Development is like a bridge. It is some kind of structure that can fill the gap.
Bridges built by donors have metal reinforcements which are very heavy, high quality, expensive materials.
We cannot compare the funds that our social enterprise might make with the ones given by the donors. The bridges built by our social enterprise won’t be as huge as the ones by the donors, they will be a smaller, and maybe the ones by our social enterprise are made with local materials, so it is easier to manage and make repairs. And we can make them faster, for example, if there is a river there, if you want to construct a bridge, we can start with a simple one, which may not be as strong as the donor one, as time goes by, we might say “ah this one has outlived it’s time, let’s build another one which is bigger and stronger”, so we get those and bring in the reinforcements and make it heavier, more or less like the ones by the donors.
Also, the bridges by the donors usually have lots of branding on them, so they also don’t feel like they belong to the community. And sometimes people will take bits of the bridge to use on their farm, because, who does it belong to?
Connects to: Waste, Power, Resourcefulness, Financing, Continuity, Ownership, Malawi