Turning Point

Blog Theme: Turning Point

During the past week I have had several realizations that I would say mark a turning point for me here at Nkosi’s Haven. While I approached this experience knowing that I would encounter people on a daily basis who are living with and have come from harsh and challenging situations this manifests in unexpected ways. While the work being done here at Nkosi’s Haven is remarkable and many of the mothers and children have access to care and opportunities that they would not otherwise complicated problems still exist. One of the largest questions and challenges I have struggled with recently is “how do you help people who do not want to help themselves?”

Studying international development at York, one of the largest debates is surrounding help -- how to help people, what kind of help is most beneficial and whether one should even be ‘helping’ as it can be more harmful than helpful. Here at Nkosi’s Haven an ongoing struggle is how to empower or motivate the resident mothers to want to better their own lives.

When I first arrived here, after a few days or weeks I began to form ideas of how things could run better, especially in regards to the mothers and their overall lack of willingness to contribute to the community. I would like to clarify that I am by no means trying to lump them all together because many have rose from very challenging situations to contribute to this community and to move on to other places. However, despite being given many employment and other opportunities the majority of them seem only be willing to perform the bare minimum duties (cleaning common areas, working in the kitchen) and spend the rest of their time sitting around.

This lack of willingness to grab opportunities to improve one’s circumstances is one that I struggle to understand and accept. I am not ready to believe that these women should be given up on but I am unable to propose how values such as self-confidence and self-motivation can be instilled in someone who appears to have given up on themselves.

While I would consider this a negative conclusion, it has made me realize how exceedingly complex and complicated this issue is and how little I know. This to me reflects the basic problem of “experts” in the development world -- highly trained and paid professionals that are brought into a context for a short period of time, usually several weeks or perhaps months, and relied on to provide advice and guidance to a project.

In addition many of the empowerment and employment opportunities offered here that have failed are those that have worked in other contexts. This adds to the development theory that one project that functions in one situation cannot simply act as a blueprint for another situation. In the context of Nkosi’s Haven I have only began to see the cracks in the surface of this very complex situation where initially I thought I’d seen problems and how to solve them.