Tuesday, July 8, 2008

words misunderstood

This has been something that has been on my mind for sometime now. Flashy words. Words that sound very beautiful, sound correct but are used so often I think their meaning gets lost.
I've got a list going. When i feel its complete I will share it. But some of the words that would be included would be empowerment, support, capacity, ownership, sustainability..... etc!

I think I touched on ownership in my last blog when it comes to ownership of ideas. But I had a wonderful talk with a man who is from malawi, studying in the UK and was doing research at WESM for 6 weeks. And we were talking about participatory. A point he brought up was that these new approaches were simply cover-ups of past mistakes and they sound better. He was actually usuing some PRA (Participatory Rural Approach)activities in his research and said that we can call is participatory but at the end of the day I have set the agenda. He was doing research on if eco/san technology actually effects water quality. He said, I am going in there looking for certain information and im not just going to ask whats important to the villagers because they will start talking of their goats, and thats not what I need to hear about. But I still use PRA. So participatory is participatory?

I started to think of these 'words misunderstood' when I started to hear people at my work use them in ways different from how I feel they should be talked about. One day i was sitting helping a co-worker write a project proposal and there were things in it that I knew he did not understand the importance of or had little intention of doing. Such as monitoring and evaluation, involvement of various stakeholders, communicating with other NGO's, etc.
But I understood why he was doing it. These flash words are words he knows needs to go into a project proposal to get funding because it is what donors want to hear. So people working in NGO's want to keep their jobs and in order to do this they need to be able to dance to the tune of donors and they need to know how to incorporate these flash words into their day to day language.

And a partner is suppose to support and build the capacity of WESM... I am finding myself asking if they understand what it means to support someone and build their capacity. (and yes i am also questioning if I even understand it! I think I do... but maybe thats the problem! :p)

I think there is room for people to teach the meanings of some of these words. To help people feel these words in their hearts. Not just hear them coming from the other side of the table.

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