|
Magazine
CAMBRIDGE LETTER
Recognising needs
BY BILL KIRKMAN
People, in any situation, deserve to be consulted, not told.
For nearly 40 years, I have been a trustee of a grant-making trust. We encourage research and innovation designed to prevent human suffering. That is, of course, a wide remit, and the trust works in the fields of medicine, education, social affairs and religion (it is a Christian-based foundation).
One of the guiding principles by which we operate when we are funding innovation (as distinct from pure research) is to back projects designed to meet a need which has been recognised by the recipients of our support. We do not, in other words, like the kind of approach where the donor, or the organisation implementing the project, decides what is good for the recipients and imposes it. Our approach essentially is that in order to find out what people need, the best thing is to ask them.
That is clearly an over-simplification. Before supporting a project we must satisfy ourselves that it is worthwhile, properly run and appropriate. As a principle, however, it reflects our policy; and it works.
When schemes work
I had cause to reflect on it this week when reading a report from one organisation which we have funded. Called Outside Chance, it runs workshops in young offender institutions, encouraging the young offenders to take sensible and realistic steps to seek employment at the end of their sentences, and hence to avoid re-offending. The response recorded from dozens of participants confirms strongly that what is offered in the workshops meets a real need in a way that the young offenders trust.
As I was considering whether to write about the policy and practice of our trust, I read in The Observer an article by Simon Caulkin, the paper’s experienced management editor. He referred to the “traditional” top down approach to management, comparing it unfavourably with a model where the organisation faces outward towards the customers, who can “pull” what they need from the organisation.
This is precisely the same principle that our trust applies: asking people what they want, rather than telling them what they ought to want, and I felt encouraged to range more widely.
There are many other areas where the principle should be applied but where, sadly, this is prevented by human arrogance or insensitivity. In a week when we have been faced with distressing news of human suffering in Kenya, much of the international reaction has reflected this; “we” know how the political impasse should be tackled. It is a reaction which, to be fair, is inspired by horror at the situation, and a genuine wish to help but it ignores the basic principle that people, in any situation, deserve to be consulted, not told.
Accepting the result when people are consulted, and they make their views clear, is often uncomfortable, as we saw after the Palestine election two years ago. Hamas were the clear winners, but Western countries, led by the United States, would not recognise the result, on the ground that Hamas is a terrorist organisation. This reaction is, of course, understandable, but it is very difficult to reconcile it with a strongly proclaimed belief in democracy. International observers accepted that the elections had been free and fair. It was not, therefore, the democratic process that the west found objectionable, but the result.
Classic example
Last month, at the Palestinian donors’ conference in Paris, plans were discussed for rebuilding the collapsed Palestinian economy. Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister, and now envoy of the so-called Quartet of the United Nationals, U.S., Russia and the European Union declared: “If we get this moving forward I believe that all the Palestinian people will want to participate in the process. Our desire is to see one Palestinian State in Gaza and the West Bank, and if we manage to get momentum and drive into the process then we’ll see all Palestinians wanting to be part of it.”
He may be right, but the approach is a classic example of deciding what people should want, rather than asking them (or in this case, taking notice of what they have already said — however much we dislike it).
There are plenty of examples from recent history which suggest that at some stage there has to be dialogue with groups enjoying popular support. Two widely varied examples are the African National Congress in South Africa and Sinn Fein and the IRA in Northern Ireland. Such dialogue does not imply approval. We are looking at Realpolitik, not a love-in. Without such dialogue, however, the Palestine problem, like many others, may remain unsolved.
Bill Kirkman is an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College Cambridge, U.K. Email him at: bill.kirkman@gmail.com
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Magazine
|
