It was just over a month ago that I sat in Dr. Lisa Gilman’s office (director of the folklore program at University of Oregon) talking with her about the complexities of researching development aid programs. I had turned in a paper that looked at how non-profit organizations use traditional craft making as a tool for empowering women in impoverished areas and I was eager to hear her thoughts on it.

Dr. Gilman was happy to see I’d taken a critical approach in my research of these programs. While there is much to celebrate in people going out and helping other people, there is also the potential for many pitfalls along the way. And if these pitfalls aren’t carefully avoided, the people, who only meant to help, may inadvertently recreate the very cycles of powerlessness that they expected to stamp out.

At this juncture of my graduate studies, being critical was an important thing. But I sort of missed my rose colored glasses.

My happy faith in the ability of non-profit organizations to go out and change the world was a big part of my decision to enter the Communication and Society master’s program. I’d always been interested in intercultural and international studies, but after a year spent in Southeast Asia with Rotary International I was now interested in adding development communication to the mix. In my head I saw the road to my master’s thesis paved with uplifting research on the good work being done out in the world.

But as I sat in Dr. Gilman’s office I realized how far away three terms of school had taken me from that smooth road. I questioned and criticized everything. Sure, I’d find that a particular non-profit model solved problem A, but in solving problem A it created problem B. And maybe some Western organization could go in and take charge of some situation, but didn’t that just recreate the power hierarchy that kept that group of people from being in a position to take charge in the first place? Being critical had turned into being negative.

Dr. Gilman assured me she’d seen all this before. She said that from her experience it seemed there was a similar cycle that most grad students in this area followed. They came in with bright eyes and big plans, looking for answers to the world’s problems. When they found that every new answer only raised new problems, new questions, they threw all answers out of the window in a heaping, discredited pile. And then, after some time, they started to find a balance between the two ways of seeing.

Thankfully, it seems I am entering that third stage of the cycle.

I have spent the past four weeks interning at Self-help Initiative Support Services (SISS). Started by a Ghanaian social-work graduate named Alice, SISS believes the best way to help people is to empower them to help themselves. They run classes, free of charge to participants, in batik making, bead making, computer training (IT), hair dressing, and catering services. Most of their students come from Agbobloshie, the largest slum in Accra, and are made up of men and women, Christians and Muslims, northerners and southerners. All of them leave with a viable skill set, and a newfound respect for one another and for themselves.

I have traveled several times to Agbobloshie with Selina and Mr. Asante (who currently run SISS, and are both Ghanaian) to interview past trainees. We talked to Shirazu Yussif a past IT trainee who now runs his own computer training center, giving classes to his neighbors in a small building he was able to construct thanks to a loan from SISS.

While we were there Shirazu gathered together a group of scrap dealers to talk with us. Mr. Asante discussed the health hazards trading in e-waste brought on to them and their families. He understood that this work was important to them – it was available and prevalent in their community, and it brought in enough money to keep life going. But he asked them what they would want to do if they had the choice to do something else. What did they want to learn? What could SISS do for them?

Many of them mentioned electrical repair work, plumbing, or professional driving. As SISS doesn’t offer courses in any of those areas I figured Mr. Asante would promote the benefits of batik making or make use of Shirazu as an example of what success can be had through the IT program. He didn’t. He listened to what it was they wanted, what they thought they needed in their lives, and then made plans to create a training program for them.

Winding our way through the narrow alleys of Agbobloshie we then made our way to Auntie Theresa’s home. She was happy to show us the colorful stacks of batiks she has been making and selling in the market. As I set up my video camera her husband helped her hang batiks across a line in front of their door and told us how Theresa had also been making soaps and pomades. There was an obvious respect for his wife and her ability to provide for their family with her new occupation.

As I talked to Theresa the tone of her voice and the smile she held were as telling as the things she said. She was very happy to have learned batik at SISS. She liked doing it and it brought food to the table. She told me that she would like to go back to her hometown in the center region of Ghana, but she had always worried about what she would do there, how she would make money. It had kept her from going back. Now she was proud to say she could go home and make batik.

As we talked a crowd gathered behind us. A group of young girls stood on tiptoes to get a look at my video camera. Grown women flanked them, a bit in awe of Theresa. As we finished they wondered if Theresa was moving to the US (why else was this obruni taking video of her?) and how they too could join SISS and do work like she did.

We met with past trainees who were now community leaders (one man was made a chief), who had set up their own chop shops outside of Agbobloshie, who were all grateful to SISS. After training some people had stayed in their original profession, but still they had benefited.
I was told about a woman who sold water (here many hawkers sell purified water in small plastic sachets). After her time at SISS she started selling it better than ever before. She even hired several people to start selling for her. The key is that through SISS people don’t just learn the steps to making something, they learn that they are people – no more, no less than anyone else – who are capable, and deserving. SISS thinks that in addition to giving their trainees a skill its important to move people towards being better citizens, better people, and runs programs on self respect and confidence, goal setting, tolerance, and so on, to that end.

SISS has seen women come in timid and quiet, but leave heads held high, comfortable discussing any issue while looking someone in the eye. Muslim northerners and Christian southerners may be neighbors in Agbobloshie, but the strain of ethnic clashes and religious differences often keep distance between them. In the beginning they question SISS, surely they must have separate classes for their separate groups. Surely they must not be expected to work alongside someone so different from themselves. But if they want to learn, they must learn together. And after three months of working side-by-side they leave as a group, their relationships an example of cooperation and understanding that begin to filter through the larger community.

Every person I talked to told me how glad they were to have been a part of SISS, how good it was to have something they could do with their hands, something no one could take away from them, something they could teach their children to do.

I have little doubt that when I go back to Oregon and sit down to read stack upon stack of articles on what doesn’t work and why, I will feel temporarily overwhelmed by the world and its problems. And believe me, it happens plenty now. When I step into Agbobloshie and see the black billows of e-waste smoke draping livestock, food, homes, children with its toxic ash; when I see the lagoon clogged with garbage, so thick in places it’s impossible to tell there is water there at all; when I see the cramped living conditions; the lack of running water in homes; the want and the need; when I first see any of this I go back to the second part of that cycle, the negative part, every time.

But all it takes is that video of Theresa to bring me back. When I see her smiling, Agbobloshie becomes its people rather than its environment. And its people are wonderful.

Poverty is not economics. This saying is printed on the front of a postcard I bought recently. The phrase stretches across the front of a trotro filled with Ghanaians going home from the market. Poverty is bad, people aren’t. Because it has such respect for people, because it understands its people, because it listens to its people SISS is a beautiful example of what can be done when a non-profit organization gets it right.

Thank you Mr. Asante, Selina, and all of SISS for helping me find those rosy glasses once again. And though I’m sure I’ll have to take them off now and then its good to know they aren’t lost.