Happy Birthday - SIDT!

11 June 2007

Twenty-five years ago, 6 May 1982, the Solomon Islands Development Trust began its reachout programs to the people of this nation. This week, 12-14 June 2007, its long term director, its founder and many of its workers will celebrate these 25 years of service. Old Staff members, although some many years retired, will return from their villages and provinces not only to celebrate SIDT's remarkable achievement, not only to renew old acquaintances but to reflect what made this small group of people tick. What was it about this tiny organization that kept it going in hard times as well as in good?

From the very beginning, SIDT was blessed by the presence of a strong Board of Directors, men and women, all Solomon Islanders, who were determined to make this newly founded NGO work and work well. Board members were not selected by name but the organization they worked for--NPF, SICA, Government, etc--sent their best representatives for monthly meetings. Reuben Moli, Malaita's recent Premier, for instance, was SIDT's first Board Chairman and held that position for many years.

A second most important strengthening pillar was the Board's determination that all donor funding would be carefully noted and spent exactly what it had been sent for. Yearly, then, SIDT's Board of Governors religiously ordered that an Annual Audit, done by an outside firm, would be conducted on the newly created organization. And so it was! For the following 24 years, each year, an external audit of SIDT's financial records was kept. To this day, each and every audit that has been accomplished remain part of this NGOs record base.

But as important as these two pillars are for any organization to grow and prosper, more, much more is needed. The coming together of two different personalities--Abraham Baeanisia, first director and John Roughan, advisor--brought a unique chemistry to the newly born. It's hard to over emphasize this special relationship since both individuals complemented the other in so many ways. Where Abraham was truly a village person, a born and bred Langa Langa, John's New York City urban roots was unmistakable as well. Abraham know everyone, in and out of government while John's connection with the Church, overseas groups and international connections proved to be a perfect match.

Even these strengths--dynamic Board members, yearly financial audits and a serious professional working admin team--would have never been enough to pull SIDT through 25 years of development work. What other things helped make this NGO tick for so many years?

Of course any NGO, whether from overseas or locally based, needs constantly to learn from its own workers but especially the people for whom it says it is working for. For instance, in the early 1980s SIDT's basic work pattern was to reach out to village people. What it saw there was the need for villagers to understand more deeply, be aware of and reply to the shifting meaning of development. Early on most villagers thought that all that was needed was money, lots of it, to accomplish their development goals. SIDT's approach emphasized the absolute need for community strength, organization skills and dynamic leadership to make any money received work well for the whole village and not just for the few.

But that development approach is not everyone's cup of tea! Simply visiting village groups and sharing this 'story' wasn't enough. During the late 1980s the organization began publishing a quarterly magazine, LINK; then it branched out into drama, having a men's touring theatre group soon followed by a women's theatre group. Still even with these added new ways of getting the development word out--village level workshops, LINK magazine, touring theatre teams--more was needed. It targeted governments of the day. Since 1989 it has conducted 7 separate Report Cards in which the people of the nation marked different governments how well or poorly it was doing in servicing their own people.

In the early 1990s, then, SIDT changed its tactics. Villagers themselves during this time taught SIDT as well. People's deeply seated feelings that, although they agreed that organizational understanding, awareness of local strong leadership and community empowerment was needed, they also made it quite clear that modest amounts of money were also vital to their progress. That is when SIDT pulled its touring teams off village visits and asked its workers to remain in their own districts demonstrating the four vital areas of The Good Life: sleeping under treated mosquito nets nightly, building a family toilet, planting a supsup garden and upgrading the family kitchen.

Looking back over the past twenty-five years history of SIDT is instructive. No matter what experts say, keeping alive a complex, multi-layered and dynamic institution is never a case of one or two things. Of course outside help in the form of dedicated people is essential. Then a proper chemistry among its workers is critical. Couple these elements with a vision/dream to make things better for the least of our people becomes achievable. And that is what SIDT has tried to do: "strengthen the quality of village living". These past years, then, have become the first chapter of a long history to come.

J. Roughan
11 June 2007
Honiara

Barbeque smoke says it all!

5 March 2007

The smell of barbequed smoke in the wind announces to one and all that some good things are on the way. The sweet-smelling smoke sends a welcome signal to an anxious and hungry people that sausages, chicken wings, tuna steaks, etc are about ready. This is one way of describing where the Grand Coalitionfor Change Government finds itself at present.

People across the nation have been smelling the political barbequed meat--strengthening the quality of village life, rural development and the 'bottom up approach' for the past nine months and they hungrily await theirturn to finally taste this meal.

In reality, however, villagers have been promised this barbequed meal since 1978. It took 20 years of frustrated waiting but in 1998, they had had enough. After all wasn't this their country! Didn't they own more than 95% of its land, trees, rivers, reefs and fishing areas? More than 84% of them made up the overwhelming majority of the population! And still they hadn't once tasted the barbeque meal in almost thirty years! Their patience snapped and the nation witnessed five years of Social Unrest.

But I think this time things have really changed. Solomon Islanders now smell the odor of the barbeque meat, it's become stronger and stronger since May last year when the new government took charge of the cooking. In past years governments of the day always told villagers to wait. The meat wasn't cooked well enough! Even the GCC government was forced to delay its work until Parliament recently gave the green light to the 2007 Budget. Now,
finally, the budget has been passed.

