One very serious bottleneck we face is that there is a firm belief that without money, nothing can be done.
I use the words “serious bottleneck” because this belief
permeates the entirety of society and has both a demand side – which is our
people who refuse to do anything where there is no money involved and this
fuels the perpetuation of this bottleneck. I am not in any way against money,
but I am against this notion that without money, we cannot do anything because
it is self-defeatist and is what will make money even more elusive.
Money follows where there is a promise of a return, and one
cannot show that promise of a return without first using what is within their
reach to show impact which then attracts money. We have no choice but to break
the vicious cycle of this “serious bottleneck” and this will be done by people
like you and me and the few others who refuse to believe that without upfront
money we cannot do anything. I will encourage you to contribute towards
breaking this cycle by re-strategizing the delivery of any initiatives as
follows:
a) Do not frame ideas as a “project” because the moment you
mention project, people know that it is about sitting back and waiting for
money to be brought and things to be done for them. Instead, frame it as a
bringing of knowledge and expertise to the community to work with them and
guide them to turn their challenges be, they in plastic pollution problem into
a sanitation solution.
b) Make it clear that this is a community friendship
initiatives and that those who call themselves friends of a given community
need to volunteer their skills, knowledge, networks, towards building the first
demonstration community toilet built using plastic waste. So, the logic is, use
your power of communication to mobilize members of a given target community to
bring their hands together and support their community with this practical
sanitation solution. It will be the way people organize “free medical camps”
but this will be slightly different as the community will be expected to play a
key role in delivering this solution – e.g. local administrators need to
provide space, local youth be ready to collect the plastic bottles and prepared
them, other professionals from the community who are in cities and that are not
on the ground to donate towards material, tools etc. So in other words, make
this a coming together of the community to deliver an innovation that has come
from your ideas and where you will play a coordination role to deliver it.
c) In this way, you innovatively volunteer your time, ideas
and efforts to make a difference and the community also benefits from a
solution and this solution delivered by the community depending in each other
and this drives ownership and sustainability. So, organize a mobilization
campaign through twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others to bring together all
these actors of a given community to work together towards delivering solution
to community.
d) Long term sustainability of this will need some kind of
model. And for this, I think you will need to have a committee – which will be
some kind of cooperative responsible for managing, maintenance and continuous
improvement of the facility you have help put in place – and this will then put
charges for using this facility. And the payments made will be pooled in
cooperatives to enable expansion of the solution. You, your team and initiative
will also be part of this cooperative.
Leverage the logic of mobilizing community members to
collaborate and co-operate around delivering a solution – in this
case, a solution to empower village youth with skills in recycling so they can
serve the community. This will need to be a recycling of waste into items that
are of use in the community. E.g. for instance, you can tie this to the first
initiative where the youth are trained to recycle plastic waste into building
materials fir making toilets and such sanitary facilities. Hence, the youth who
build these toilets are trained first. The same model will apply here as well.
a) mobilize willing youth to be trained as solutions
providers for community sanitation challenges.
b) community members contribute in-kind – including by
volunteering to train these youth.
c) engaged youth who build these toilets become part of
cooperative and be benefiting from the little fee payed by users of these
solutions.
d) expand this model to other communities and plays
coordination role.
Start with what you have which is your ability for
mobilization, our free guidance, and the platform that Innovative Volunteerism
provides that can make it a trusted custodian to coordinate community actions
on the ground.
Start with what you have you look for Money!