"Collaboration" without the "Co"

The meeting had a noble goal. As part of the action plan of a village-wide meeting a few weeks ago, I decided to pull together the leaders of the village groups, associations and organizations to try to figure out why there isn't more collaboration among community leaders along with lots of duplication and redundency.

I was really excited about this. From the day of my arrival, that is my second arrival that didn't involve fainting and lots of blood loss, I had talked to many passionate people doing some really neat things in the village; However, they all seemed to be off in their own corners, not sharing ideas, stories of success or failure or simply feeding off each other's energy. So, for this meeting I had in mind a room filled with a dozen of the town's movers and shakers where we figured out where we shared the mission and activities of all these different organizations did and worked through some of the key ways they can work better together for their beneift as well as that of the village.

It was not to be. However, what did happen ended up being really interesting and telling in its own right.

Thirty-mintues after the meeting was supposed to start, only four faithful participants showed up, all people I knew fairly well and had effectively guilted into coming. It's actually the good opening line to a joke: "So a chief, an imam and a president of a women's co-op walk into a room.."

Anyway, given this ironic nature of the turnout, i.e. a meeting about collaboration without collaborators, the plan would have to change but not in too different a direction. We started talking about why people wouldn't show up for a meeting about collaboration, something that I intuitively thought people would jump to as well as as we would have to do for people in the village to work better together.

What came out, especially from the local Imam and the Chief of Farende (a sweet guy with a voice like Marlon Brando - if Brando spoke French, that is - and an amazing collection of hats), was that people, although they might understand in the abstract why colaboration is important, aren't motivated enough to invest in it. The chef talked about how at the family level, they save together to buy a radio and understand how working together solves common problems. At the level of the village or among different organzation, however, the rewards of collaboration seem uncertain and abstract. Perhaps I could learn from the examples of others, but is the time it would take to have a meeting worth it, given my dusk 'till dawn schedule of hard work at home as well as the uncertain nature of what will come. In other words, being an entrepreneur testing the waters and learning from best practices is a lot easier without the constraints of subsistence living. You're also a lot more motivated to do the tough work of organization, coordination and analysis if you're from a can-do culture where the resoruces make success likely, not where you are used to being stuck behind.

So, through this meeting, quite accidently, we ended up getting to the core of the problems of collaboration in this setting. The only difference was that a kind of meta-lesson about the difficulty of collaboration was mixed into this dialogue. Cute.

I have another big meeting planned for this Thursday, one which is town-wide and with a narrower mission. The goal is to promote this tax-system I have been working on all summer. The Impot de Solidarité pour la Developpement (ISD, a solidarity sax for development of the village) is 100CFA (20 cents) per month per family tax that will be used to pay for public goods in the community. This fund will be used to repare roads, dig wells and fix up the market.

I think it's a great way to give this village a chance to invest in its future in a way that is empowering to the villagers both in terms of independence from outside help and also in bringing together the village for these common goods. However this tax poses a particular problem for me and the village: it is not a matter of getting a grant or not or getting a big donation or not. The village has the resources and the success or failure of this project is purely an issue of motivation and organization to get the work done.

So, my work to this point has been to figure out how we can convince the villagers to give up their much neeed money for these public goods. I've worked to set up a special commission to research the details of potential projects, follow up on ones that are started, follow-up with collectors and do the public relations work. It's important for the villagers to know that their money is going to be taken care of in a transparent and accoutnable way where they have a voice. But, they with also need a push o f motivation. At this meeting, it is my job to kick start the public relations work by trying to convince the villagers that what they do for their families - saving and working together towards common ends - is something they should and must do for their village:

I'm looking forward to the challenge and will let you know how it goes. I only hope people show up!

Cheers,
Alex