Beyond Millennium Development Goals: Taking a broader perspective on human development and assistance needs

January 23, 2006

T-Shirt with a drawing by children in Soccer for Children on the Road to Empowerment (SCORE). The program teaches street children in Jakarta about HIV/AIDS, drug abuse and sexual health while coaching them in soccer. Target 7 of the sixth Millennium Development Goal is printed on the other side of the T-shirt along with the aims of SCORE.

Photo: CWS Indonesia

Maurice Bloem is Church World Service’s Regional Director for Indonesia and Timor Leste. He was interviewed by Federico Graciano, a communications officer at a partner organization.

Federico Graciano: How does CWS’s faith-centered mission add value to technical assistance programs generally constructed to meet physical, quantifiable needs?

Maurice Bloem: Having to work in a country like Indonesia (that has a majority Muslim population) as part of an organization with the word ‘Church’ in our name means that, in many situations, we need to prove twice as hard as other organizations that we follow the Code of Conduct and Principles of Humanitarian Assistance, and that we are not in the country to convert people to Christianity. Nonetheless, as a faith-based organization we can often relate more than other groups to the belief systems of the poor and vulnerable people that we work with and for. It seems understandable that our organization has been more effective in countries where we have a multi-cultural, multi-religious, and multi-ethnic setup.

The problem is that most development agencies have only focused on social, economic and technological systems, and the environment, while ignoring the issues related to interior states that are relevant in shaping stakeholder perceptions, behavior and – at the collective level – culture. Like other faith-based organizations, CWS’s humanitarian mission originates from a perception of and desire to fulfill spiritual, ergo interior, needs. However, in its evolution toward becoming a professional humanitarian aid organization, CWS had to develop programs aimed at meeting exterior needs as well. This has led to the development of the fundaments of a framework that can enable CWS to understand, manage and respond to complex situations.

Based on the work of people like Ken Wilber, we now have a concept of various levels or stages of human development, and corresponding levels of development in terms of culture, and in terms of external, objective systems. CWS’s problem is that it often fails to take into account these different levels of development in terms of both interior-subjective states and exterior-objective systems. As a result, we fail to map and address different value systems, and thus our programs and communications are not able to reflect the deepest motivational structures relevant to a diverse set of stakeholders and economic, political and social conditions.

What I just said might sound difficult, but in the end it means that our spiritual beliefs, in combination with the desire to become a professional organization that implements evidence-based interventions, puts us one step ahead of many other organizations as it enables us to approach development from an holistic point of view.

FG: Can you describe some examples of CWS programs that meet both physical-exterior development objectives as well as interior development needs?

MB: Yes, after both 9/11 and [Hurricane] Katrina, our Emergency Response Program not only provided material aid, but also gave proper attention to pastoral and trauma counseling. Our colleagues in Pakistan provided similar holistic programs in response to the recent earthquake. Also, here in Indonesia, we take a similar approach in our programs in tsunami-affected Northern Sumatra, in drought-affected West Timor, and in conflict-affected Central Sulawesi and pay appropriate attention to body, mind and spirit.

Another very good example here in Indonesia might be the USAID Title-II funded project in urban Makassar, South Sulawesi, (which ended last December) where we not only used the rice, vegetable oil and Wheat Soy Blend as payment for work and training to free up money for education of the children, food and health care, but we also aimed for an integral approach toward mother and child health (MCH). We simultaneously focused on physical (objective) interventions necessary for mothers and children as well as on their emotional motivations, psychological attitude, imagination and intentions in health.

This individual consciousness (subjective) does not exist in a vacuum, but is embedded in shared values, beliefs, norms and perceptions (inter-subjective factors) that should be kept in consideration as well. MCH cannot be properly addressed without taking material, economic and social factors (inter-objective) into account and therefore we tried to address important issues through efforts to improve people’s livelihoods, support vitamin A capsule availability and distribution, and support projects that improve access to sanitation.

FG: Has the evolution from a purely faith-based organization into one that also engages in technical assistance successfully led to increased acceptance from/partnership with non-Christian beneficiaries and/or partners?

MB: Yes, a good indicator might be that we have local partner organizations (governmental and non-governmental, as well as secular and faith-based), international partner organizations and UN agencies that work with us in a range of activities and projects. We are seen in Indonesia as one of the front runners in the field of HIV/AIDS. We work closely with technical assistance organizations like Transcultural Psychosocial Organization (TPO) Netherlands in the field of psychosocial support, and Helen Keller International (HKI) in the area of nutrition and health. During the Tsunami response, we expanded our water and sanitation activities with assistance from Norwegian Church Aid (NCA).

Ensuring a good nutrition intake for underpriveleged children in Sulawesi.

