Page 14 RAIN July 1982 decided to make a donation to encourage the village to do another self-help project. This village now has about $2,400 in a new special development fund account at a local bank which will go towards the cost of their next project: improving their access road. We learned a number of things about self-help projects from experiences in this and other communihes. Day after day the most important skills we used were those of group facilitation and problem solving. To our surprise, our lack of a strong technical background was an advantage, because it forced us to seek out local experts. This, in turn, increased the visibility of government technicians, broadened support for the project, and also took pressure off of us to have all the answers. Encouragement is the key to self-help development. A traditional ruler in northern Ghana Borquists We encouraged communihes to idenhfy and use their strengths to take control of their own development. We made it very clear that we were there only to encourage them to do a project, not to give them money or materials, or to do the project for them. We could have accomplished very little without Fu- seini, and he would have accomplished little without us. A kind of synergy happened that made our team of three much more effechve as a whole than we could have been individually. As an insider, Fuseini knew the cultural and historical background of the area and so was able to guide us through sometimes intricate and delicate situations. He spoke Dagbani (the language of the people) fluently, knew the all-important nuances to be given to what we said and heard, and was the team's interpreter. For example, Fuseini referred to us as "timabihi" (our mother's children) when introducing us to village elders, knowing that they would then receive us as brothers and sisters rather than strangers. We as outsiders and especially as foreigners were able to reach the ears of government officials and businessmen inaccessible to Fuseini. Traditional rulers granted us automatic respect for the same reason. Amasaachina's method of self-help development is to encourage a community to unite, prioritize their needs, choose a project, and then find the funds, materials and technical experts needed to make it happen. Many projects sponsored by outside development agencies (even "self-help" projects) start from the opposite direction: funds and materials are gathered, a project is chosen, and villagers are encouraged to do it. No wonder so many are dismal failures, ostensibly due to the 'uncooperative, conservative, and backward attitudes" of the people for whom the project was designed. We made a special effort to include women in the projects. Often only the needs and ideas of men, the overt rulers of the village, are heard, and the resulting project ends up intensifying the hardships of the women. Amasaachina has women leaders in its local executive structure to insure that their voices are heard. The preservation of culture is an essential part of all self-help efforts, since physical development per se is not the only objective. Tradition and traditional skills should always be emphasized, as they often provide the foundation for self-help activities. What of villages that for reasons of culture or inertia are unwilling to join the Amasaachina movement? Eighty five of the villages we contacted did not take the initiative and start self-help projects. The main constraint, aside from lack of money, was that some remained unconvinced and preferred to hold on to their internal conflicts and/or to wait for someone else to meet their needs for them. Our experience is that self-help development is contagious — a succesful project in one village brought other villages arovmd out of competitiveness and a sincere desire to improve living conditions. The key was in finding the receptive villages and working with them. Government can and should play a role in self-help development, for several reasons. It insures continuity in development and in longer-range projects because ultimately governments are the powers that will inherit them. TTiat is why Amasaachina workers include local and regional officials in all of their projects so that they feel they have played a part in what the villages have accomplished. It helps local government become more aware of and responsive to the people's needs by putting officials in direct contact with their constituents. Lastly, it is beneficial for governments to be involved in the creation of a more self-reliant population, especially when they are overburdened and unable to provide all of the services the people need. Self-help in Northern Ghana is part of a much larger national movement. As economic difficulhes continue and the government is able to provide less and less, traditional cooperative structures are being adapted to organize self-help projects. The realization that "father
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