I’ve been reading this paper, Animation in Haiti: MCC Haiti’s Experience with Rural Community Development by Barry C. Bartel, published in February 1989. Barry lived in Haiti for a few years during the 1980’s as an MCC volunteer (it’s something like JVC, but through the Mennonites), and his writing is eloquent, as I wish mine were. I’ve transcribed the first section of his paper, as I think it’s brilliant… It might be a little too philosophical for some of you, but I think it resonates so well with everything I’m trying to do.
(Hopefully he won’t mind… I don’t have any permission to replicate his work, but I hope he’ll see this as a sincere form of flattery. J )
Animation as a Philosophy of Development
Before describing animation in its specific applications to Haiti, it is important to establish it as an overall approach to or philosophy of development. The specific applications will then be seen to embody this philosophy.
The term animation is not likely a familiar term in many development circles outside of Haiti. Other terms, such as consciousness-raising education, participatory development and empowering, may be more familiar in other countries. The essence of the approach is that it sees development as a long-term process that seems to empower others through encouraging and facilitating their participation and ownership in the development process. Results are important but are secondary to the process. Roland Bunch, author of Two Ears of Corn, has identified a key to development not as solving or even helping people solve their problems, but as helping them learn not to solve their problems. Otherwise, what happens if we help them solve their problem, then we leave, and their problems change? They are stuck, no better off than before we came.
Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and by some people’s estimates has the highest concentration of foreign missionaries in the world. Foreigners see needs in Haiti and feel good doing things to solve them. Haitians thus learn that the only way for their situation to improve is if foreigners come and do something for them. I call it the Helpless Haitian/ Almighty American syndrome. As a result one of the biggest tasks for development in Haiti is to help Haitians learn that they can control their situation and solve their problems. Without a doubt they need technical advice, moral support, and financial assistance, but they need to own the solution. This takes longer and results may not be as evident, but some of the most significant results (trust, cooperation, a sense of individual and collective self-worth) may be invisiblt or may only be a seed then we see them.
In its orientation sessions for new workers, MCC stresses that new workers will likely enter assignments with high expectation of what they will accomplish. They desperately want to help those less fortunate than themselves. But the brief contributions of development workers are often more frustrating than productive, as is seen as a long-term enabling process, the approach is significantly different than when participants try to produce visible results quickly.
This approach takes more time, but hopefully results are more permanent. Rather than solving someone’s problem, an approach based on animation helps people identify their needs, helps them identify and analyze possible solutions, helps them develop and implement a plan, and only then helps them find necessary financial resources to supplement their own resources and work. With their own planning, work, and sacrifice, they will own the solution, begin to feel like they can solve their own problems, and work to ensure that the solution lasts. Without this emphasis on process, we risk showing people that they can’t solve their own problems now or when we leave. Animation as used in Haiti does an amazing job of bringing primarily illiterate farmers, who have learned by living that life is difficult, that leaders dictate, and that foreigners are needed in order for anything good to happen, to an understanding and implementation of forms of cooperation, solidarity, collective self-worth, and self-determination. The process is the key.
This is the shortest section of this paper, but I believe is is the most critical. I articulate it here because I believe it forms the foundation on which specific applications of animation in Haiti are based, not because I expect it will be new or revealing to people reading this paper. I suspect the above description of philosophy would have been more universal application in development than the specific approaches used in Haiti, though they, too, may have application elsewhere.
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