Beyond the Tipping Point

Two years ago I had a number of conversations with my friend Martin Lafontaine about "tipping points" (Martin was volunteering with Project HOPE UK in Munsieville at the time). We would sit together having a meal at the end of a long day in Munsieville dreaming of the day when bringing this great new concept to birth would no longer feel like pushing a giant boulder up a mountainside, because it had now reached the place where it would roll forward through its own inner momentum.

Over the past three months, The Thoughtful Path: Munsieville has, in many ways, reached a crucial tipping point! More and more people, both locally and from around the world, have seen the importance of the project and joined forces with us to realise its true potential. Our Children's Embassy has opened, making a huge statement to the community. The House of Young Ambassadors has been launched, placing children at the heart of the process of delivering change. And the Thoughtful Path Leadership Academy is steadily equipping the emerging "movers and shakers" of the township as agents of transformation. As we welcome the programme's new-found momentum, we also recognise that it needs to be maintained and managed. A boulder rolling uncontrolled down a hill can be very destructive! And what happens when the boulder comes to rest at the foot of the mountain? Is that it?

The energy of pushing, shoving, influencing, advocating and cajoling to bring The Thoughtful Path to where it is today has been shared with a number of incredible people who, over the past two years, have come as volunteers and interns to the project. The recent, highly-significant push, leading to the "tipping point" has been made possible because the efforts of our permanent team have been multiplied by the sheer professionalism, passion, sacrifice and perseverance of Carola Michielsen from Holland, Alyson Krucher from the USA, and a band of 11 doctors, nurses and health and safety professionals, all of whom were gifted to us by our corporate partner, GlaxoSmithKline.

But the fact that all except Alyson have now finished their assignments (and Alyson only has another week in Munsieville), poses a couple of very important questions: will the current momentum of the project simply peter out? Will the good things they have initiated be sustained?

Well, in all honestly, it would be imprudent to answer definitively. Clearly, in the harsh reality of an undeveloped South African township, only the strongest and best ideas survive. "Good" is never enough; only "great" will cut it! But, where the activities of these and other volunteers succeed, there is always evidence of much "sitting under the mango tree" with the local community. And none of the volunteers has just whisked through Munsieville like the Lone Ranger - they have all planned well, felt the Munsieville "vibe", listened to the community, and worked, not to deliver change, but to equip the local community to deliver change!.

Project HOPE UK has benefitted from our volunteers and interns more than words could ever adequately describe, and we want all these friends to stay engaged. They all have so much more to offer. That's why earlier this week, we launched our "Directors' Circle". This is an invited group of special friends of The Thoughtful Path: Munsieville, who have expressed their desire to stay with us until we see the project reach its objective of being an influential, world-class model of excellence in community-based care of orphans and other vulnerable children. Now we have strengthened our support-base with a growing band of trusted advisors and consultants, all of whom have first-hand knowledge of the project, so they can comment from a position of real understanding.

Yes, it has taken supreme effort to bring The Thoughtful Path to the tipping point. But now, as momentum builds, the Directors' Circle will mean that progress is controlled and maintained. After all, to succeed in Munsieville, we will need to reach many more tipping points along the path!

Introducing The Director's Blog

My name is Paul Brooks, the Executive Director of Project HOPE UK, a well-respected UK-based NGO that is passionate about the long-term health prospects for children in developing countries.

Although, over the 17 years since we were founded, we have run successful health programmes in dozens of countries across four continents, in recent years, whilst honouring the commitments we have in other places, we have chosen to concentrate our resources on one of the world's biggest health challenges - the health of orphans and other vulnerable children in sub-Saharan Africa, where the United Nations estimates there to be 53 million orphaned children, and millions more, rendered extremely vulnerable due to their proximity to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Evidence from the communities in which we work suggests that statistically, children who are orphaned through AIDS have a tragically short life expectancy and are unlikely ever to contribute more to their society through taxes and productivity than they will take from it in social benefits and health care.

Traditional Western-led NGO initiatives, whilst achieving some short term benefits for the target communities, are rarely truly sustainable; charities and governments claim that they are, but the evidence is that most major programmes, unless supported by locally-generated funds, will collapse after the initial international grant has ended, typically after between two and four years. Furthermore, the old adage, "he who pays the piper calls the tune", means that, however it is dressed up, real authority, responsibility and control remains in the hands of the Western NGO or its funders, militating against the "empowerment" of the local community that oozes from the press-releases and annual reports of the organisations promoting the activities.

Something has to change! Firstly, there simply is not enough money in the system to provide the levels of care that 53 million orphans (plus the other vulnerable children) will need to overturn their poor prognosis and become healthy, productive adults. Secondly, because the old-style approaches of the West simply perpetuate a disempowering new-style colonialism, working against Africa's courageous attempts to take responsibility and emerge from oppression and poverty.

The Thoughtful Path is an initiative that unashamedly seeks to develop the sort of dynamic, international, culturally sensitive partnerships that will re-write the rule book and inspire genuinely sustainable solutions that will offer a real future for the children of Africa and beyond.

This blog is intended to offer comment and insights into some of the struggles involved in working with communities to effect transformational change, leading to marked and measured improvements in the long-term health and well-being of orphans and other vulnerable children, and inspiring others to think again about entrenched, ineffective operational structures that can perpetuate poverty of the mind and spirit, as well as the body.

This will not be a platform for charity "spin", but of honest, warts-and-all reflection on the path to a better future for the children of the world - the Thoughtful Path. I will share honestly and openly, a very personal view of the joys and frustrations of swimming against the tide, and hope that through it all, we can discover how we can, in the words of St Paul, "look not only to (our) own interests, but also (and especially) to the needs of others.