Participants: Joe, Melinda, Jay, Laurence, Emily
Joe: We’ve had problems dealing with people in Haiti who don’t’ think and plan for the long-term Laurence: it’s like the people who cut down trees for firewood but aren’t thinking about what it will do to their farm land.
Joe: People have historically experienced short-term intervention, even government changes quickly.
Laurence: Strategic planning process- if projects aren’t part of a larger plan they become a waste of time. Need mission and vision statements so you are working towards something. Feel like they are part of something long-term.
Joe: appreciate the idea of mission and goals. It can be hard for partners to get past focusing on today. You can talk about it all you want but people are living day-to-day.
Organizational structure: one example of more successful is the art cooperation modeled of micro-credit cooperatives
Laurence: they are forced to think of the future, like the peer pressure of having to pay back the original loan in order to get another loan.
In some places corruption is considered the norm. When future is uncertain Capacity-building can be requiring strategic planning
Work with communities to choose which projects are most important-have the people in best practices for community building-can use these in long-term process.
The community selects the projects.
Getting past the step of taking ownership.
Use open space to talk about the problem such as equitable distribution of resources.
Hire someone from outside (in Haiti) to work through the problems.
Also need the long-term strategic plan aspect.
Often end up with parallel structures offering same services-traditional power holders don’t’ want to give it up.
“Conflict impact assessment” – showing up with money introduces conflict in the community, challenging the traditional power holder.