In our recent blog posts, Reflections on Cultural Survival and The Blue Sweater, we offered our concerns about the possible unintended negative impact of outside help to the people of Northern Kenya. Clearly, one response to these concerns is to look to those in need for the answers.
I had the opportunity in October to meet and talk with Kathleen Colson, Executive Director of the BOMA Fund, a non-profit organization serving Northern Kenya originally established in association with Joseph Lekuton. Over a bowl of soup in Brattleboro, Vermont, Kathleen listened to me lament over these issues that seemed to me to present a moral dilemma. When I finished, she simply said, “I don’t think it is for us to decide.”
From Colson’s perspective, the key issue is not cultural survival but human survival, which requires addressing profound poverty. The BOMA Fund and its Rural Entrepreneur Access Project approach this issue through working with the women in the rural Rendille, Samburu, Ariaal, Turkana and Elmolo communities in Northern Kenya to establish community businesses with a mission to improve the capacity of individuals to earn their own income. The BOMA Fund website and this video give an overview of their work:
Video source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTaEmgHL1l0
“Patronizing the poor is proving to be a deadbeat strategy. Trusting those in need may be the answer.”
Claudia
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