Sunday, August 24, 2008

Diplomacy consideration of previous post

And here is an important example. You have western aid workers rushing into places like Afghanistan. They want to "Americanize" through their volunteer work facilities such as homes and schools. They may be well meaning but this mindset causes trouble for two reasons. One it is not a consistent mindset with how life goes on there (the values and the culture), plus it is not long term and lasting. Just like I mentioned in the previous post, well meaning people go there to do some things on a check off list, and then leave.

If I were in charge of western volunteer aid workers in places like Afghanistan, here is what I would do. I would let local community leaders identify what they need for their children, community and economics to thrive. Then I would create guilds in those trades. Guilds are an honorable tradition in both western and eastern culture. Then I would endow organizations that could fund that activity using culturally appropriate means (such as Islamic banking traditions and organizations). So instead of westerners arriving to "build a school," the local people would decide what kind of school they need, the guild trade organizations would train and assemble the local people who would do the work, and they draw upon the well meaning charitable funding through regulated culturally approved means, such as an Islamic banking organization. Voila. Less danger and misunderstanding for everyone involved, and many orders of magnitude more permanent progress and lifting of standards of living for everyone.