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Development in the 21st Century and the nature of helping others...
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Live from Zagreb! At the annual meeting of UNDP capacity development practitioners in Europe and CIS, Jens Wandel, Deputy Regional Director and Regional Centre Director, talked about systems thinking, and how this helps us to work in complex environments, to see interrelationships and patterns of change - necessary skills for dealing with 21st Century challenges. He also talked about the importance of assisting countries to develop institutional capacity for low carbon economies, and suggested that area based development can help to define the scope of capacity development support. Interestingly enough, soul searching was also on the agenda. Development waxes philosophical: The real show stopper came from Søren Kierkegaard who shared some wisdom from way back in the 19th Century, from his: The Point of View for My Work as An Author (1859). According to Kierkegaard: “That if real success is to attend the effort to bring a man to a definite position, one must first of all take pains to find HIM where he is and begin there. This is the secret of the art of helping others. Any one who has not mastered this is himself deluded when he proposes to help others. In order to help another effectively I must understand more than he- yet first of all surely I must understand what he understands. If I do not know that, my greater understanding will be of no help to him. If, however, I am disposed to plume myself of my greater understanding, it is because I am vain or proud, so that at bottom, instead of benefiting him, I want to be admired. But all true effort to help begins with self-humiliation: the helper must first humble himself under him he would help, and therewith must understand that to help does not mean to be sovereign but to be a servant, that to help does not mean to be ambitious but to be patient, that to help means to endure for the time being the imputation that one is in the wrong and does not understand what the other understands.*” Relevant today as it ever was. It echoes sentiments that are at the root of the capacity development approach, which respects the invaluable understanding of country context that can only come from national partners. It is development that responds to national priorities, that builds on existing capacities and systems. It has built in opportunities to engage, dialogue and communicate at each stage of the capacity development process to ensure that partners are not only on board, but lead the way. Thanks Kierkegaard. *Translation by Walter Lowrie, Harper & Brothers, New York, 1962.
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