276 _{Papi, ‚Failing: A story of forgetting our own lessons at PEPY.‛} 277 _{Papi, ‚Failing: A story of forgetting our own lessons at PEPY.‛}

future. Having said this, development discourse is facing a new challenge. Today the development industry has to contend with a ‘new era’ in development – the ‘celebrity expert’ and the popularisation of the development cause, which are discussed in the following Part Two.

Part 2

‘Development is easy’: Popularised development

The concept and practices of development have moved significantly since the commencement of the development era. Today, an entire industry has been built around it. Escobar argues that it is the professionalisation of development that has allowed the concept to influence the world’s psyche. He contends that this has been achieved via a collection of criteria and practices that have ordered development knowledge and given it a ‘status of truth’.278 The number of institutions and organisations now involved in development – and the way development initiatives are structured and implemented – has seen the myth of development morph into an ‘industry’ in its own right. That industry now employs tens of thousands of people worldwide in the role of ‘doing’ development, or as de Haan notes:

The number of organizations can be ‘baffling,’ according to the Development Assistance Committee (DAC), the body that brings together dispersed aid statistics and has worked hard to coordinate donors. According to its count, there are no fewer than two hundred bilateral and multilateral organizations (including only the ‘official’ agencies) channelling official aid assistance (ODA), all with their own strategies and principles.279

The contention that development today is accepted as a natural certainty offers a rationale as to why there has been a rapid growth in volunteer tourism in recent years. Volunteer tourists, in a similar way to those involved in the development ‘industry’, are subscribing to the myth by seeking to

278 _{Escobar, Encountering Development, 45.}

279 _{Arjan de Haan, How the aid industry works: An introduction to international development}

‘make a difference’ to the lives of the people for whom the volunteer tourism projects have been established. I contend, however, that it is not only the professionalisation of development that has stimulated participation but also the ‘popularisation’ of development. Individuals have been influenced significantly by mass media and celebrities advocating the ‘cause’ of development, so much so that they subscribe to the myth of development via volunteer tourism. Part Two of this chapter examines this popularising influence and the contention that the popularisation of development has played a role in inspiring people to commit to the ‘cause’ of development via volunteer tourism participation. To do so, I address the rise of celebrity influence in today’s society, how mass media and social networking sites have legitimised celebrity opinion and enabled celebrities to be heard when they take a stand about a cause. Humanitarian causes have been adopted by several celebrities, and, increasingly, their simplified messages have infiltrated the public domain. So-called ‘celebrity diplomacy’ has ‘dumbed down’ development.