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By Laura Libman ‘05
What is self-development? No, really. I’ve commiserated with a number of nonprofit execs, trying to come up with a clear and succinct definition of self-development for the lay person. We have yet to come up with a satisfactory definition. Self-development is the paramount goal for my organization, the Tia Foundation, and many other worthy NPOs. I can point to a variety of instances of self-development occurring in the field.
For example, almost all of Tia’s Community Health Workers organize the people in their villages to address community issues unrelated to health, such as lobbying the government for access to education, or pooling their pesos to co-op fresh produce (which individually they could not afford), and sharing knowledge and skills. We do not prompt them to organize; they do it their own. My fellow NPO colleagues notice similar changes in their communities, too.
I noticed that there are some astute posts here, so I’d love to get some help from our virtual Global Citizenship community.
Laura Libman is president and founder of the Tia Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit that provides sustainable health development strategies in rural Mexico. The foundation primarily focuses on training and equipping Community Health Workers, elected by fellow villagers in remote areas, hours from the nearest doctor or medical facility. Libman, a 2005 Thunderbird graduate, is a member of The Border Trade Alliance, The Arizona-Mexico Commission, The National Hispanic Honor Society and The National Society of Hispanic MBAs. She also serves on the board of directors of and is a mentor and group leader for The Washington Street Foundation (wsfkids.org), a Phoenix-based mentoring program for economically disadvantaged children.
February 26th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
In some regards, for CHOICE Humanitarian, a self developed village might be defined as a village that now looks forward, one that has vision, and one, whose villagers now have real dreams…dreams that aren’t just ‘pies in the sky,’ but dreams that they believe they can achieve.
Part of how we measure the success of our programs is by what the village accomplishes after CHOICE exits. How are the leaders responding to the current needs? Are they using a strategy that includes all of the available local resources? Are they actively seeing the assistance of other regional, national, and international organizations? Are they making their own ‘pitches’ and presentations? Are they thinking more about the community needs vs their own individual needs?
We have been fortunate here to see a number of our villages achieve this level of development.
March 1st, 2009 at 7:52 am
One of the projects our organization provides is village based health training that focuses on Behavior Change, which I suppose could be a synonym for Self Development. We look for evidence of behavior change in health and hygiene practices among individuals, families, and villages through pre- and post- KAP (Knowledge, Attitudes & Practice) Surveys taken before and after the trainings, which are spread out over several months.
I think the concept you’re talking about, self-development, can also be seen in many instances of successful microfinance. When families, and especially women, successfully turn a profit on their investment activities it can be a very motivating and empowering experience – albeit harder to measure outside of profits.