People working with People

This week, we were engaged in a conversation with an NGO we have close ties with. The conversation centred on trends in the South African NGO sector and was part of an evaluation this NGO was conducting for one of our funders. As part of the conversation I was trying to highlight the difficulty, we are facing: Funders, especially corporate funders, are interested in funding project costs, often meaning funding for materials and excluding funding for salaries. I explained the challenge this poses for us, as our work includes “people working with people”, which inevitably means: our highest cost is salaries – and thus exactly the expense funders do not see as a necessity.

As most human beings would be, I was delighted at the excitement, which my statement sparked in the person conducting the interview. Wow! Someone marvels at what has come out of my mouth! Don’t we all want appreciation for our doings?

It got me thinking about the actual statement I had made: Yes, our work is about people working with people. For many, especially those in the corporate world, it is difficult to understand the importance of it: Surely, development must be about bringing infrastructure, education and jobs to people! Fair enough. I do see the importance of all of those.

But what if…

What if the world was more about relationships between people than about money, cars and houses? Would the world not be a much richer place? Would the rising oil price still affect us as much? Would we still aspire to have more and more? And are we really having “more”? What about all the things that are being lost in a world driven by material needs?

When considering the latter question, the limits of capitalism are coming to the fore. We are destroying our world by destroying the environment and thus our own livelihood, because we believe “more” equals “better”. Maybe the alternative would mean a much happier, healthier and sustainable way of living. But what is the alternative? Maybe the alternative is to place more emphasis on the relationships with those around us; to show appreciation to people.

I recently co-facilitated a course for members of our target group; that is members of grassroots organisations. In it, we questioned the concept of poverty by challenging the fact that poverty is often perceived as a lack of material wealth. We introduced the notions of “poverty of the mind” and “poverty of the spirit”. At the time, xenophobic attacks were spreading across the country. In the week following the course, one course participant (who we refer to as “learning partner” to highlight the fact that we all learn from each other) came to me and said “you know, I’ve been thinking about what is happening in the country. I realised that these people, who are committing such atrocities, are in fact very poor in mind.” I was stunned. How true! I wish people would open their minds to the importance of building relationships to eradicate poverty of the spirit and mind. Stomachs will always be hungry and crave for more. While I would not want to downplay the importance of infrastructural and economic development I sometimes wonder whether these are indeed sustainable forms of development. They are contributing to a system that, in my view, has already failed, exactly because people will always want more. It is a vicious cycle: Once people’s basic necessities have been met, the level of what is considered as basic will be adjusted. Why else would a TV be considered a basic human right in some, more wealthy, nations? I wish the country, or rather the world would start thinking more critically about whether mere infrastructural and economic development do not in fact support a system that has already proven to fail. What if there was more humanity in this world built through relationships and care among people? What if we appreciated each other more for who we are as human beings rather than for what we have? Would xenophobia still be possible?

And if not: Are people working with people not at least as important as the building of houses, roads and schools?