Is the measure more important than the people? Workers at Neema Crafts' tailoring department
(Photo: © Neema Crafts)Neema Crafts is a flagship project for people with disabilities in Tanzania, founded by CMS mission partners Andy and Susie Hart. Here Andy wonders whether the development world is more interested in relationships or 'measurable change'?
Having worked on the ground in development for the last nine or so years and seeing the blessings but also the problems with development, I still get regularly frustrated by development organisations and others who are too hung up on gathering data and want to measure everything for their reports.
Today I was asked to quantify Neema Crafts' achievements improving disabled people’s rights in Iringa.
Despite knowing what they were looking for, I responded by telling them about Godfrey, one of our deaf chefs.
Godfrey used to be thrown out of shops in town because as he is deaf, people assumed he was mad.
The last shall be first
Now, because many shop keepers use our deaf run restaurant and have learnt some sign language from the menus and have seen the abilities of our deaf chefs and waiters, he is beckoned to the front of the queue in their shops and served before the other customers because the shop owner wants to show off that he can speak a little sign language.
From being thrown out and humiliated onto the street, Godfrey is now the most honoured customer.
I also shared about when Benjamin, our disabled weaving workshop leader, came in one morning with a huge smile on his face.
When I asked him why he was so happy he replied that someone had come up to him that morning and asked him to help them financially.
Susie and Andy Hart at the Neema Crafts building in Iringa, Tanzania
(Photo: © Harts/CMS)
My response was to say that it happens to us all the time and can really get us down. He replied that that was the point; a year or so previously no one would have ever come to him, a disabled person, for help. Instead, they would come to someone like me, a European.
Now he feels he has been fully accepted by a society which once wrote him off, now that society is coming to him for help.
Quantifying success
These stories, however, are not really measurable in the way my questioners wanted. They nodded politely but wanted something else.
Hearing that a chip factory in Iringa is now employing 14 deaf people off our waiting list - or that last year Tanzania appointed a junior government minister with a brief for disabilities and the first thing she did when she came to office was spend two days with us at Neema Crafts to see what could be done - sounded much better to them.
This then is how they recorded success:
"There are small scale success stories… Godfrey, who works in the cafe, used to be thrown out of his local shop for being crazy. Today, he’s given priority service.
"There are medium scale success stories… a local chip making company in Iringa recently employed 14 deaf men after seeing them at work in the Neema Crafts restaurant.
"And there are massive scale success stories… after much lobbying by Neema Crafts, last year the Tanzanian government employed a junior minister with a remit for disabilities.”
However, I would have put these in the opposite order.
Godfrey’s and Benjamin’s stories are the massive successes. They are the indicators of how society has changed.
It's relationships that matter
Disabled people getting employment elsewhere and the government reacting to disability issues at last, while fantastic, really follow on from a change in the relationships we see in society.
When it comes down to it, it is restoring relationships between people and groups that matters and brings long term change and justice.
This is why a Christian voice is so needed in these areas of social injustice and why it can be so effective.
Jesus is all about restoring broken relationships.
It has challenged me to look at how we measure success and how we make targets in our work and in our churches and how we prioritise our actions.
Do we put relationships at the heart of what we do or do we get too hung up by 'measurable change'?