Carl is Off to Nicaragua - WHY?

Carl is off to Nicaragua again.  What is he doing this time?

Es complicado!  I've been there 7 times now for a variety of meetings and things.  But this one is a little different.  Let me give you a little bit of history first, then bring you up to date on what is going on for the next few months.

History
Our parish, Guardian Angels in Oakdale, MN, has had a relationship with a small community in Nicaragua for over 25 years.  They just sent a delegation here to visit us for a couple of weeks in September.  We had a true family getogether.  We took them to dinner, showed them around, sat and played games and songs, and shared our hopes and dreams for a few weeks.  This relationship started out as a church to church thing between our pastor and their pastor at the time.  It has since become something between our whole parish, and a small "community" within their parish.  This community is pretty well developed.  They have by laws, and a coordinator, and a governing board, and a novitiate, and a small loan program.  They celebrate together, they grieve together, and they dream together.

In the beginning, we sent things there - like money.  We paid for a roof on their baseball stadium.  We sent some money to purchase a herd of cows, which someone there managed and produced some milk for their kids.  We collected used typewriters, and someone there, I have no idea who, set up a small commercial school to teach people how to type, because there were jobs in that field. We now call these things "projects".  They worked, they were fun for us to do, and a few people there got some benefit.  BUT . . . no major change in the way of life.  We wanted to do more.

We formed a relationship with another group, called AKF.  This Nicaraguan group was our eyes and ears, and provided transportation and translation and insight into our small community.  Over the years, they have facilitated this group, and helped them grow and mature, and educated them, and raised their vision of what they could accomplish, etc. We moved from "projects" to "accompaniment" - "hermanamiento", or "solidaridad".  Depends on how you want to think about it.

A New Approach
Over the years, AKF and we have developed a new vision of this thing.  We have moved to "they are in charge", or something like that.  We are now trying to do "sustainable development" but a version that comes FROM the people. "Self initiated sustainable development" - something like that.  The other is a Jeffrey Sachs term, and I don't really like it. I'll come up with something better as we go along.  Sachs has this vision of ending world poverty.  He thinks that if you put a lot of resources into a village you can get them "over the hump", or out of the circle of poverty in which they are trapped.  If you can provide education, water, and some sustainable economic base - they should be able to lift themselves out of poverty.  If you look on the WWW, you will see a lot of references to this effort. His book on this is worth reading.

Well, I think Mr. Sachs is wrong. I know he has the UN behind him, and he is putting big bucks into a lot of small towns in Africa and elsewhere - but I think he is overlooking one small item.  The people who are in poverty, who are in developing nations, are in that situation because of how they think and operate. They, and their entire infrastructure - government, courts, law, police, banks, etc. are working with a different view of how wealth is created.  He thinks the poverty problem is caused by a happenstance of geography, and climate and other accidental features.  I think a large part of their situation comes from their world view.  His Millennium Villages are doing very little to change that world view.  There is some education, and there is some exposure to outside ideas - but world views change very slowly, and that is not at all his focus. And, virtually ALL of the resources and ideas and energy of his efforts comes from OUTSIDE.  The people already have a world view that someone else is in charge, that wealth is something you get from elsewhere, and this approach only confirms them in that view.  What we should do is change how they and we both think of what THEY are ABLE to do.  We need to work on changing both of our world views - together.

World View and Culture is Key
I won't take time here to try to persuade you of this - as I have ALREADY done that in this blog!  You can refresh your memory of that, by skipping back a bit to this entry:
   http://carlscheider.blogspot.com/2011/01/culture-and-developing-nations.html

Assuming you have digested that - or that you don't really care and just want to see what I am up to now - you will have to read along as this thing develops.  I have already run on so long that you are likely bored to tears as it is.  Briefly, I am heading down there to assist a Rotary effort at doing this - they are taking an entirely different approach, one where they are enabling the local folk to change their own world.  Not a project, not an accompaniment, and certainly NOT a mission.  (More religion they do not need, of that I am certain!  They could send missionaries to us, I think.)

AND, I honestly have no idea how I can hep with this - we are making this up - but I will be with an experienced team of people, who will, no doubt, teach me a lot about how this works.

I plan to post pictures, and movies, and lots of ideas.  I also plan to learn a bit more Spanish, and to try to lose my Italian accent!  Que lastima!

