International Development

One of the reasons that I couldn’t start writing about my life in Ghana is that I hadn’t found the theme of this series. It’s not very easy for me to put efforts on writing without destination and purpose. To tell the truth, I have a blog in Japanese on the Internet, because I am a representative of Japan as I said and working on it as public relations of JICA. We, volunteers, should devote ourselves to the 3 pillars of JICA volunteer: 1. Contribute to economy and development or reconstruction of society in developing countries, 2. Promote friendship and mutual understanding between Japan and these countries, 3. Return experiences to Japanese society. Thus the 3^rd one pushed me to bring back my experiences in Ghana to my Japanese friends through my blog.

By the way, the United States has the volunteer organization called “Peace Corps”, which has longer history than JICA does. And according to JICA, they seem to have similar mottos like JICA (in fact, JICA would have copied from it) and the 1^st and 2^nd ones seem almost the same in meanings but the 3^rd one seems to say: “Propagate (or Do public relations for)” the United States of America. Namely if people think and feel through Peace Corps volunteers: “America is a great country!”, “We love America!”, “Americans are very generous!”, their volunteer work would be successful. Actually there is a Peace Corps volunteer for the subject “Creative Art” in our school, and on one occasion, she unconsciously slipped from her lips: “You have to get donations to be a good volunteer.” I felt “Ummm?! Donation???” In my understanding, volunteer work has nothing to do with donation.

And she has been working on painting walls in some classrooms with pictures related to some subjects. According to her, it is very hard to get funds (= money) or materials for it, calling to companies, writing emails to NGOs, and going to talk about it etc. I do admire her efforts on it. However the idea “painting walls” is, in truth, mine. When I talked about “creativity”, I advised her as an example of being “creative” that she could “teach creativity” to students in the process of painting walls, but she just copied things from textbooks or some magazines and painted all walls by herself, except base painting, which is boring and tiring and students did. The contents of painting are not very creative and the method is not creative either. She would have misunderstood what I meant, “maybe”. But as a matter of fact, she donated some “beautiful” paintings to the school. So she is a good volunteer in her definition and her acts would leave some good impression of the United States in Ghanaians, which must meet the one of requirements of the Peace Corps.

And at the end of this term, she distributed marker pens to upper primary students without reasons. Yes, she just “gave” the pens, this is the problem “for me”. I named my blog as “The Giving Three”, which is parodied from the picture book called “The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein and whose theme is to Give. For I want to think about what I give, how I give, and why I give to others as a volunteer who represents Japan, and I think what volunteers do is basically to Give. However “To Give” is not easy and simple, because if you give something without consideration, this act “can” destroy something like balance, mentality, future, even life itself. Firstly, you need reasons to give, and then what you give: expensive or reasonable things? And you must think of how you give it. If I can't take responsibility, I won’t give anything. Donors must think of not only their own profit, reputation, good impression but also receivers’ benefits, affects, side-effects because it’s a matter of responsibility. I can’t be irresponsible in the name of Japan. So what is International Development?