From: "Marsha Hanzi" <hanzibra@svn.com.br>
Reply-To: "permaculture" <permaculture@franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2001 11:54:28 -0300
To: "permaculture" <permaculture@franklin.oit.unc.edu>
The idea of bringing the 'multi-disciplinary tools of permaculture into the aid agencies' as you suggest Marsha is, of course, a good one. It is also one fraught with the difficulty of overcoming organisational inertia - the momentum that existing ideas have developed over the years.My proposal for permaculturists interested in working in aid to do some voluntary work (or paid work, if they can get it - we need more people to be paid for their permaculture work so that it becomes integrated into their lives and income stream) with aid agencies in their own country was to enlarge their skills and to provide insight into the aid industry, the limitations that aid agencies receiving government or other donor funding in developed countries work under and how the agencies respond to the needs of their partners in developing countries.
Yes, that is one very important function,. But I also suggest that bringing the multi-disciplinary tools of Permaculture into the aid agencies could help these go in the direction that they are trying to go...
I don't think the work of the agencies I am familiar with - they are of course all Australian agencies - really deserve the neo-colonialist label. Many of the staff maintain a third-world viewpoint, even some in the large Australian agencies which have more of a conventional corporate structure. If there are shortcomings then I believe you would find it to do with the organisation itself rather than the staff.
...out of the neo-colonialist top-down approach to a facilitative function of local realities.
...Russ
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