Day Twenty-Three: The Project Proposal (5 July)
on From Banglatown to Bangladesh (Bangladesh), 19/Aug/2010 10:10, 34 days ago
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Really, it feels strange to identify writing a project proposal as a positive. Too often, these seem like unavoidable nose-dives into the devils of development. The meaningless, over-used jargon, the donor-driven demands, the simplistic steps between inputs and outcomes, far away from the complex realities‘on the ground’. All of these can feel like mere marketing exercises, NGO-style, rather than meaningful steps towards change.But there’s also, importantly, a sense of potential. Of what could be, for my organisation, and for the communities we work for. For my organisation, every new project is significant, and a successful project proposal is always something to be celebrated. Writing about potential impacts amongst communities of Khagrachari feels positive too. My work is generally very limited to the office and its systems and management. It’s exciting to get opportunities to contribute outside these walls, and to think about possibilities for our most important work, that which we do in the ‘field’, and thechanges we can contribute to in villages and communities throughout these green hills.In reality, Bangladesh has taught me well that the planned connections between development activities and their impacts amongst communities are not so simple. These are not straight lines, these links between‘inputs’( whether they are workshops, meetings, trainings, infrastructure, or others) and resulting changes. They can be wandering and at times broken, changing direction and weight and tied up in so many issues, including power and resources and understanding and culture and personal relations.Yes, Bangladesh has showed me that change is not a simple thing, or something that can be easily planned and predicted. (I wish someone would tell that to David Cameron. All of his talk of‘quick impacts’ and ‘value for money’ are millions of miles away from my Bangladeshi realities, and leave me fuming. With those attitudes, I doubt he’d last a week as a VSO volunteer.) But still, despite knowing it won’t be quite this simple, the potential a project proposal holds doesindeed feel positive. Discovery of the realities ahead will have to wait.
