... .
|
Web
Smith, Publisher, Educator, Trainer, Author, Editor
|
.
| Web
Smith for this site, Community Empowerment, is Phil Bartle. Now retired,
available by email for discussion of points raised about the material.
Sociology
Professor. Was Chief Technical Adviser (CTA) for the Uganda
Community Management Programme (CMP), 1994-1998, during which this web
site was begun. |
.
.
.
| Here
is Julianna Kuruhiira's depiction (artist's
line drawing) of Dr Phil in a training session for senior community mobilizers,
managers and co-ordinators, at a post graduate seminar, Makarere University,
Kampala. |
.
.
| The
sixties had all sorts of youth revolution, the more notorious being hippies
and yippies. The era also gave birth to quiet movements; many Canadian
young people went to poor countries to offer their services to independence
and freedom. |
.
| Cuso
was founded in 1961 (we boast it is six weeks older than the Peace Corps).
I was one of those idealists, modest enough to know we could not make major
changes, but we could contribute and learn. |
..
| I
wanted to find practical uses for my training in economics, sociology and
anthropology. After two years in Ghana, I spent a year living with
poor people in dozens of countries in Africa and Asia. Hooked, I
dedicated my life to development, although maintaining my connections to
academia, and my love for learners and teaching. Although the training
material avoids theory and ideology, I recognise that my approach has been
informed by the writings of Paulo Freire, Ivan Illich and Franz Fanon. |
..
| I
did my PhD in Ghana, with African teachers and an African concentration,
focusing on Obo, a stool town on the Kwawu
Escarpment in the rain forest. |
..
.
| I
learned that much of our aid contributed to poverty, making recipients
dependent upon handouts, and encouraging government officials to become
corrupt. With others of a like mind, I helped develop an "Empowerment
Methodology" as an alternative to charity, based on the idea that struggle
produces strength. (An athlete does not become strong when the coach
does the push ups). |
..
| Now
that I am in my sixties, and health prohibits overseas work, I turned my
experience into writing for community workers. I put it on this free
web site, so they could print the material for training and upgrading.
It has grown to over four thousand documents, on many related topics. We
get about 20,000 page views per day, or half a million per month. |
.
.
| Some
pages are translated into over five dozen languages, by unpaid volunteers.
With all these volunteers (over a hundred persons have contributed
to the web site), we have organized into a non profit society,
registered with the Government of British Columbia on an island in the
Pacific off the west coast of Canada. Several guest contributors have added
training material. A literacy module
is dedicated to the memory of Peter Gzoski, a participatory
management module dedicated to Dr. Gert Lüdeking of UN-Habitat, while
an AIDS document is dedicated to Stephen
Lewis. My rewards are the hundreds of email messages from all over
the world, and the dialogues that result. More recently, it has also been
rewarding to see the many people who donate their time, energy and skills
to the site; it is heartening to see that altruism is not dead.
Phil Bartle
|
.. |
.
