International Sustainable Community Development practices such as Child-Aid foundation requires the proper preparation. The first thing that comes to mind after the speaker talks about the Child-Aid issue with teachers is the loss of resources as a result of uninformed staff. The books stashed in the library would have been a loss if the issue was not identified. The Guatemala school teachers had not used books even during their life as students. The instructors and founders should understand the difference between charity and development. In most cases, people participate in charity more than in the developing to the needy or orphans (Serageldin et al., 56). From Greg Meenaham’s Child-Aid scenario, charity and development should be considered as two distinct ideas in ISCD. Charity only involves the giving resources while development involves the resources, skills that help in the future developments of the individuals.
The Child-Aid Project faced the challenge of educating the teachers first on using the books where they could also teach the children. Meenaham claims that Guatemala had experienced violence and the locals would not trust the Americans. The locals in any traditional culture tend to hesitate when it comes to changing some of their traditional practices. The ISCD practitioners should have the attitude and motive of having an impact on the children lives. Meenaham claims that the practitioners helped the project because they portrayed the right attitude and motivation of bettering the lives of the children in the future. The previous allocation of book would appear as charity as they would not understand how to go about using books. The speaker also converges that the local culture and history determines how the people respond to the practices.
The literacy program uses development strategy over charity to impact literacy to the students and the teachers. Fighting poverty may be difficult if the individuals have no will hence, instill knowledge and skills is the effective tactic for ISCD programs such as Child-Aid.
Work Cited
Serageldin, Ismail, Michael A. Cohen, and Josef Leitmann. Enabling Sustainable Community
Development. Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1995. Print.
