One Village Partners

As Ann and I walk about Kenema, we see numerous land-rovers with NGO (non-governmental organization) insignia on their doors.  What do these organizations do exactly?  How are they helping?  Are they making a bigger impact than Peace Corps?  After recently reading The Africans, by David Lamb, an account of the first generation of sub-Saharan African independent states (1960 – 1980), I know that it is easy to make mistakes in foreign aid to this part of the world.  Donate some rice to a starving country, the government sells it cheap, knocking the fair market price down so much that the indigenous rice farmer can’t make a profit.  Build a road, hospital, school without community buy-in and watch them crumble as soon as the NGO support leaves.  There are countless stories of millions of dollars of foreign aid siphoned off into European bank accounts by unscrupulous African leaders and villagers looking for the quick fix of Western money.  As we prepare to leave Sierra Leone in a few months, Ann and I are searching for legitimate endeavors that truly are helping Sierra Leone get back on its feet and stay there.

One day early in March an agricultural student at EP saw me reading outside our back door and came up to greet me.  His name was Karim and he wanted to be my “friend.”  This is a common request we hear on the street.  It usually means that telephone numbers are exchanged and financial support could be possible.  While chatting with him, Karim told me of an NGO, One Village Partners, that had helped his village recover from the destruction of the war.  It also helped him go to school.  When he told me that the headquarters of OVP was in Minneapolis, I was interested in learning more about it.

OVP planning session.

One Village Partners was started by Jeff Hall, a Peace Corps volunteer in eastern Sierra Leone from 1987-89.  In 2004, after the war was over, Jeff returned to visit the villages he served (Jokibu, Foindu, Pujehun) in the Kailahun District of eastern Sierra Leone. Jeff wanted to help the villages rebuild, so he turned to his church, the Plymouth Congregational Church in suburban Minneapolis, for assistance, and the Sierra Leone Plymouth Partnership was established in 2006.  In 2010 the partnership became the independent non-profit organization One Village Partners (OVP).  

Hand-washing station and latrine models.

We happened upon the OVP Land Rover one day and introduced ourselves to Chad, the program director and his wife, Jen, who is the country director.  We met Chad a week later to chat more about his NGO.  Chad grew up in Africa.  His parents raised three sons in the country Chad where they worked as missionaries.  Sent off to boarding school in Kenya for his secondary school education, Chad was convinced that he was never coming back to Africa once he went to college back in his parents’ home country of Canada.  After graduating with a degree in English literature, he found himself teaching English as a Second Language in South Korea.  There, he met fellow ESL teacher Jen, and together they embarked on a young career of world-wide travel and work.  After another stint of ESL in Kenya, they realized that work in community development was what inspired them the most.  So, for over five years now they have been managing community development projects in sub-Saharan Africa, first in Ghana and since 2013 in Sierra Leone working for OVP, an organization dedicated to thoughtful, sustainable community development with maximal community involvement and minimal donor dependence.

  

Villagers voting on action list.

Chad explained the guiding metaphor that he uses to help village members understand OVP’s assistance.  OVP provides the ‘stone’ with which the community can sharpen its tools for work.  Just as a sharp machete can clear a field for planting faster than a dull one, OVP can help improve the overall efficiency of work in the community.  Once a village of appropriate size and location is identified, OVP will train about a dozen volunteers from the community, young and old, men and women, skilled and unskilled, to compile a vision action list which the community prioritizes by voting. The OVP website gives a sample of action list items: clean water sources, basic sanitation, improved hygiene and health practices, access to primary and secondary education or a library, improved agricultural practices, starting a new business, improving food processing, construction of needed community buildings. OVP provides workshops, training, guidance, and some materials, but the villagers play the central role in prioritizing, planning, providing materials and labor for each project and monitoring afterwards.  In short it seeks to serve only as a catalyst, not a driving force, for community development. 

NOW women with workbooks.

In addition to community action, OVP has introduced a new program called Nurturing Opportunities for Women (NOW).  Not just a micro-loan clearinghouse of which there are already plenty in existence, this program focuses on helping women make decisions on how to run their businesses, from numeracy education to figuring expenses on loans, to day-to-day operations.  Chad said that one unforeseen consequence of this program is that women are talking to their husbands in a different way.  He reported that a village chief told him that he found it necessary to resolve fewer marital disputes once NOW had come to his village.

OVP’s impact has expanded from 3 to 13 villages and hopes to increase its number to 50 by 2020.  It is a tremendous commitment and Chad knows it will involve major grant approval, something that is more feasible now that OVP has established a solid record of over its ten years of existence.  Chad and Jen plan to stay with OVP at least until 2019 as they both played instrumental roles in developing the long-range planning document.  Jen recently wrote a blog entitled “Traditional vs Community-Led Development.”  Here is a paragraph that I think nicely sums up the unique approach that One Village Partners has taken toward community development.

“This is how OVP works. This is why we participate in Community-Led Development (CLD); 'the process of working together to achieve locally owned visions and goals… focusing not on projects but on systemic change.' To have truly sustainable change, OVP and other organizations cannot just simply construct a water well, or hand out money, food or goods. We must build deep long-lasting skills. To do this successfully, we must listen to the community, we must let the communities lead and truly participate in every step of development so they can fullfil their own self-defined goals.  It is not easy and it takes a lot of time and work. But we believe it is essential to create sustainable change.”

You can find out more about One Village Partners at onevillagepartners.org.  Jen’s entire article can be found in the blog section. All photos in this blog were generously supplied by Chad.

Note to readers.  Ann and I will be taking a break at the beach again, Bureh this time.  Look for the next blog posting the first week of May.