The Trouble With Progressive Economics

Notes on The Trouble With Progressive Economics

    http://breakthroughjournal.org/content/authors/rob-atkinson/the-trouble-with-progressive-e.shtml

This is an excellent little article on economics.  I have been trying to read more about economics to make some sense of what is going on these days.  This piece helped enormously.  If you are in a similar place, give it a read.

It offers an explanation of how we got into the current mess, using the various economic theories of the last hundred years or so. The author does a good job of simply presenting the major tenets of classical, Keynsenian, neo-classical and progressive views of economics.

He makes the point that the Keynesian or progressive approach is to stimulate demand - be it by government spending or private spending. We basically encourage low and middle income families to spend more and more.  Progressive policies are focused more on sharing the wealth, spreading it about equitably, and not on creating wealth - the true classical approach.  That sounds a lot like classical economics, but that school would not give the government any role in creating wealth.  He says that today, we need sustained government intervention and investment in the things that cause wealth creation:  new technology, education, innovation, productivity.  Some progressives actually oppose these programs because they seem to threaten full employment.

He does a nice job on globalization as well.  Instead of viewing it as a threat, where businesses in other countries can out compete us by ignoring labor and environmental standards, we have to recognize that it is inevitable, and work with it and through it.  Protectionism won't help.

I think this approach needs a name - Progressive Classicism?  I like it - try it, it'll grow on you.  It's better than "neo-classicism with a heart" - the failed approach.

Practical Steps out of Poverty - The Family Independence Initiative

If you have read my blog up to this point, (http://carlscheider.blogspot.com/2011/01/culture-and-developing-nations.html) you know that I am persuaded that CULTURE has a profound impact on economic development.  Culture is defined as "the way people think things work".  The problem with that insight is that if this is true, then there does not appear to be much that one can do to assist people in developing nations that want to escape the poverty cycle.  If the root problem is how they view the world, that changes very, very slowly.

There is a new approach to the problem.  The Family Independence Initiative.  It is described in a recent piece in the New York Times, by one of their columnists, or bloggers - David Bornstein.  Mr. Bornstein has not benefited from my insight into culture and development - but he doesn't really care.  This technique works!  It works spectactularly.

Here's the article:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/out-of-poverty-family-style/?emc=eta1
If it's gone or moved, you can find the author at this blog:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/fixes/.
And the group that actually implements this technique is called "The Family Independence Initiative".  Itcan be found here:    http://www.fiinet.org/.
     Or send me a note - I have a copy of the article.

The rest of this piece will give you a 25 cent tour of the article.
1 - why this is a big deal.
2 - the characteristics that make this work.
3 - implications for the rest of us!!
4 - caveats.

WHY IS THIS A BIG DEAL?
Many, many people around the globe are working to end poverty and hunger.  One of the keys is clearly to foster economic development in those areas where poverty is a major problem.  Many, many people live on less than a dollar a day.  People like Jeffry Sachs (The End of Poverty) and the millenium development approach are working hard with large investments to change the physical landscape, the water supply, education, and economic infrastructure of entire villages.  They are having some success, but it is long, hard, slow work.


Some economists are persuaded that the creativity and energy for development are always present in humans, but they need some fundamental support structures from their government and society in order to unleash this potential.  (Amartya Sen - Development as Freedom).

Others recommend a type of experimental economics - try various incentives to see what works and what does not.  Don't use any theoretical approach as humans are different around the globe.  See Bannerjee and Duflo, Poor Economics.  http://pooreconomics.com/



Our parish has been working with a community in Nicaragua for 25 years to assist their development.  We have done a wide variety of things, from projects, to gifts, to education.  We have made a some progress, but not as much as we would have liked in that time frame.

This approach is a simple set of steps that seems to work very well.  It does not require the injection of large sums of money, and there is no effort from the outside to direct or control what happens.  The whole effort is internal to the group themselves, with very modest assistance from outside.  This is not charity, it is not demeaning.  It enables the power of the group themselves to effect change.  And . . . it works!

WHAT ARE THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THIS APPROACH?
I really encourage you to read the article, and to research it further, but here's a synopsis.
Basis of the approach: 

• Make resources and funding available more directly to people, not just institutions.
• Allow families the freedom to determine their own paths, instead of taking direction from case managers and social workers.
• Encourage and reward personal initiative, instead of penalizing or reducing eligibility for help if a family makes progress.
• Support and promote mutuality and building social capital, instead of helping individuals outside of the context of their families and communities.
• Honor resident leadership and expertise, instead of professionals and outside intervention
• View families as consumers with valuable feedback entitled to hold services and programs accountable, instead of needy victims.

