Voluntary Complexity: the small mobile intelligent NGO

by Oliver Lowenstein

All rights reserved, 2002.

Research material assistance from Working Abroad. Permission to use any sections apart from short extracts required from author - fourthdoor@pavilion.co.uk, 00 44 (0) 1273 473501

I'm expecting a crackle on the line as I wait for someone to pick up the phone in a place which my mind's eye imagines to be deep in the Brazilian interior. But when I get through, the other end of the line is surprisingly clear, if a mite quieter, than if you or I were chatting in the same town, and I quickly spiral into realising I'm a mere trans south Atlantic telephone novice, in need of serious upgrading in the advances of global communications technology.

'Yes, the line is good. It is not always so good', says the voice at the other end. Carole Pilloud is a Swiss legal secretary in a Berne practice, where she put in sixteen years of day-in, day-out, nine-to-fiveing. But during many of those years she cultivated a yearning to travel. As a way to do this she began to look into voluntary work. Today, this dream has been realised. As we talk, it's her last weekend on a small farm project deep in Brazil's interior before she sets off for six week's travel and adventure into the depths of the Amazonian rainforest. For this last weekend, she'll be finishing off her varied jobs on the farm, one of sixteen volunteers there, in the north of Minas Gerais state, six hour's bus journey from Brazil's capital, Rio. The farm is a part of the Iracambi Trust, a micro-Non Governmental Organisation immersed in environmental work at the southern edge of the still vast Brazilian Rainforests. Carole has put in three months of her journey half-way across the planet - clearing trails, planting trees, as well as repainting, plumbing and carpenting in the environmental school the Trust runs, ending up as food manager for the entire farm; essentially organising the shopping lists and heading for town. 'I feel good', says Carole, 'but sad to leave. If I have the opportunity I would love to do something like this again.'

Talking with Carole, what comes as something of a surprise is that contrary to the old assumed practices of Voluntary Services Overseas, Peace Corps, and the like, rather than any expected quid pro quo of bed and meals in exchange for volunteer's worktime and commitment, Carole, and thousands like her, have actually paid the charity to go out to Iracambi, be there, and do their volunteering.

'Nobody was more surprised than we were! Charging was the only way we could continue.' The accent is middle class english, hard to square with the place you are trying to summon up a picture of, whilst the man's name evokes further confusion, Robin Le Breton founded the Iracambi Trust, by himself, after years working at a Governmental level. 'I expected three or four volunteers, he adds, 'and we got twenty!'

All this feels indicative of many things related to living on a small planet that's getting smaller: First, the growth of the development sector; and interconnected, the massive growth in travelling by significant portions of the world's richer populations, serviced and aided by the steep upward curve in the world's air industry; and the transformations in communication: from my easy phone communication to rural Brazil, to the increasing ubiquity of the internet and the world wide web. In this, a tangential, but related consequence of media communications, has been the change in working patterns over the last twenty years. No longer can people rely on a job for life, and anyway, many don't necessarily want such life-long jobs. Travelling, volunteering, and working, combine to be one way to provide the CV with some extra pizzazz, and for demonstrating a willingness for new experiences and "broadening the mind". Such broadening these days is considered, at least in moderation, a "good thing". Why else the pre-career, pre-college institutionalisation of the Gap year - another phenomenon underpinned by a contracting planet - and, surely, arguably, partial driver of this realignment of the voluntary sector? Enmeshed in all of this is the exponential rise of world tourism, and the desire by so many to travel further, and often faster. If there are dark warnings about the eventual ecological and cultural consequences of so many people traipsing the earth in search of their few months of bliss and blisters, this expression of what essentially is a version of ecotourism, appears to imprint a much lighter eco-footstep on different foreign lands, and seems relatively benign and muted in its negative side-effects. The critics of the whole culture of tourism who question the differences between eco and mainstream tourism have a point, but this said, eco-advocates argue that one day of mainstream tourism is equal to five years of eco-travelling.

All told, these turn-of-the-millennium convulsions have, whatever else, also enabled the symbiotic growth of a whole new layer of NGO activity, of which the Iracambi Trust is but one example. Some of these micro-NGOs were already there way back in the sixties, but paid volunteering has enabled many to both survive and prosper, getting their aims realised effectively, and setting a ball rolling which is growing at a steady and indeed, increasing rate. The interesting, and for many, accepted practice in this neck of the NGO woods is, that Carole is one of many volunteers paying for their time out in the wilds of the Western world, far from their safe European (American, or Australian) homes.

This is an evolution in how NGOs work and can be seen as a distinct new turning. In part emerging out of seventies and eighties boom in overseas work, which took literally hundreds of thousands of young, mostly white, men and women to what were, until recently, far-flung corners of the globe. Whilst the NGO movement matured during these decades, becoming institutionalised, with career structures crystallising, and a quasi-corporate level of professionalism, it also introduced countless individuals who were so taken with what they had been able to do on the ground, that they tried to figure out small-scale ways of continuing this work, without necessarily having their hands tied. Or by having styles cramped by being so accountable to their former mentors; top-down large scale organisations such as Voluntary Services Overseas, Oxfam, and others, which fall under the United Nations umbrella, or the Governmental Ministry Agencies.

