Sometimes having a lot of money can actually be a curse. Less money means you have to think more, and more strategically, about how you're going to spend it. When you have a big pot of cash, every idea seems like a good idea and it's easy not to take the time to prioritize or consider how a project is really within your [organization's] purview and principles.
In addition to less money forcing you to be more strategic and thoughtful about how to spend, I think it also forces you to be more creative. We don't always take the opportunity to think creatively when we have a lot of money to spend because we just don't have to. You don't have to think outside the box when you can afford to stay inside the box. "You don't have to move outside the box if you can afford the rent inside." Things can be missed this way.
The OTI Afghanistan program is significantly different from OTI programs in the rest of the world in many ways. But one of the differences, which I also find problematic, is the enormous amount of money that's flown through the program. Especially in the south (where I work), the message coming from leadership in the recent past has been to burn money fast (leadership who are no longer in place, partly for this reason). Typically, OTI works on relatively small budgets, and I think the resources in Afghanistan have contributed to OTI losing some of its comparative advantage and strategic edge. We've just been doing anything and everything because we've had the money to do it, rather than taking the time to think about strategic yeast and change agents and being catalysts for peace. I think we look a lot more like "big AID" than we're supposed to.
OTI is supposed to be doing innovative and creative projects. And while there's no need to constantly re-inventing the wheel, and we should be learning from what works - I've so far seen very few projects that seem to be really exciting or innovative. Lots of school refurbishments, canal reconstructions, infrastructure projects. Building things. It's not that we should only do things that are sensational - sometimes a well might be the exact thing that's needed to address instability in an area. But I'd like to see us thinking outside the box a bit more. There's a lot more we can do with our money besides build things. I came to Afghanistan because I want to think creatively and strategically about how to build peace here, not to manage drainage ditch-cleaning projects. Fortunately, there is a big push to slow down, change direction, and get back to our OTI "roots" (partly because the money isn't flowing quite as freely from Congress as it was a year ago).
Question to think about then: What is the opportunity in having vast resources?
Well, it may not force you to think strategically and creatively, but it doesn't prohibit you from doing so. And if you come up with an amazing idea that is also expensive, you can afford it! You can also operate in more places. You don't have to do huge projects - you can do small, strategic, creative projects in more areas. Opportunity for breadth. You can feel free to take more risks that might pay off. If you only have $5k, you might not want to use it on the creative but risky idea. But if you have $15k, you'd probably be more willing to give it a go and less worried about failure.
I have a couple of questions/ideas that I don't think are new to you or OTI, but that keep coming up to me both as I read your blog and as I reflect on my future role as a teacher:
ReplyDelete1. Re: "In addition to less money forcing you to be more strategic and thoughtful about how to spend, I think it also forces you to be more creative." <-- I think this is true for you, but not for everyone. Other responses to having little money may include desperation or resignation to having fewer choices. In order for people to go to the trouble of getting creative with few financial resources, they need to have hope or belief in their power to significantly and positively change their situation. This hope is a privilege for those of us who have experienced this power without a great deal of struggle. One good question might be: How and for what purpose(s) should/can we extend this hope to people who have not experienced it?
2. Re: "What is the opportunity in having vast resources?" Here, I question (I think, as you do) what having "vast resources" means, apart from having lots of money. Money buys a lot, but what other resources can/should be maximized in order to have the greatest positive effect? Ruby Payne (PhD), wrote a book called A Framework for Understanding Poverty (1996) in which she identifies other kinds of resources an individual might have besides the financial: mental, emotional, physical, support systems, and knowledge of hidden rules (of a group of people or greater society). This document explains them: http://homepages.wmich.edu/~ljohnson/Payne.pdf
I am wondering what parallel or analogous resources you see in your work in Afghanistan.
As I read your blog, I can't help but remember the observation and the similar frustrations I had working for ABC, a USAID contractor. As I got to know many Project Managers (my role was to provide support in their budget tracking and management), what I saw was that these brilliant, well-educated, good hearted, creative people were working 50 plus hours a week, exhausting all their energy and knowledge (needless to mention all their billable hours) on burning up the obligated budgets. And at the end of the day, when were the celebrations? When they won projects in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the money flows through... I guess this is sort of an intra-organizational resource curse? We write about underdeveloped countries facing resource curse and yet the very same people who identify the the problem are behaving equally when given too much.
ReplyDeleteSa-Eun alluded to this, but I want to draw it out a bit more. In development we talk about this thing called the resource curse. Basically natural resources provide a stream of revenue that allows the government to operate without the burden of collecting taxes. This thereby divorces government action from accountability to the public. Even in highly democratic countries, a steady stream of non-tax revenue breeds corruption. Something very similar happens when that natural resource based revenue is replaced with direct budgetary support through aid. One study of corruption in Kenya found that the amount of money pilfered from government coffers in (going from memory so I could be wrong) 2007 was equivalent to the amount of direct budgetary support provided in aid. Direct budgetary support is highly fungible, which is great if you have a highly trustworthy government to give it to, but absolutely disastrous if the nation doesn't have a very strong legal system and civil society to how it accountable. So to the question of "what is the opportunity in having vast resources?" time and a again the answer has been: a good chance to steal them. Big money begets big corruption.
ReplyDeleteThis is a lesson that the development/aid community has already learned many times over. I mean, it was taught in our introductory development class, it's not a mystery. But the same mistakes are made time and again. Part of the problem is political. We want to look like we're going something, so we have to spend a lot of money. Or money is used as a stand-in for time. As though doing all the projects you can think of in 10 years is the equivalent of doing just the best ones over 50.
But I think the problem has more to do with a historical narrative that leaves out some very key details. Our aid system grew out of the Bretton Woods conference at the end of WWII (1944) and large scale projects like the Marshall Plan. The thing we don't seem to grasp is that Western Europe was not a set developing countries with weak governments, but very strong democratic states that had been ravaged by war. Using the Marshall Plan as a road map isn't going to help most developing countries because they lack several of the other facets that made the plan a success. Conversely, taking a "big push" approach to development, and especially governance work and peace building, is a perfect recipe for failure. The money that goes in will undermine strategic efforts to promote peace and security.
I believe this think tank has a pretty good handle on the issue:
ReplyDeletehttp://tinyurl.com/yhu4of7