Key steps:

• Identify a group of low income families in similar circumstances that are willing to work together.
• These families agree to meet as a group once a month to discuss their goals and any issues they want to raise.
• The group is asked to create some goals for their families, and write them down.
• They are asked to fill in a questionnaire each month that tracks changes in things like income, assets, debts, health, education, skills, social networks and civic engagement.
• For every success in their goals that is documented, they are awarded $30, up to $200 per month.  The funding continues for the first two years, but the group structure is intended to be last longer.
• The results are audited every three months.
• The outsiders do not guide the agenda of the meetings, and do not act as facilitators.  They establish a structure, and let the operation up to the families.  They do not even offer friendly advice.

Initially the groups waited for the outsiders to give direction or take the lead. But they soon began to share their goals, define them, and document them.  The results are large increases in family income, in education acquired, savings, etc.
The key things about this approach are:

• The support provided by the group of families.
• The sense of self empowerment of achieving actual goals they established.  This touches on the cultural question.
• The refusal of the outsiders to take charge, or even to offer advice.  The families are completely empowered and in charge of this.

IMPLICATIONS FOR OUR EFFORTS
We at Guardian Angels have actually started down this road, thanks to our years of working with the same group of families, and the assistance of AKF, our coordinating association in Nicaragua.  They had actually initiated the change from us giving things or doing things, to the local community being in charge of their goals.  With AKF's guidance, the community spent a lot of time  and energy defining their own goals - and they did a fine job of that.

Based on the information from these studies, I think we would change a few things.

• Set smaller, personal goals for individual families, and set smaller goals for their overall project, as steps to implement it.  For example,a goal would be to establish a legal entity to own the land, build the worm farm infrastructure, etc.  This latter could also be a part of individual family goals to take part.  We have tended to ask them to establish ultimate 'dreams', which may appear to them to be almost impossible. Given the cultural tendency in developing countries to feel that they are not able to change things, it would make sense to start out with smaller goals, smaller steps.
• Document all of these in writing.
• Track their progress toward those goals in writing.
• The US version offers a small cash incentive for each goal accomplished.  That does not feel right in our situation.  Rather, I would create a replenish-able fund that is put at the disposal of the local community.  They establish a board to review proposals from individuals and families.  The entire community has to review and approve their community goals.  When approved, the individual or family is given the funds to accomplish their objective.  
• When the proposal is completed, it is documented in writing to the satisfaction of the local community, and that is submitted to the funding entity.  The fund is then replenished.   
• The community is asked to pay this investment forward, by assisting in establishing a similar community in another place.  They would be the speakers, assist the trainers, and provide support to another community that is setting about this same activity.  To get a bit larger scope, we could ask that they assist with TWO new communities in this regard.
• The community continues to meet monthly with the other families, to discuss their progress toward their goals, and provide mutual aid and support.

CAVEATS
This seems to work well in the US, but the cultural impact in developing countries may continue to present a problem. Granted, the group members to this point are generally from a specific sub-culture that has some  elements that conflict with development, but they are surrounded by the larger culture of the nation which supports it relatively well.  In developing nations, the culture of the larger society is less supportive, and the institutions to support development are generally lacking - such as an honest and transparent political system, courts, police, education, etc.

That said, it does offer an alternative that follows good guidelines:

• Goals are created by local people, not from outside.
• A social support structure is created, which will endure.
• Local people are in charge of obtaining the results.
• A small financial incentive can get things rolling.
• Tracking and reporting progress provides powerful feedback.
• A supportive group of other families helps immensely.

Well, what do you think.  Does this have potential?

Trust and Economic Development

There is a study published today in the NY Times that I think tends to confirm the idea that it is the national "culture" that drives development.  Trust is number 6 on my list of factors that influence development.  A study found that the level of trust between citizens tends to correlate well with high per capital income.  You can read it here:
   http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/18/trust-me-were-rich/

Of course, the argument could be that the wealth creates the trust - but I really think it is the other way around.  The trust relationship makes the economic one work.  When trust is absent, things simply do not work.  When the courts do not defend ownership, when business agreements are not upheld, when profits cannot readily be counted on - people do not undertake risky development activities.