People with local knowledge and local contacts thus began to set up their own organisations, often after working in a particular place in the world, maintaining that connection, and trying to feed in further assistance from the West (or more accurately, North). As a result there are today literally thousands of organisations which run on a micro-scale, 'one man and his dog' as one put it, doing things the world over.

And what has been noticed is that these organisations can get things done. Fleet-footed, and small enough to respond to sudden changes in circumstances, these players show a capacity for adaptive behaviour that the creaking cumbersome dinosaur logic which big, organisational thinking cannot match. But removing the 'fitness' survival metaphor, there is a basic difference in approach so that although small, tangible results do flow from the strategy. Results such as Iracambi's recently launched environmental education programme in the regional schools for instance, or many miles from Brazil, deep in rural Tanzania, Mondo Challenge (another charitable trust) is facilitating the construction of a building which acts as a village nursery and health centre.

Iracambi's Robin Le Breton, who worked for many years in the institutional Brazilian development sector jungle, talks about how nigh on impossible it was (and remains), to achieve results through the corridors of power. By contrast he points to Iracambi's latest grassroots achievements; an Environmental Education School and a Municipal Economic Development Plan, both through their separate routes, introducing the ideas and practices of sustainable agriculture to the region. What it means, according to Le Breton, is that local people, for instance the actual farmers, are active participants. "We're able to talk to people, mobilize resources, get things done. If it had gone through the Government agencies, nothing would have been achieved at all, I've seen it so many times. In Brazil, the government agencies are too bureaucratic. But we're able to get people involved at a grass-roots level, start the ball rolling...even if the changes are small, and not very visible." And he points to big changes happening from small seeds. Indeed Le Breton appears particularly pleased with the Environmental Education project, where both its staff and volunteers have been working with local schools introducing both the rudiments and more sophisticated ideas about the nuts and bolts of sustainability, seeding it in the next generation. "Everyone, the schools, parents, children, were very receptive, but didn't know what to do. And if we hadn't done it, nothing would have happened." So successful has it been that it is presently being introduced as part of the school curriculum across the whole state. In the longer term this fits into Iracambi's overarching strategy of growing what are in effect forest sanctuaries from their base on the southern edge of the rainforests. With these areas safe from logging, the hope is to join these to the remaining forest fragments so as to create long joined-up forest areas, chains almost, to the larger forest regions further north. This will aid the 10,000 plant species and principal trees at risk, as well as protect the biodiversity of the region. It is an ambitious if understated project, and would not have got anywhere without the volunteers.

Mondo Challenge's, Anthony Lunch, tells a similar story. His organisation is currently sending up to one hundred volunteers every year to projects being facilitated in Nepal, Tanzania, India and the Gambia. He agrees it's a kind of entrepreneurial cross-subsidy, the cost being £600 to £700 for about three months. 'Volunteers', he declares, 'are more important than money.' They can be unbelievably focused, and very effective at a person-to-person level. To have people come and work within local communities is fantastically heartening, and communities very much value the volunteers. Also with a volunteer there is someone who acts as a check and balance in the loop, so we can provide small amounts of money, two or three hundred pounds - amounts which wouldn't even appear on a NGO budget - and set up projects which would be impossible otherwise'. His words declare a distrust at the conventional scatterball approach of throwing money at problems. "Money very, very easily gets lost, but with people there you can find people who can be trusted and want to get things done, and then things happen."

For instance, in Arusha, a small Masai village in the north of Tanzania, the community wanted to build a children's nursery, from a local boma design with wattle and daub. Volunteers and community worked together, with a local project manager looking after the day-to-day work, and within a few months the boma had been built in the village compound. One problem with the system, is how projects can fade away once the volunteers leave. Lunch says this isn't the case with Mondo Challenge, but he's seen it in other instances. As to the growing sector of such volunteer-dependent organisations, Lunch affirms the need for tight management control and for running the organisation professionally, otherwise follow-on considerations, such as the critical mass needed to continue, can be put at risk. He's also sure that the small-scale paradigm accounts for much of the dynamic, and thinks organisations need to stay 'lean, healthy and keen...the volunteers are inspired by the situations they find themselves in, and they're allowed an incredible amount of leverage, which just isn't accessible to the large NGOs. And also, once you're working in a large organisation there are many kinds of waste. There's an awful lot of people out there', he adds as something of a caveat, 'who just want to roll their sleeves up, work with people, and learn something.' What these words disguise is the different circumstances which volunteers come to projects compared to the host communities. Whilst the volunteers often bring boundless enthusiasm they are freer to challenge the local bureaucracies without fear of reprisal compared to those from the communities. There is also a sense from some in the more orthodox NGOs that a principal part of the work is for these communities to be solving their own problems, which volunteering can at times distill. And sometimes volunteers come with presumed notions of certain technologies being appropriate before finding that there are only too real reasons why local lo-technologies have been applied over many years.

