Making BUA work!

2 July 2007

The present government is wedded to making the Bottom Up Approach . . . BUA work! But the village, the very place where many different groups of people live and work, all are waiting for the BUA to root and quickly so. Men and women, young/old, educated/less so, business minded/gardeners, healthy/sick, well off/poor, informed/uninformed, etc. etc. all are waiting to see things happen and quickly so.

To make rapid and deep change at the same time among all these different groups will take much work, abundant resources and trained personnel. For the past 28 years, the Solomons Ship of State has been sailing in the opposite direction. Now all of a sudden, the focus is off the BTO, the Big Time Operation, as the best if not the only road to the better life for the majority of our citizens. Of course BTOs like GPPOL, Gold Ridge, Taiyo, etc. are national assets but these have never been at the centre of the typical villager's life.

Among all these different groups which group/groups, then, hold out the best and quickest return on the government's investment of time, energy and resources. Which group is the key to all the others? In other words, is there is one type of village person, if targeted immediately and forcefully, would translate to have a major spin-off effect on all the others?

During the early days of BUA, government's funds and needed personnel are limited to turn villagers lives around for the majority of people. If, for instance, the government would focus--money, personnel, resources--on the poorly educated young people group, then those very same resources could not at the same time be spread out to other villages groups. But the government wants to see an almost immediate positive response across the board.

My choice for that key group is village women. They already have a track record and are a commanding presence in any village life. Not only did they feed thousands during the Social Unrest period--1998-2003--they literally protected the smallest, weakest and most vulnerable of village society. Even with severe limitations, they jump started the national economy from below zero in 2002 to over 5% in 2003!

With little or no assistance from outside forces they marshaled their small resource base to keep village life from collapsing and fall into chaos. During those 'bad old days' when central authority structures--police, justice system, prisons, treasury--were experiencing free fall, the backbone of village society--the woman--kept a weakened society alive.

Even outside groups are now appreciating the value of village women. Last week, for instance, the United States Women of Courage award was presented to one of our own women in recognition for her work during our trying years of the Social Unrest period. Ms Apollonia Talo of Guale had worked for many years not only as a wife and mother but had seen it as her duty to work closely with the Guadalcanal Council of Women and later on Peace and Reconciliation Committee.

How positively village women's lives are raised up should be the yardstick measuring the worth of government's 'Bottom Up Approach'. Once the BUA is going for a few years we can measure its success when the typical village woman can be assured of quality education for her little ones. When sickness strikes, she can be certain that the local clinic carries the correct medicines with a trained nurse on duty. Modest amounts of money for personal use will be there for her because her garden produce will fetch that money from the thriving local market.

BUA is certainly the way to go. No new government could possibly reverse what is seen across the board what should have been happening since 1978. But it is important that a major effort to get it started indeed happens as quickly as possible. We can not allow those who over the past 28 years have been sailing the Ship of State towards the reef to ever return again.

J. Roughan
2 July 2007
Honiara