If you have not read my prior pieces on "Culture and Development", they are here in this blog.  See these:
http://carlscheider.blogspot.com/2011/01/culture-and-developing-nations.html
http://carlscheider.blogspot.com/2011/02/culture-and-development-bits-and-pieces.html

The study also evaluated the corruption index, and the confidence in national institutions, and those correlate well with wealth.  Pro-social behavior also correlates well with wealth.  But, interestingly, the relationship between income inequality and anti-social behavior is very weak.  Also interestingly, Greece has a relatively high pro-social behavior, given its wealth position.  There must be some history there in that realm.
See:  http://www.oecd.org/document/24/0,3746,en_2649_37419_2671576_1_1_1_37419,00.html#data
Data is downloadable as an XML/ Excel file.

Why "Culture"
I also got some commentary on those posts that is worth addressing.  A friend suggested that we should use the term "world view" instead of "culture" to identify the different mental framework of people that influences how they see things, and how they operate in the ecnomic realm.  But, most of the literature I have been reading talks about culture - world view is a small part of that.  This article, the one on trust, exemplifies that.  One's world view of how things work might or might not include one's trust of others.  Culture can clearly encompass that, and many other traits that seem to impact on development.  It is not that ALL components of culture have a direct influence on development - but clearly SOME do.  For example, I highly doubt that artistic flavor or taste has much to do with it.  In some countries I have visited, the walls are bare and plain, compared to those found in Northern Europe and the US.  I don't think that relates to economic development.  Trust clearly does, as does "who is in charge", "the value of hard work", etc.  Music and poetry and dance - probably not so much.

The more I learn, the more amazed I am at just how much we actually know about stuff, but how little of that knowledge is generally shared, or had any influence on our political behaviors!

What do you think?

Finland's low pressure, high performance schools

I like this recent article in Time on Finnish schools.
  http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2062419,00.html 
The gist of it is that the Finnish schools are very non competitive, very relaxed about testing, homework, etc., and yet turn out superior results.  They do very little testing and measuring results.

In the latest PISA survey, in 2009, Finland placed second in science literacy, third in mathematics and second in reading. The U.S. came in 15th in reading, close to the OECD average, which is where most of the U.S.'s results fell.

There's less homework too.

"An hour a day is good enough to be a successful student," says Katja Tuori, who is in charge of student counseling at Kallahti Comprehensive, which educates kids up to age 16. "These kids have a life.

The key ingredient appears to be treating the teachers as true professionals.  Every teacher must complete five years of training - our Master's degree.  They are highly selective on who can get into the profession - only 10% of applicants are accepted.  The quality of the teachers seem to be the key to their success.  A teacher stays with students from first grade through sixth grade.  And once they are there, they leave them alone.

"You don't buy a dog and bark for it," says Dan MacIsaac, a specialist in physics-teacher education at the State University of New York at Buffalo who visited Finland for two months. "In the U.S., they treat teachers like pizza delivery boys and then do efficiency studies on how well they deliver the pizza."  

 But this approach may not work everywhere.  The Finnish non competitive culture is behind it - and it won't port well to some place where that doesn't fit.  Just another example of the tremendous influence of the local culture on the way we work.

Music - the wonder of it - how did it evolve?

This is way outside of my field, but fascinating to me.  There was a piece in the Washington Post the other day on music - why we like it so much. It was by Carolyn Butler, and you can find it here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/28/AR2011022806231.html.

It turns out, music turns on our brain - really.  We get a shot of dopamine when we listen to music we like.  It can be any kind of music that we enjoy.  We anticipate the next part, the beat, the cadence - it turns us on, literally.

The author notes that there is no accepted theory for the cause of this evolutionary miracle.  Most evolutionary traits that were developed by evolution have to do with survival and sexual selection.  It seems obvious to me how this feature  evolved - but on looking it up, there are apparently no good theories on why we acquired this amazing feature.

There is a wonderful, scholarly review of all of this available on the web here:  http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.106.6746&rep=rep1&type=pdf.