Fortunately, the government has not been quietly sitting by waiting for the meal to be properly cooked. Last week, for instance, its servants--Cabinet Ministers and their Permanent Secretaries--have been learning how to be better servants, to carefully cook the barbeque, to prepare a meal well, etc. The Commonwealth Foundation working out of its London office sent a
team of top chefs to the Solomons to conduct a three-day servants workshop to strengthen our own local servants and to teach them to cook better.

The workshop was more about the quality of Parliamentarians' and Permanent Secretaries' work ethic and much less about marketing and packaging. It stressed programs, services and products than advertising and public relations. In other words even if the government can boast of an attractive logo or catchy tagline--Bottom Up Approach--the target audience, the village
and the villager, must not be allowed to once again experience all sizzle and no steak. If this happens, it won't take long for our people to see only smoke and realize there's no meat on the grill!

But the exercise of touching the basic lives of village people in practical ways is the responsibility of all Solomon Islanders. Of course the Chief Cooks (MPs) and their senior waiters (PSs) are only the first in a long lineof other workers, not all on the government payroll.

That's why the GCC Government recognizes Church groups with their unequalled village-based structures, the NGO sector with its outreach commitment and villagers themselves as not only necessary but important lines of workers bringing the barbequed meal to those sitting furthest fromthe kitchen.

For too long village people have had to suffer the pain of sitting at the head table and then watching others wolf down the barbeque meal that had really been cooked for them. At long last, we now have a chance to change this event and get the owners of the nation sitting down at the head tableand enjoying the barbeque at long last..

J. Roughan
5 March 2007
Honiara

Village Life Still Counts!

19 February 2007

A village person's world view is fundamentally different from the urban person's understanding of how the world works. And the villager's world view has been created in large part by actually living on top of one's resource base. We in town, on the other hand, for the most part try to live on top of another resource base--money. That's why our most important 'garden' is either Westpac, ANZ or NBSI. For it is from this 'garden' that we draw our daily sustenance of food, shelter, power, drink, etc. The ATM, for instance, is our favorite 'garden tool' and in some ways our only tool.

Villagers, on the other hand, draw their daily food sustenance, water, shelter, recreation, etc. from a resource base which they actually own and for the most part, control. They live their lives atop of their own resource base. We in Honiara need to feed the ATM with our bi-weekly cheques from our work patterns before we are able to withdraw money out of the system. Villagers--making up more than 84% of Solomons people--radically differ from their urban cousin in their view of how the world works and is the basic reason why much rural development over the past 30 years hasn't worked as well as it should have.

Much rural development has been driven by urban people, many from overseas but not a few of our own leaders, whose agenda, consciously or unconsciously, is to convert the villager to become pale imitations of themselves. Would this fact be at the bottom of villagers fierce reluctance and unwillingness to part with their most precious resource, their land?

Last Saturday's very public signing in Auki of the Aluta Basin landowners giving permission for land surveys to begin for an oil palm plantation will be watched with great interest by Malaita people and the rest of the islanders as well. I am convinced that the present work--identifying the real landowners, seeking their permission for the survey process to begin and bringing them on board in such a public way, as important as it is, will be the easy part. Without a constant, continuous and consistent awareness and education reachout to the villagers of that area, then the project is apt to flounder. As said above, the village person's world view on the meaning of land is quite different from the modern world's understanding of it.

Yes, village and urban lives have been growing closer over the years. But not as quickly as had been predicted by the experts for years now. When I first came ashore in Honiara in 1958, the town boasted 2,300 people, about the same number of those who currently sell vegetables, fruit, fish, etc. on a busy Saturday morning at Central Market. Over the past fifty years, then, even though Honiara and the provincial towns have seen dramatic increases in population, the percentage of people opting for the urban life has been modest.

The 1976 Census, for instance, showed the Solomons with a 12% urban population. Now more than 30 years later, the urban population still remains modestly low, no more than 16%. In other words, the Solomons urban population has no doubt grown but at a much lower rate than had been predicted in the mid 1970s. Many thought that Solomons people would be abandoning village life and heading for the lights and delights of urban life. Honiara alone would be attracting many more thousands than it actually has. Why hasn't this urban drift prediction--true for many developing countries worldwide--come to pass in our own country?

Few will argue that village life is the easier one compared to town dwelling. Most Honiara citizens know quite well that village living is physically demanding and time consuming for life's simplest of tasks. A cup of instant coffee, for example, can easily take 25 minutes or longer to collect fire wood, bring in water, cook and finally serve. Yet, each December Honiara noticeably thins out when so many of us head for our home village knowing full well that most have no running water, few boast of toilet or shower facilities and the typical meal is bland.

Yet, as ship owners delightfully tell you, their ships departing Honiara in the early weeks of December are filled to overflowing. Police are at full alert monitoring these ships from actually sinking at the wharfs with so many passengers in full flight from town returning to village life.

What is it then that continues to attract so many of us back to village life even if only for a few short weeks? It certainly can't be the ease of travel! Spending 12, 18 and 24 hours or more on a crowded slow ship with few amenities puts off the bravest of travelers. The ticket cost to travel on these 'cattle barges' goes up yearly, yet still they leave town and head for their village.

Some say that returning to village life, even for a short period, is a way of recharging their internal batteries for the rest of the year of town living. I would go a step further! Returning to village life is a re-confirmation of the Melanesian world view: they do not own the land but the land owns them!

J. Roughan
19 February 2007
Honiara