Being in Zambia, makes you think and a lot about different ways of living and the lottery of life. Of course, some people here are having a decent situation, but the poverty is widely spread and a major majority.  The people behind RN have worked with developing aid in different countries for almost 30 years. The idea of self-help facilitation as a method grew from a frustration of what traditional giving causes in shapes of passivity, irresponsibility and deletion of local industries.

RN´s approach is to never give any hand-outs to the people. Instead they want to create a feeling that the people themselves have the skills to build and create necessary facilitations as schools, clinics, wells etc. When you have made something yourself you tend to be more responsible, caring and proud of the work you´ve done. You have probably also improved your skills and know how to solve the problem next time it shows up.

Since RN is a quite small organization, and the people do a tremendous work on a grass root level in the fields by motivating the villagers – one of our contribution while here is to try to help to show the results of the method in figures and statistics. Hopefully this contribution can lead to that more people and organizations can see effect of the method and the improved life situation for over 60 000 people in the villages. As a partner or donor to RN, your money goes to building materials and to the staff to be able to run these self-help programs, holding start up meetings and workshops in the villages every day in the week.

Yesterday an American couple showed up at the office. They were living in the bush here in Zambia and had built a home for orphans. There was now a need for a school and a clinic in that village. The couple had met challenges along their way and were convinced that by letting the people in the village create and own themselves, it would help them even more. So they had heard about RN and the self-help programs and asked RN to come and start up the programs in their village. Inspiring when good news travel fast!

So since we arrived we have focused a lot of just that – results and presentations. The up-coming week we will present some of our suggestions to the staff and see if this is something they will go along with.

So long!