As part of the UnitingWorld Development Education School Partnership Program, participating schools may elect to participate in a visit to their overseas partner community. These visits are not practical, service based visits as is often the case, but rather focus on learning from the partner community and out of this providing effective support through a deeper understanding and relationship.

Context:

Many church and school communities want to connect with communities and cultures overseas and most are motivated to address situations of poverty with the desire to be part of the solution. This in itself is a great motivation, and to be embraced and encouraged.

However there are certain ‘default’ activities that tend to be embraced in the attempt to realise this desire. These are based around our need for individual, practical, tangible and physical responses. Responses we can identify, photograph, report and package as our contribution.

While this is not a definitive analysis, here are some insights into the implications of the most common of these default responses:

1. Work parties that go into a community to build or repair a building, or the like. Providing a building doesn’t guarantee a service! When we go and do the work we are most likely taking employment off local building professionals and labourers and this clearly does not help alleviate poverty. Also the buildings tend to reflect an Australian style rather than the local and this can make repairs difficult and even render the building dysfunctional (i.e. enclosed buildings in tropical climates!).

2. Sending a crate of resources that we identify as worth sending. Resources that we value and find useful may not offer the same usefulness within a different cultural context. Also, these ‘resources’ are often our second-hand cast-offs and deemed out of date and less than useful in our context yet we naturally assume that it would be appreciated by those in a context experiencing poverty.  For example, textbooks which are out of date in Australia are also out of date in another culture and won’t enhance the quality of education; or, overhead projectors are a valuable resource for disseminating information in our context (though becoming a little dated now I concede), but useless in contexts where electricity is not reliable etc.

3. Setting up a child sponsorship program. To put simply, poverty is generally the outplaying of inequality where some have access to essential services and resources while others do not. Literal one to one child sponsorship[1] programs can reinforce this situation where some children are chosen for sponsorship and therefore may, while receiving the sponsorship, gain better access to resources and services while others do not. There are also considerations as to who is chosen, how they are chosen, how the program is monitored and managed, how the money is allocated and spent etc. When the sponsorship ends and the actual causes of the poverty or not challenged the situation is ultimately unchanged!

4. Sending shoe boxes containing trinkets for children. Often these boxes contain toys and trinkets that are relevant in our own culture but are often irrelevant and inappropriate in another culture. The idea is founded on the presumption that all cultures value individual identification and ownership as we do, whereas many of the recipient cultures are actually communal in nature and this is thus not the case. For many cultures gift giving is not the main method of celebrating a religious festival such as Christmas. Lastly, there is rarely a rubbish collection service available to clear away the mess of packaging rubbish that comes along with the boxes, resulting in a detrimental environmental impact as well.

These are all very common responses however they originate with us and to be honest ultimately do more to meet our need to feel like we are making a difference, than actually making any real difference to those we genuinely seek to support. Further, they are founded on an assumption that we know best how to address the poverty experienced by other people in another culture simply because we have access to a good standard of living and quality of education within our own cultural context.

Sadly these activities at best may go some way to impact the symptoms of poverty for some but do nothing about the underlying causes of poverty and ultimately do not result in change. At worst, they can actually result in reinforcing the situation or even in creating new or bigger issues!

Development Education Exposure Visit (DEEV):

The idea behind a DEEV is to recognise that we are not the experts within another culture and that one-size-fits-all approaches to addressing poverty are rarely effective. We go as learners, to genuinely meet with people living in the local community and to learn about their lives; to recognise situations of poverty or disadvantage and to look for the underlying causes. We also have the opportunity to begin to identify the difference between poverty and differences in other cultural approaches to living. When we start to recognise this we start to see the value and wealth in these differences and how our lives can be changed and enriched by sharing time with our partner communities.

We also embrace this as an opportunity to recognise local strength and capacity in addressing situations of poverty and to look to see what local communities are already doing or would seek to do if they were given the opportunity. These projects may not be what we would have identified as the most important from our perspective; then again we are not living in the situation full time!

The DEEV experience is founded on an ’Act, Reflect, Act’ personal growth cycle where the participants act by taking part in the experience; through active participation in debriefing reflect on their experiences and what they have learned and then act in response in such a way as to best support their partners.

It is very important to recongnise also that a DEEV is only 1 aspect of a larger, long-term partnership. It is not the main focus of the connection.

The Expected Outcome

DEEV’s are conducted to Partner countries and communities where UnitingWorld is supporting these partners in bringing about change through Development projects. In the vast majority of cases, these projects are initiated by the Partner Church / community to address local issues that they are experiencing and have identified as a priority. At times this may involve the support of a volunteer or the consultation with a technical expert however the projects are implemented by the partners and their communities.

Out of a DEEV experience, the school has the opportunity to be part of effective solutions by supporting these projects financially. Having a better understanding of the community and culture also gives the school a solid foundation for advocating for their partners within their community to increase the support of the partner and projects and thus the impact of the partnership. It also gives a better understanding of how to pray for their partner community and allows the partner community to understand the school community better as well and how best pray for them.

As Opposed to Tourism

I have recently returned from a trip to Bali to visit our projects there and to investigate what a DEEV to Bali would look like. As part of this trip I had the opportunity to explore the tourist aspects of Bali, an experience that has helped me to be able to clarify the differences between a DEEV and general  tourism.

While this is perhaps a generalisation, from my observation it is fair to say that in Bali, many of the tourists were about being tourists. They were about having a good time themselves in the Bali location. The predominant attitude that I witnessed was that the local culture was about catering to the tourist and the tourist was about being catered to by the local culture, and economically this works. Largely, the tourist retained and portrayed their own cultural identity within the Bali context. Therefore, for example, many wore bikinis and Bintang singlets anywhere and everywhere regardless of the fact that such dress is largely inappropriate within the Balinese culture. It is also a short term event and it is mostly about the experience itself. I’m not saying that all this is negative, this is not the place to explore to benefits and downfalls of cross-cultural tourism, it is merely an observation of the reality of this tourist paradigm and how this differs from a DEEV.

A DEEV is very different to this as the aim of the trip is to participate in, experience, learn from and value another culture and way of life different to their own; to recognise and experience in some small way the difficulties and challenges that people in this context face on a daily basis and to see the most effective, appropriate and helpful ways of supporting projects that can bring about real change. It is part of a much bigger whole, a long term partnership and relationship between people and cultures, long-term and ongoing.

Most tourists when they return from a trip will talk about themselves and their experience while away. Through the ‘Act, Reflect, Act’ cycle we have seen that most participants who return from a DEEV or similar experience talk about the people that they meet and what they learned from the different approach to life. They talk also about how they themselves have been impacted and changed by the experience and how they intend to actively and practically respond to what they have seen and experienced in ways that they have learned are effective and beneficial in the local context and not centred on their own satisfaction.

For more information on the UnitingWorld Development Education Schools Partnership Program, contact Bronwyn Fraser Development Education Officer UnitingWorld.

[1] Literal Child Sponsorship is where the money is designated and directed to the assistance of a specific child. This is as opposed to established child sponsored community development programs where the child sponsorship is merely a marketing approach to fund community development projects. While this is a better approach it still has significant considerations.