Taking Action in a Changing World
Appeared: 10/20/2006
Taking Action in a Changing World. Aaron Emmel. George Ronald.
"At its heart, community development isn't about building roads or donating computers. It's about transforming souls."
(Aaron Emmel, Taking Action in a Changing World)
Everybody should read this book, right now! This book is for everyone who has struggled to get their community involved. This book is for everyone who has looked at social projects being carried out elsewhere and wondered "why can't we do something like that here?"
Aaron Emmel's Taking Action in a Changing World (published by George Ronald) takes a broad view of socioeconomic projects, and explores what must be done to set up efficient agencies of action. His book is written in short chapters, with an eye toward group reading and discussion. It's a quick read; Emmel's style is breezy and at times humorous. (I found that his book in general went down easier than Holly Hanson Vick's shorter Social and Economic Development: a Bahá'í Approach [George Ronald 1989].) However, no one should mistake this for lack of depth. Emmel has real insights and real suggestions that should not be ignored by anyone hoping to create change. His examples are clear: in my favorite, he uses the Navajos' Long Walk (their removal to Bosque Redondo and their eventual return to their homeland) to illustrate the importance of not attempting to foist upon the proposed recipients of an aid project an agenda fixed in someone else's mind, but to consult with those individuals in order to determine what their priorities are. Needs must be identified; people must be listened to. Not everyone will want or need, for instance, computers.
Emmel introduces us to Bahá'í projects around the world. Some will be familiar, like the Táhirih Justice Center in Washington, D.C. and the Rabbani Bahá'í School in India; some will be new to the reader, like Building Green Bridges, founded by Christiana Lawson, which promotes sustainable development in China. It's fascinating—and instructive—to see what Bahá'ís have been up to!
The nuts-and-bolts issues of development projects are not ignored: goal-setting, staffing, assessment, funding, securing grants, and the like. And Emmel also takes pains to point out that the proper foundation for all these activities is love, not hope of gain or prestige, and that attempts lacking the necessary spiritual foundation will, like the house on the sand, ultimately fail.
A useful feature of this book is the inclusion of various sidebars pointing up steps in the process and things to keep in mind. In one, Emmel writes:
A Bahá'í community development project:
- Is directed at the visible improvement of some aspect of life
- Must be capable of learning from its experiences
- Serves as a centre for learning
- Promotes material, moral and spiritual progress
- Measures success by the ability of individuals and their communities to address development issues at increasingly higher levels of complexity and effectiveness
Good advice for all of us!
I began this book shortly after reading William Russell Easterly's The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (Penguin Press, 2006), a critique of Western efforts in the "developing world". The two books were very interesting in tandem. I suspect that Easterly and Emmel would have much to talk about. Easterly points out that much more good takes place when small groups (whom he calls "Searchers") find ways to address single issues, than when large groups ("Planners") confidently sail in with the foreign aid map tucked under their arm. Easterly describes a school in India where young teenage women were dropping out in droves. Investigation revealed that the problem lay in the school's having only one communal restroom—and the girls, after hitting puberty, were understandably reluctant to share the facilities with the young men. A second bathroom was built; the dropout rate plummeted. Problem solved. Easterly didn't say who was responsible for building the second restroom, but following Emmel's method would inevitably lead to such a success.
Communities who wish to become involved in some sort of social and economic development project would do well to read Emmel's book and attend to the concrete steps he sets forth. As we drive toward community centers, children's classes and study circles including non-Bahá'í attendees, and greater visibility in the world, our ability to have both the vision of change and the means to carry it out will distinguish us.
Email Kathleen Kettler Lehman about "Taking Action in a Changing World"
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