Breaking Ground!!

So it has been 3 years and 8 months tomorrow since I left for Sierra Leone.  What was supposed to be three months of walking/hiking through the country turned into a shorter stay within a specific location and for targeted work.  However, life, malaria, poverty, unemployment, an occupation, fundraising issues, bureaucratic hurdles, and now academia have all come in the way of me moving forward with this project. But now, finally, we have made some progress, and are building!

Back to Work - Africa style

So today got a late start due to rain, seems they use it a bit like a snow delay in the US (or so the fable goes). It certainly seemed to work today. I've been trying to get some concrete answers. Actually, I'm trying to get some concrete output. That's where Africa style is still waiting to meet up with me. I keep hearing wonderful things, but I need results. The chairman (Eric) is having us write the memorandum of understanding (mou), which is great. We define the written agreement.

There seem to be structural issues with the productivity of the council though. Eric is an elected official and in charge, but the administrators and the head admin are employees who apparently have no thoughts of either working or being let go. They are rarely at the office, nevermind working. The head admin has been suspended once already. Not that the top helps; to meet with Eric himself today we had to go to his house after waiting an hour at the office (12:30-1:30).

This is not to take anything away from Eric, he is very much in tune with things and has a very good mind for development. One of my favorite quotations though is "it is not the consciousness of men that creates their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness." How can one function outside of the only world they know? My pathway must lie in trying to navigate both his and my worlds...

We talked about some other very good ideas. And my crew here came up with some other one's following the meeting. More on that in time. But the goal is to get the MOU and copies of the proposals for the the brick machines and diaspora donation network asap. From there we can take these documents to possible donors here and in the US. We are looking to approach other NGOs and the Ministry of Finance here for support. It would be great to get the bricks up and running on funds from here. We will see.

I want to give this process two weeks. Then I aim to get out onto the trails, delegate the ground work to the team here, and get back to learning. I'll always be within just a few hours of Makeni if need be, and I need to get the trip back to where it intended to be. The more I see, the more ideas we'll all have to work with!!

A New Partnership

So I went back to the council today, hammered out the final aspects of the partnership with the them. They are going to pay for all aspects of the machines and the trainer coming here. We are responsible for running the training, managing the company and brickmaking, and putting what portions of any profits are not reinvested into the development of the company towards the development council's development projects. All the money will stay with us in trust until a project is ready to break ground. I don't know about you, but I am quite happy about that deal, should it all come to pass as agreed.

We also registered a company today. "aibia". It is first registered as a CBO (community based organization). This makes us able to provide services for the council here locally, while not forcing us to undertake all the difficulties and monetary constraints of full NGO incorporation. Once we are in a position to do that, then we can simply change the designation and keep all the assets with the company. We filed the cbo registry today, will pick it up tomorrow. 24 hour company registration (and only because the 2nd administrator that must sign it was out today).

I also have offered Yapo a position as the local manager of this organization. Everything is happening very fast, and it may seem impulsive. (I keep waiting for "the catch", but it hasn't come yet). This decision about Yapo though is something I have thought about. I feel that I can work with him, and that he can do a good job. He is a young guy, training to be a lawyer, but he has a good business sense. He is currently managing some projects for a few local NGOs, he has worked as a supervisor for a more traditional brick making operation, and also worked for the same development council that we are working with now. He understands their side, he understands a bit about bricks, and he understands the local environment. I feel that he will be a good fit.

I have yet to talk to Kaps about this, but he and Kevin are very much focused on ChildHelp. The track will give them a great opportunity. They are very committed to their work and I see them as being on the board of directors for aibia, and handling a good deal of the community projects we will undertake. I couldn't have gotten here without them, they are special people to me. I have to make the right business decisions. I am not sure how to handle this culturally, or if I should even be worried about it. I hope they didn't want to manage it. They are both very good facilitators. I think their strengths are perhaps more in aid and charity work then construction management though. But I will discuss it with them this afternoon and make sure we are clear.

Now to write a letter of introduction for this new company: aibia

The Big Picture

Given a comment that I received on one post it seems that I should bump up in order of importance a post about what the ultimate goal of this whole scenario is in terms of meaning and methods.  Some of this was touched upon in 'Why Sierra Leone?'.  But to elaborate, the ultimate goal with this project is not just about Sierra Leone, it is not about child soldiers, or human trafficking, or any other specific micro issue that one might put their finger on.  The issue here is humanity.  Take a step back and look at the world in broad terms.  Less than one billion people live in 'the West', yet this area dominates the world and its socio-economic directions.  The rest of humanity has been forced/enticed into following our ways based on the material outcomes of our society.  The problem with all of this is that in order to maintain our level of dominance we in the West have had to expropriate numerous resources - both raw, manufactured, and human - from less 'developed' areas of the world.  We are doing this at great cost to the local populations and society at large.  We need to rethink our way of living together and the way we produce and reproduce things.


