Letters from Alfonso: Learning to Listen: The first-hand account of a Colombian village's birth and growth--important lessons for the Peace Corps, NGOs, and the rest of us - Softcover

Kessler, Earl

Softcover

ISBN 10: 193828822X ISBN 13: 9781938288227

Publisher: Terra Nova Books, 2013

Synopsis

Construction, development projects, slum improvement—rewarding work for Peace Corps volunteer Earl Kessler. But when residents of a Colombian town wiped out by flood took the future into their own hands, his life intersected with that of Alfonso Perez Correa, and he learned lessons in local participation and empowerment that have helped bring success in meeting community needs all over the world.

About this title

About the Author

Earl Kessler has been engaged in the design and development of shelter and urban programs since 1965 when he began his career in international development as a Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia.

He earned a master of architecture degree in the Planning for Developing Countries Program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He has worked on urban strategies for the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and USAID; and with the USAIDShelter Team in Haiti, as well as inclusive urban development work in India with the ADB.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I was fortunate. I learned to listen to people I considered partners at the beginning of what became my career in urban development and disaster risk management in developing countries. Important lessons came from the effort to rebuild Cao Salado from the flooded mangrove swamp it occupied along the Canal del Dique onto higher ground that the community had decided to invade. A few months into the effort, I was presenting the new site plan to the community that I, the recently graduated architecture student, had prepared. It was great: neat, efficient, and eminently do-able. All self-help and village-y (to me anyway).

After the presentation, there was a respectful silencereally a terrible silencebroken only by me when I said OK. Que pas? What happened? My Spanish by this time, going into the third year in Colombia, was good, even able to communicate in the very-difficult-to-follow coastal Spanish spoken in Cartagena with its overlay of a seventeenth-century Spanish-Portuguese dialect and African words still spoken in the villages surrounding Puerto Badel. The issue was not the language.

Alfonso stood and doffed his hat to say something to the effect of Pues, Carlos, this might be very nice in your country for people who live in the city. In fact, we are sure it is [seemingly said just to make me feel better]. However, it is really not appropriate for us here since we are farmers and rural people who have different needs and uses for our ranchos and land. And so Alfonso, with the other men and women at the meeting, proceeded to lay out a program for development of the new town with dimensions and lot sizes and uses that I could only applaud. So I said, When I was asking, why didnt you tell me this before? And the answer set me straight on what development, especially community development, is all about. Alfonso replied:

We didnt think youd listen.

Edition details

• Publisher: Terra Nova Books
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 193828822X
• ISBN 13: 9781938288227
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 260