This is cited by 98 sources, and it is a good survey of the field of knowledge on this.  If you skip to page 199, the author summarizes the discussions on the evolutionary imperative to endow us with this amazing gift of music.  To summarize briefly:

1. No adaptive function at all - seems highly unlikely to me.
2. Cheesecake - we created this just to enjoy it - it doesn't have any adaptive function.  Similarly unlikely, but hey, whatever works.  I like cheesecake too.
3. Byproduct of language development.  Well, it's certainly connected to language, and we are one of the few species with both skills!  But I think this needs a little push yet.
4. Sexual selection.  I dunno - it seems to work for birds and frogs - and it may be part of the origin of this, but I don't think this highly developed skill works all that well in attracting mates.  Didn't work for me, anyway.
5. Group function - kin selection. Dancing and music certainly generate group interaction and cooperation - amazingly well.  I think there is an element of the adaptive function here.
6. Mother / Infant song.  That works really well too, but I think it is still missing the key point.
7. Music as play.  Yep - no denying it - but how adaptive is that?  It's important to learn basic things as youngsters, like wrestling, hunting, etc.  And music is a key skill - but what is the adult return for this development?

The answer - well, this is mine anyway.  It's a combination of the above in this way:  humans learn things orally, through song and rhyme and rhythm.  Before we invented writing, we passed on wisdom and practical knowledge and myth and values orally.  We sat around fires and hearths for hundreds of thousands of years, and told stories and sang songs.  Homer and the Bible are clear examples of what was passed on from generation to generation in poems and songs.  We love stories, we love songs.  If you didn't learn them, then you could not remember how to hunt the beast, or how to build a house, find the edible plants, or how to negotiate a bride - your genetics did not survive.

Why do you think those songs get stuck in our ears and brains?  That is how we were taught to do everything before we invented writing.  It is still an amazingly effective learning method.  But I think we have forgotten how to use it to teach and pass on wisdom.  We have popular songs that are not helpful, to say the least.  The religious stuff we are normally exposed to is of no help either.  It rarely focuses on our current behavior and the wisdom of our time.  It is all wrapped up in  myths and stories.

I love baroque and classical music -- and it does lift me up.  But it doesn't teach much.  I've learned more from Bob Dylan and Peter Paul and Mary than Beethoven and Bach.  I'd like to see a revolution in song that emphasizes learning and cultural values that are more uplifting, ennobling and supportive of human development and freedom.  Does anyone have a catalogue of those handy?

Culture and Development - bits and pieces

Introduction

I've gotten some comments from friends and "others" about the paper on development. See:  On Culture and Development.  Thanks to them, I am reading new materials and learning more! Thank you for that. I have been treating this blog as a "publishing" forum.  I spend a fair amount of time working up a topic, and then publish it like an article  But this culture business is pretty complicated.  My next version of this is going to be months in the future.  I marvel at others that I read - like Jason Lehrer - who can generate something really useful once a week.  There are even some that do it daily!

In the interests of carrying on the discussion, I am going to post shorter pieces as I learn things.  My hope is to collect them into a more extensive entry at some point, and delete the shorter "notes".  So . . . these are notes in progress.

Development and Trust - Egalitarianism as a Means

I found an interesting abstract of a paper on the topic of trust as an essential ingredient of economic development.  As part of this study, the author concludes that a government can create a better trust environment by working to reduce inequalities in a society.  You can read it here:
Article Abstract: All for One: Equality, Corruption, and Social Trust

I like the idea of trust is a key element of economics - it seems to be a key element of "business ethics", and essential to economic development.  It seems pretty clear that a fundamental element of economic development is the level of trust in a society.  Some think that English / US capitalism is based on the trading practices that the early Quakers developed, because people trusted them absolutely.    But I think that the way it works is that a society with a high level of trust moves toward a more egalitarian distribution of assets.  I see little evidence that the other approach, government forcing people to a more equal share of wealth, has the ability to create trust.  If anything, the few examples we have seen of that attempt in the Communist world destroyed trust.  The few in charge profited, and everyone else lost out.

This perspective reflects the a basic world view that wealth is something in short supply, and the way to increase wealth for the poor is to take it somehow from the rich.  That is typical of a culture which does not favor development.  But it isn't really a competition for wealth - as much as our male dominated societies want to cast it that way.  We are all in this together.  Wealth is something we create.  I am not poorer because Bill Gates is richer.  In fact, Bill's genius enabled productivity enhancements that increased the wealth of the planet.  I think his rewards are somewhat outlandish, and I would even that playing field a bit with taxes - but it does not hurt the rest of us if he is wealthy.  The US is not poorer because China is now richer.  In fact, the growth of an attractive Chinese market will increase everyone's wealth.  The wealth disparity is a motivator, but not a means.

I think the genius is to change how people think about something - not forcing them to do something.  If they opt to do it, it will happen.  If it is forced upon them, it has little impact, and may have a major negative response.

More later.