Photo: CWS Indonesia

FG: In your opinion, what are the most pressing needs that CWS can and must fulfill – globally, regionally, as well as in Indonesia?

MB: We need to work for and with the poor, those most in need and those most vulnerable, and they live mostly in urban slums and remote rural areas. These groups are the ones that fall between the cracks left behind by globalization and economic growth. Let me only speak for the issues in Indonesia and Timor Leste. Concrete data on the health and nutritional status of poor urban children is remarkably difficult to find – in Indonesia as elsewhere. Where concrete data does exist, however, it shows alarmingly high rates of child malnutrition and resulting high incidence of low weight for age, stunting (low height for age), and anemia. The urban poor struggle with food, nutrition and health security as a result of, for example, their great dependence on cash income for food and non-food purchases, weak informal safety nets, greater labor force participation of women and its consequence for child care, lifestyle changes, and greater exposure to environmental contamination.

Remote rural areas (RRA) are another concern for CWS as these areas often suffer from chronic poverty which is the result of a lack of physical, social and human capital. These areas can be characterized by high levels of risk and contribute to the difficulties of emerging from poverty as well as the likelihood of destitution. Social exclusion is also an important factor resulting in the poverty in RRAs. These areas are also often insecure and prone to conflict. One of the main problems is that livelihood development, based on successes in non-remote areas, often does not take account of the special risk, exclusion and marginalization characteristics of RRAs. Activities that focus on RRAs will directly and indirectly contribute to eliminating extreme poverty and as such assist in reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

FG: Do you think that the most pressing human needs are adequately captured in the eight global MDGs?

MB: Yes and no. We need to listen to the critique of persons like Walden Bello and ensure that the MDGs indeed prove to be more than rhetoric and promises. On closer scrutiny, we also see that these goals are very much focused on exterior needs and outcomes, and the problem is that without a corresponding transformation of individual and social attitudes and behaviors, i.e. guiding people to perceive issues from a globo-centric perspective as opposed to one that is ego- or ethno-centric, it will be very difficult to address all the issues properly. Having said that, we also need to acknowledge that simply adopting a holistic or globocentric worldview will not do the job. As I mentioned before, people are at different stages of development, so you really need to have an understanding of consciousness and the paths of interior development.

FG: How can you show that providing subjective-interior support, such as religious or psychological counseling, directly contributes to achieving the MDGs?

MB: In Indonesia and Timor Leste, when we started to link our strategies and activities with the MDGs, we realized that interior-subjective needs could also be identified. For example, MDGs 1, 4 and 5 (i.e. respectively seeking reductions in hunger, and child and maternal mortality) can be addressed by using the UNICEF framework on the causes of malnutrition that was developed in 1990 as part of UNICEF’s nutrition strategy. The framework shows that causes of malnutrition are multisectoral, taking into account food, health systems and caring practices. Causes are also categorized as immediate, underlying, and basic, whereby factors at one level influence other levels. It was obvious to us that when one tries to address caring issues, our psychosocial support activities were directly fitting into the framework, and thus contributing to efforts toward achieving these MDGs.

We live in a world that faces many huge problems and I think that organizations like CWS have the potential to facilitate the process toward a solution to these. Having gained enormous experience by working in different settings with people living in different circumstances and with different perspectives, we can learn how the different stages of development in both interior as well as exterior human conditions interact and share this understanding with the rest of the world. Being at a particular stage [of development] is not necessarily better than being at another, but I do think that some of us have passed certain stages and others have not. Some people are forced to stop at a certain stage due to their circumstances while others choose to stop at a particular stage. Every single person should be treated with equal respect.

In helping to improve the quality of people’s lives at whatever stage of development they may be in and empowering them to make the transition to the next stage, religion plays a crucial role as religion is the institution in today’s world that gives legitimacy to the earlier stages of interior development. People need to be conscious; without consciousness, we aren’t human beings and we would have an inability to notice what is inside and around us. Spirituality can provide this consciousness at an individual level, but for the creation of a collective purpose, we need religion, which is nothing more than institutionalized spirituality.

We need a collective purpose, an interior path to really establish the desired development. We can tell people to think about the environment, but without a collective purpose, we will fail to save the earth from pollution and the like. Now, the problem is that many of the people in the US and Europe separate religion from their lives in such a way that they are now unable to understand and relate with the lives of people in which religion plays a major role. It is high time that “we” start understanding religion again as it owns 70 percent of the world population. We need communication channels that will allow people to speak about purpose and their desires. We need to start communicating properly to people within and outside of our organization about what we are witnessing. Faith-based organizations as “translators” and mediators can play an important role in creating the platform for dialogue.

Read more about the Millennium Development Goals.