First step towards sustainability

As a leeway from my afternoon graduate studies readings, I devoted half an hour toasting some sliced bread in the kitchen. In a matter of a month, I learned the fundamentals of cooking home-standard meals, including mixed vegetables, chicken and fish soups, Adobo, and chicken curry, among others. Now, venturing into preparing easy snacks that my family considers edible is where I am expounding. Cooking, surprisingly, is not such a tough job. With working taste buds and experimental hands, I believe anyone can cook.

While toasting bread dressed with butter and white sugar, I did not implement a timer to note when to flip sides. Because I panic when timed, and, guiltily, I do not perceive such as a critical component in my system. If the bread burns, I will spare it from my family and consume it myself, that easy. But upon pondering about how I could have saved several slices from burning, I caught my personal inclination to be the same with other people’s lack of interest. Specifically, our partners' less preference for new interventions because they have a capable and reliable system in place for decades.

Since I started working for a service-oriented agency, I have acquainted myself with the same frustration my workmates face through the years. To put it plainly, some of the projects we develop and turn over to select farmers do not last long as expected. There is not a single assessment that we do not discuss the term sustainability at work. Because, even up to this day, we are still figuring out how to hit it.

But I dare say we are not far from addressing the term sustainability. My workmates, especially those who coordinate directly on the field with our local agencies, know that their system is not working; hence, devising it is necessary. And it should be as simple as this: involve the program beneficiaries as actual partners for change. I mean including them in conceptualizing and implementing the project. Allow them to propose solutions for everyone to examine and decide. A participatory approach to development interventions is not only necessary to project sustainability. It makes up sustainability.

A participatory approach cuts across every development initiative. I remember someone from work who discouraged me from listening too much to our clientele's opinions on the Education, Information, and Communication materials we produce. When I told her one remark of a farmer I met in the field, she told me to dismiss the idea. She did not blink but insisted that between the farmers and us, we know far better.

I wish I were bolder to counter her argument at that time. But importantly, I hope she knew what she was talking about because clearly, she is missing the entire point of what we are doing.

The peril in how most government agencies go about their work is their trust in archaic methodologies. Despite how failures repeat themselves through the years, they have acknowledged it as a norm and not strive to counter it.

I have sustained my decision to practice actual cooking because I find it a practical skill for myself and my family. In relation, when deciding on a development project, we should be asking what a community needs in the first place. The one that they would pursue even without our help provided they have access to local resources. Such would be a practical investment.

Practicality value will determine sustainability. If we focus on this and not derive pride in what we have given, especially not the cost, our projects could have lasted and not died with the tides. We could have clearly say we are progressing.