Two weeks ago, for GPP 115, I read Easterly's work on Planners vs. Searchers. He described planners as out of touch academics who set unspecific goals and create plans (or programs perhaps, from todays lecture) which are not tailored to the unique context of a country. He attributes the failures of the World Bank and other aid organizations to their reliance on planners, who develop complex conceptual plans of action or goals, and then force these plans onto problems. He contrasts planners with searchers. Searchers are those who look for demand, who find out what people need, or what they are willing to pay for, and find a way of getting them that product.
I do not completely agree with Easterly's criticism of Sachs or the Planner Searcher dichotomy, but it did make me reconsider how I have been approaching my practice experience.
Has anyone else been planning for their practice experience, rather than searching for it? I chose to do my practice experience in Spain because I was studying abroad there. I chose to work with an organization focusing on healthcare because I have interest and experience in health care. I planned when I would work around my school schedule, and where I would work based on where I'm staying. What I didn't do was search for a problem I could fix. I didn't search for an organization looking for people with my skills, or seek out a group which was in particular need. As it turns out, the Spanish Healthcare System covers almost everyone, for almost free.
I think this also speaks to the arrogance many people have about 'solving' poverty. I assumed that because I'm almost educated and have health care experience, I could make a positive impact. Has anyone been struggling to situate themselves within their organization to make the greatest difference?
That is perhaps my greatest difficulty, not necessarily finding my PE, because I already chose to do mine in Ghana with Blue-Med, but because I plan to make it a career to work in organizations later in the future. But everyday I am learning that perhaps it is not such a great idea to go to the Global South with great ideas, or expectations. Easterly’s ‘Big Plans’ and Garland’s “Volunteer Tourism” article, along with may other points I have encountered tend to be cynical about college students that go abroad and join organization to try to ‘make a change’. I feel that these pieces try to me to persuade me to not go, and change the world that I might make things worst since I come from a total distinct world with different ideas. I understand that, but I still believe that these poor countries will alone fix themselves. Thus, I still plan to still go abroad, but with less plans so that I can become more like a facilitator, ready to provide service, in whatever they see me fit. And finding an organization that will allow me to do just that in the future, will be difficult; but I am hoping more organizations will rise up, with same objectives—to act as facilitators, not as institutional and plan builders.
ReplyDeleteI took GPP 115 in the fall of 2012, and I distinctly remember William Easterly's essay, "Planners vs. Searchers in Foreign Aid," as a piece that stood out from the rest of the readings. Easterly's work particularly resonated with me because I had never thought about poverty action in that light before.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I thought that his classification of "planners" vs. "searchers" was brilliant for multiple reasons. Not only is it a simple and catchy means of describing two contrasting approaches to poverty action, but these two terms have a sort of ambiguity to them in which the reader is not certain which class (either planner or searcher) is going to be the one that is critiqued. At first thought, the planner seems to be someone who is thoughtful, logical, and methodical in her approach to poverty action, and thus, will find success in whichever endeavor she chooses to partake in. On the other hand, I hypothesized that the searcher would characterize someone who could potentially be scatter-brained, wishy-washy, and perhaps even confused about why she is engaging in poverty action in the first place. However, Easterly masterfully unravels the distinction between the two and it is easy to see that the searcher, although perhaps not as methodical in her plan of action, is the one who will certainly make the biggest real change in poverty alleviation.
To answer the question Ben posed at the end of his post: I am not sure that it is possible to situate myself in my organization in a way that will make the biggest difference. While Breakthrough Collaborative seeks the input of those it serves and often implements their suggestions, it can still be seen largely as a top-down NPO in which the donors and program directors call the shots, having all of the decision-making power as well as most of the risk. Because of this set-up, which I’m sure many of my peers can identify with within their own organizations, I do not feel that I am in the position to situate myself in any way. Rather, I must essentially do what I’m told. Thankfully, I agree with most if not all of Breakthrough’s practices and mission, and I do think that I can make a real difference within my organization even if I am following a preexisting model. This is largely because I feel that Breakthrough on its own can be seen as an organization that does its fair share of searching. Breakthrough searches the population for those with the biggest need for assistance in education as a means for poverty alleviation, and then recruits from that population. Although Breakthrough is also largely an organization that creates “complex conceptual plans of action or goals,” I do not necessarily see this “planning” aspect as impeding the strengths of its “searching” process in student recruitment.
What you have to say about the failure of the World Bank and other aid organizations as stemming from planners, or people who force action goals and plans onto the work done by others, has been a way that I have avoided situating myself within the organization where I will carry out my practice experience, the National Center for Youth Law. To answer your concerns about struggling to situate oneself within an organization, it seems that an effective way to become comfortable there is to first acknowledge, and continually relate back to, the fact that one will often be an outsider to the organization that they are working within, especially upon first starting to participate there. As to avoid being the planner, we must enter our practice experiences with an open mind regarding what strategies should be used to take action on whatever issue it is that our organization is targeting and keep an open mind about the different way that the target population may feel towards an issue, beyond what the organization may think is best.
ReplyDeleteThis claim comes from the observation that as students we are limited for a large part, up until the moment we start working at our practice experience locations, to relying upon scholarly work and reports that conceptualize the issue areas regard the target populations that we are working with. These sources are very helpful and based on experimental research, though it is often difficult them to convey the full complexity that occurs during poverty action related work. A way that I learned this lesson in the past was through working at the Family Violence Law Center in Oakland, which is an organization that provides women with assistance in filing restraining orders against abusive partners and family members. It was not until I started meeting with clients at the Family Violence Law Center even though restraining orders were the most effective and logical response to domestic violence that I had read about, emotions and financial logistics made obtaining a restraining order impossible for many women.
This is not to say that we should come into our practice experiences unprepared. The difference between being a planner and being something better, like a “preparer” is putting in effort and committing oneself to trying to understand what is important to a population and seeing whether or not one can provide skills, knowledge, or support in assisting them to meet that end. We should use the literature review assignment as an opportunity to conduct a broad amount of research into how other scholars have situated themselves into the issue area to help us situate ourselves into the issue area. Even with this general knowledge of the debates and conditions that scholars have captured about the issues we may confront, we should enter our practice experience ready to have our previous assumptions and expectations challenged.
This being said, I agree with what you have to say about not completely agreeing with what you describe as “Easterly’s criticism of Sachs or the Planner Searcher Dichotomy.” I believe as innovative students we should, to a degree, hold on to part of the idealism and high goals that we may have walking into our practice experience to use them to continue to motivate us when facing challenges in our practice experiences and to continue to demand better results for the people our practice experience organizations are working for.