   
This project in Sierra Leone is not just a hiking project, it is not just a non-profit project for Sierra Leone, it is the foundational element in working towards finding an alternative way of doing things.  One that finds a balance between the individual and the community.  Communism focused on the community, and it failed for a myriad of different reasons.  Capitalism may have 'out produced' communism, and all other systems for that matter, but when I look at the world right now I do not see a blissfully utopian scenario.  I see a place where, according to the HIIK Conflict Barometer (for interactive map click here) for 2009, 365 countries maintained active conflicts: 108 latent conflicts, 114 manifest conflicts, 112 crisis, 24 severe crisis, and 7 wars.  Where the world has billions of people in need of clean food and water and estimates at the percentage of people living in 'poverty' usually starts at 25% (thats over 1.5 billion people or 5 United States - picture the entire country in poverty, x 5 !!).  The rich areas of the world and countries push around those with less and they do this by militaristic and economic bullying.  

It is very difficult to look at the world as a whole and say that it is a good place and that the Capitalist direction - based on supremacy of the individual - is going to make things better for more than a few.  We don't do much for other places or communities, because our system does not directly reward it for ourselves or our communities.  This is specifically the longer term goals of this project, to work towards finding a way for society to develop and excel in a way that favors a balance between both the individual and the community and creates a motivational and reward system from within the localized system.  When an individual does something to benefit themselves the system should also provide rewards for it to benefit the community, and vice versa.  A symbiotic relationship.

We plan to do this in practice by creating a business structure that will work to balance these rewards and motivations.  The initial entity of ownership in a business/production scenario will be the non-profit (later to be named).  This separate business entity will then grant ownership and/or controlling rights to its workers (as part of their pay or a similar scenario) and also to the local community via buy in.  Non-profit "x" would maintain a stake for a time as well and act as an incubator of sorts.  But not solely as a business incubator, but as a structural incubator designed to initiate and then maintain this symbiotic balance between company, individual, and community.  


It is an elaborate concept, that I won't get wholly into yet here.  But the outcome should be a company that is   controlled in equal aspects by the community, its workers, and the 'investor'/'incubator' (though not permanently).  The company itself would function in a manner similar to a non-profit in that profits would not go to enrich the individual stakeholders.  All proceeds would be reinvested into either the company or the community.  The stakeholders benefit is more in regards to an aspect of control than financial gain.

The principle is to create a non-governmental organization based in a specific locality that would work as an engine for the local community.  The business itself would function as any 'typical' business, working to maximize efficiency and incentivize employees in a way to be competitive in the marketplace, but its 'shareholders' (though there would be definite restrictions on transferability, etc) would not be motivated by individual profit seeking, but in terms of individual professional and subsequent local community gains.  The profits would go to provide many things considered today to be public works or 'state' provisions - sewage, roads, security, parks, clean water, etc.  The community will have a huge stake in what the company does as it is their ticket to better public works, yet it is a private entity run locally by the workers, community and external and/or local investors investors.  The business will be set up to sustain business operations, employ local people, and to facilitate local infrastructure and socio-economic development on all levels from roads to parks.  A symbiotic relationship between the business, the community, and the individual.

I am not sure that this makes a great deal of sense as I have only brushed the surface of it and there is still a great deal of work to be done on this concept.  But I believe it is a positive pathway to continue down and one that perhaps in time could eventually work as a starting point or even societal model for sustainable and productive socio-economic development.

Introduction Part II

So how does a dream then become reality?  Well for me, at least intrinsically, that means just getting up and making it happen - just going.  But luckily cooler motherly heads prevailed.  I believe that if you really want to learn something you should go into it without much presumption, with an open mind and an open heart.  I.e. just get up and go, figure it out as you make it happen.  But I come back to the initial two desired outcomes: to blog and write about it, and to identify future endeavors.  Ultimately, if we wanted to do these two things properly some planning needed to happen (it also doesn't hurt that the summer time is the rainy season in Sierra Leone and not ideal for backpacking!!)

So we sat down to map out the best way forward.  This of course is a continually fluid scenario, and still being worked on...  ;)  But what we have come up with is that no matter what, if it is a sponsorship scenario or a non-profit entity doing exploratory project research, there has to be a non-profit organization to help facilitate it all.  Donars need their contributions to be tax deductible, and any future endeavor would benefit from a name with a track record.  Unfortunately in our world, the head of a non-profit organization carries more weight than any random backpacker walking through town.  So setting up a non-profit became a priority.  

There are of course a litany of other things that must be done.  Logistics need to be sorted out.  Visas, doing business in SL, length of stay, etc.  What kind of network of cooperation could be achieved both there and in the US?  Are there sympathetic entities on the ground there that would help the project?  How do I contact them, and can they help provide guidance for my trek?  Equipment; everything from communications to a light backpacking stove needed to be researched and decided upon.  A budget, a web presence, a method for connecting and blogging, a group of well intentioned people to delegate to, a board of directors...  People and information...  Funny how the world revolves around those two 'simple' things.  The list continues, language, the Sierra Leone diaspora here in the US, tropical backpacking, security...  Complication after complication...  It certainly would be easier just to pick up and go!! 

But its ok, we'll take the time and plan it out.  Set up a legitimate non-profit organization that can grow over years, map out an agenda and trekking route, obtain the right equipment, wait for the proper time of year, and then go and figure it out...    :)