The Foreign Service Journal, January 2004

person in the ministry is personally committed to the initiative. Having a backer like that is good news if it is necessary to push the bureaucracy along, but if that person leaves, you may have no constituency for what is to be done — especially if the project involves change. In fact, change — even for the better — is often perceived as a threat to the status quo and therefore to the position of the special interests already operating there. In our case, for example, we argued that a non- formal education project didn’t replace conventional schools but simply supplemented them. That rationale was effective for a while, but then four things happened to undermine our position. The power- ful governmental official who had grown up in the region and had suc- cessfully fought for the project was replaced for political reasons. Next, the project was placed directly under the control of the new minister of education, who was also the head of the teachers’ union. She had always seen the project as a threat to union power because our teachers were unpaid paraprofessionals we had recruited from the local community and trained. Then an economic cri- sis meant that the 150 Dominican Education Ministry project staff were not paid for six months. The coup de grace, however, was our very success. As measured by tests, our children were learning more and faster than the students in the conventional schools with trained, licensed teachers. Here we were, teaching in thatched structures paid for and built by the community, staffed by unpaid volunteers, and transmitting lessons via the radio at about 20 percent of the cost of a for- mal school setting. Due to the trans- parency of our research, people were bound to ask what our success said about the efficiency and cost of Dominican schools. So the question arose, who was supplementing whom? The Minis- try of Education, no matter how much we extolled their efforts and emphasized the importance of for- mal schools, perceived us as under- mining their programs because they were never really committed to non- formal education anyway. They wanted more traditional schools and more teachers even though hun- dreds of thousands of youngsters would go unserved. (Under even the most favorable economic projec- tions for the country there was not enough money for conventional school programs to meet the current or future demand.) The situation soon resembled “Roshamon,” with everyone involved seeing the project differently. For the international cosponsor of the project, the project was an educa- tional experiment to see if numeracy and literacy skills could be taught via radio. The Ministry of Education saw it as a temporary, stopgap pro- gram to help unserved people. We, the three expat project staff, were trying to build an institution to serve the many hundreds of thousands of Dominican kids without access to schools. And for the subcontractor for whom we worked as direct hires, the project was simply a wonderful chance to make money. In the resulting collision of interests, the clients came last. Ultimately, you can’t build an institu- tion unless everyone shares a com- mon vision — and when they don’t, the vested interests opposing change almost always win, unless the interna- tional agency has the courage of its convictions and a heavy hammer to use on the client. And because most aid agencies lack the political will even to engage in the conflict — as many agency officials say, “we want to make friends, not enemies” — the people who would have been served lose. Staff Training and Finance A project that is an innovative experiment does not normally require heavy staffing because the focus of the effort is on identifying research results along specific dimensions. But if you are building an institution, creating a human infrastructure for the future, you need to train people intensively in all phases of the work so they can keep going after the foreign staff have left, the money has been spent, and the project is over. Everyone on the staff, down to the porter and clean- ing lady, needs to understand what the project is about, why it is impor- tant, and how it will serve the people of the country. Furthermore, they need to learn how to participate in decision-making — a new experi- ence for many, particularly in tradi- tionally authoritarian, hierarchical societies. Understanding and faith are the cornerstones of institution- building. This also means that you have to change the time period of the project and allow more time for the same amount of work to be produced. (Five years, I think, is a lot better than three.) I am always amused that no matter how much Washington bureaucrats extol the virtues of for- eign staff participation, we will read- 60 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 4 The best way to target assistance is to talk to the people who will be affected by what’s done.