To creep or not to creep?

A little over a week ago, we held a meeting with several members from the community who consider themselves leaders in Cite Soleil. Though the comments of our staff and the participants were filtered through partial English translation and my weak Kreyol, they presented a stark picture of how government and LAMP are understood in Cite Soleil.

Tom Griffin, one of the founders of LAMP, was visiting on a short trip and called the meeting to hear the community's perceptions of the clinic and take suggestions for improvement. After a brief introduction, the comments of the most outspoken participants changed course, instead steering away from the clinic towards a litany of requests for LAMP to undertake in the community.

Job creation, free food, clean water, tidy streets, university scholarships for adults and the construction of a school. The thing most of these requests share in common is the continuing responsibility or even obligation of government to concern itself with these services, both because of the Haitian constitution and the ratification of human rights treaties that speak to most of these matters.

Now, Tom has an excellent metaphor for the impact of foreign NGOs (non-governmental organizations) introduced into the context of a functioning democratic country. Consider the Haitian government and polity as a part of a closed biological system, such as a body. Ideally, the body is self-regulating; an infection in one place (i.e., a public demonstration petitioning the government for clean water) receives a response from the immune system (i.e., the government finds a way to provide the water). This partially meets the body's need and returns it to a state of equilibrium until the next outbreak. Now, imagine a machine implanted into the body--this is the foreign NGO. The foreign implant serves a vital function that maintains the health of a section of the body (providing medical care, clean water, a feeding program, etc.). The result is wonderful for the particular part of the body that benefits from the implant. But that's not looking at the big picture. With the introduction of hundreds or even thousands of competing implants responding to outbreaks, the natural responsiveness of the body's own systems begin to break down. No longer does the body have to trouble itself tending to certain diseases or outbreaks, as foreign technology and resources have effectively wrested control of functions originally controlled by the immune system. Tending to outbreaks is now so piecemeal that the original system stops being responsive to the whole body. This is a concern with foreign NGOs like ours doing what we do.

One of the most telling moments in the meeting came part way through. Tensions were high (like they almost inevitably are in political discussions here) and Tom explained that if the community wants change it has to organize, taking their concerns to the powers that be to create the change they want to see. LAMP is not the government, Tom insisted, and all of the Haitians in Cite Soleil have the responsibility to make the system work. Tom is not naïve and knows the difficulties that such an approach poses here, but this is the paradigm that leads to a healthy body—not countless foreign implants filling the gaps left by the government.

The response from one individual, speaking for the first time in the meeting, struck us. "What you are saying is very, very discouraging to us." We paused, surprised because it seemed Tom's words were supposed to be empowering. "If all blan [white people, but also a general term for foreigners] thought the same way as you do, then we would have nothing. Everything that we have comes from them."

Now, I don't relay this to show the importance of LAMP or its work. Far from it. The fact this may be the prevailing notion in the community is the complete inversion of what good aid wants to accomplish. When Haiti is the land of 10,000 foreign NGOs, this seems the epitome of a learned dependence that's both disheartening to us as an organization and a signifier of the difficult context in which we work.

So this leaves LAMP in an interesting position; like any nonprofit, funds are limited and meant for certain purposes and can not, and should not, fill each niche request made at the meeting.

But what to do when the people you serve want your organization to become a de facto local government? Do you let your organization creep from its mission of health and human rights? Can that mission expand to fit what they want? And how to step back once dependency becomes the norm? Yikes.