People in Need, a Czech NGO that provides relief and development assistance in poverty-stricken and war-torn countries around the world, opened its permanent mission in Afghanistan in 2001. Its projects are coordinated through a central office in Kabul and an office in Mazar-e-Sharif, though it operates 14 field offices in the provinces of Kunduz, Balkh, Baghlan, Nangahar and Paktia. Its aim is to help find long-term solutions for poor nutrition and a lack of education, and to strengthen the ability of the local residents to tackle problems in the community using locally-accessible resources with respect to the specifics of the local climate and terrain. Radio Prague’s Christian Falvey, who is in Afghanistan, covering the work of People in Need, spoke to the head of its mission Jan Štepán and asked him how they operated given the extent of destruction all over Kabul.
“Well, first of all, it is not the case that half of the buildings are destroyed. They are very slow in clearing up here, so much of it is still the remnants of the wars in the 90. They still haven’t reconstructed that. Not much of the destruction you see happened in the last eight years.”
But still with so many problems in this country, where do you begin?
Photo: www.peopleinneed.cz
“Well, over time every organization like People in Need profiles itself in a certain way. So you are trying to look at things that you know how to do best so that you are as efficient as possible. Also as an organization you usually have a strategy or sectors that you work on long-term in various countries –so you build up expertise. And that is the case with PIN. So in Afghanistan, immediately after the Taliban was overthrown, we opened the mission and the first thing we did was assisting the refugees who were returning to the country because that was the immediate need on the ground. We helped them return to their villages, we reconstructed some schools, got water into the villages and reconstructed some of what was destroyed during the war so that people could actually start living there. And then slowly, we added to this emergency component – because we still do emergency aid in terms of food and water assistance - education. This is something that People in Need does all over the world and we do it relatively well. So in Afghanistan we are basically one of the major partners of the Ministry of Agriculture and we are working at all the agricultural high schools currently functioning in Afghanistan. And then we added to it what we call a rural assistance programme – basically we go to remote areas and we create community councils – they call them CDCs – we don’t actually create them but we facilitate the process of democratic election and then the CDCs are trained how to handle a certain amount of grants. They get grants from the government and they can implement their own little projects.”
At the end of the day, how do you rate your own success because there is always so much more that can be done?
Jan Štěpán
“That’s always a difficult question for any humanitarian or aid worker. We all want to change something. That’s why we are here. At the same time you inevitably see that the impact you make is limited and is concentrated to the area in which you are working. At the same time organizations like PIN do not strive to achieve a change in society or a change in politics or a change in culture. We are profiling ourselves and in Afghanistan we are the NGO that goes to the remotest villages and we help the poorest of the poor. That’s what we do and that’s how we judge whether to undertake a project or not. Is it far enough? Is it remote enough? Is it isolated enough? Is it poor enough? And if it is, then we say okay this is where we should be. And the impact you see on the ground is enormous and this makes you really feel that whatever you do here makes sense. You see these farmers that have been helped for the first time. And you see them coming down from the mountains with their donkeys to pick up the first pack of wheat that they have got from anyone. And you see them looking at our demonstration plots where we show them how to plant it a bit better so that they have got higher yields. And they are amazed that something like that exists. And they are just so happy. And then they receive water from us. They are amazed that a white person would actually bring them water. Some of them have never seen a foreigner before. We are talking about places so remote that even the Russians did not get there. Not even the Taliban were there. There on the ground you see the impact and that is what brings your internal satisfaction because you really do change things.”
Do you feel that there were big mistakes?
“Well, there were big mistakes, obviously. There is a school that has not been finished because we started building it on a site that later turned out to be problematic. There is a small clinic that has not been finished because there was a dispute and the villagers started fighting over it. We stopped rather than continuing, because it would have created more problems. We have not found a way to make rainwater drinkable for six months. It is collected in early spring and people use it until September. So how do you make sure that even in September, when people use water from the same tank that has been there for six months, that it is still drinkable. We have not really gotten there yet. We are still trying things. And then there were smaller mistakes where sometimes we did not quite pay enough attention to the local myths. And because of this certain projects failed. For example, they believe that a certain type of water storage tank needs to be big enough so that when the water comes in it makes seven waves going through it. And if it is not big enough they would not drink the water, they would not touch it because they believe it is not big enough to be clean. Obviously, it does not make any sense. But sometimes you cannot really explain this because it is so deeply in their culture and their beliefs and their stories and what the grandfathers have told to the grandchildren. They would not touch the water and then all the work would go to waste. These are small things that happen and it is through monitoring and independent evaluation that we learn about these. So, yes, there were mistakes, obviously.”