If all this gives an impression that NGO volunteering is limited to the developing world, any such assumption would be wrong. North of the Arctic Circle, in Canada, Malcolm and Coral Earney are working in a school for a small local community of Indigenous Canadians, isolated from the next village by hundreds of miles of Taiga. The Earney's, from East Anglia, Britain demonstrate another aspect of this work. Both are retired, he an ex-bank manager, she working in their original home community. Both did voluntary work in Britain, and they say, the work they are doing, and the problems being encountered - alcoholism, poverty and rural isolation, amongst others, - are not so different. The Earney's wanted to see parts of the world from a first-hand perspective, to really get involved and experience what happens on the ground. Volunteering in this way, has enabled them to do this, actually living in a community, something, they say, travelling through hotels would not have been able to provide. What is perhaps interesting is that this form of volunteering is not the preserve of the young, something Lunch is also keen to stress, noting how volunteers often bring a wealth of experience and knowledge built from a lifetime's professional work.

Lunch's last suggestion is how a loose affiliation representing these grassroots micro-NGOs, networked and cross-stitched together, could help this bubbling movement. When asked, he seems reluctant to criticise the large scale NGOs but the dynamic nature of the micros does beg an awful lot of questions regarding both their efficacy and efficiencies of scale. Talk to others and there is a sense of how Governmental Agencies are viewed as a genuine problem, rather than solution, unlikely ever to make it into heaven, if quality control were part of the latter's entry requirements. As Andreas Kornevall of Working Abroad, the web-organisation which links volunteers looking for places to go with places looking for volunteers to come says, "these large NGOs may have the resources to provide a new fleet of lorries, but then they don't think about training people how to repair them when the lorries break down. It doesn't even begin to be joined-up thinking!" By contrast, Kornevall - whose company, with many of the micro-NGOs on its website to check out, is among those which have facilitated this whole culture of volunteering - repeats the mantra of the small, mobile and intelligent NGOs, provides a rollcall of further examples of where on-the-ground flexibility comes up with results.

At the extreme end of this spectrum it has so frustrated some of the micro-NGOs that some are actually rejecting the support of the major donor organisations. Siddarth Sanyal, of the Dakshinayan Foundation in northern India wrote in a recent newsletter of his conviction that to effectively carry out "need-based development work" the Foundation would have to remain independent, which translated into not accepting any funding from the government or any donor agency. Up to this point Dakshinayan had completely financed itself from whatever was saved from volunteers fees supplemented by individual's contributions. But with only meager financial contributions and an absence of volunteers coming in, Siddarth states he is between a rock and hard place. "Either I do what every organisation is doing: asking for funds from donor agencies and "implement" their programmes; or shut down for the time being and restart when the situation improves. Quite honestly, I would rather close down Dakshinayan than seek aid from donor agencies who will expect us to do what THEY feel is good for the project and the people. If I do that, Dakshinayan will cease to be what it is and all that it stands for. It would be better for it to die."

This may be a specific and rather desperate example but it provides dramatic food for thought about the passions which come with the small independent NGO territory, and the disdain some hold for the lumbering majors, along with an insight into the perceived absence of legitimacy about the actual good being realised for the community the aid and development funds are supposedly meant to be helping. It is not a unique tale by any means either. And in this regard the relationship reflects the despair many in the varied and multi-focused Anti-Globalisation movement feel to the official explanations as to the supposed benefits and therefore reasoning for every next move towards Economic Liberalisation, Free Trade, and the other leit-motifs of present day Globalisation.

The small NGOs, with Anti-Globalists, also share, partially because it is surely a manifestation of the same spirit, the qualities of a bottom-up 'headless' organisational frame, rather than the command economies of top-down thinking. Both anti-Globalists and the micro-NGOs suggest many emergent properties, given both are manifesting self-organising systems. Whilst it may be pushing the analogy, it doesn't feel too far-fetched to talk of these NGOs as exhibiting various signs of the conditions of emergence. These micro organisations have learned from the past, and adapted into the terrain. Volunteers are part of this adaptation. 'More Is different', 'Ignorance is useful', 'Encourage random encounters' and 'Pay attention to your neighbours' are some of the guiding principles by which to understand the organised complexity of the modern world, according to theorist Steven Johnson in his recent book on the subject, imaginatively titled Emergence. It feels as if micro-NGOs fulfill some of these descriptive categories, even if not, perhaps, in quite the same way as ants, cities, and slime moulds. In effect, it feels as if it isn't stretching the interpretive frame to see this phenomenon as another expression of complexity, however much its enthusiastic participants may be yearning for something else, simplicity perhaps. Rather than voluntary simplicity the NGOs might possibly be said to exhibit signs of voluntary complexity. Perhaps, at the very least the small, intelligent micros show a new way of doing development which expands the vocabulary of how development can be done.

Fourth Door Review - Oliver Lowenstein runs the green cultural, new media, arts and architecture journal Fourth Door Review

Frontiers Foundation – Community Development projects with Aboriginal people in Northern Canada

Iracambi Trust website - Environmental education and rainforest conservation.

Mondo Challenge - Teaching, women's projects and community development projects in Tanzania, The Gambia, and Nepal.

Working Abroad - Website for all those wanting to volunteer with grassroots organisations all over the world, offers information services, and personal advice.