Although Tulane makes us take a number of development classes, this was the first time I had the opportunity to learn about ICT4D. I found it interesting how, while projects may be different, the overall concepts are still the same. The concepts that we discussed related to ICT4D projects and why they fail will be very helpful with anyone’s future professions, but especially in the development sector.
When we discussed the reasons why ICT4D projects fail, I felt like the reasons were so obvious and questioned why more people weren’t listening to them. Two of these that really stood out to me were that the projects weren’t relevant to local context/ strengths/needs and that projects were supported only by short-term grants. These ideas are important to apply to development jobs as well as any other job that you choose to do. The most important concept is to focus the project on the group that you’re doing it for and give them a say in the matter. Many people in the development world think that they know what is best for the people that they’re trying to help. However, without asking them what they want, you have the potential to spend a lot of money on something fails miserably. Second, it is important to always think about something in the long-term. It is great if you are given a grant to build a computer center in a rural village, but it is important to think about what will happen to the project when you leave. It isn’t just whether it looks good when you leave, but about whether it makes a difference in the long term.
In the future, I want to work internationally in the health sector. For health projects, it will be important for me to create a project that will make a real difference in a community. That means I need to create a project that will be accepted in that culture and will make a difference in the long term, not just when I’m there with my grant. Many organizations create health projects that don’t work with cultural norms. For example, handing out condoms for men who have sex with men in an area where being gay is not allowed. This automatically creates problems with the culture and results in no progress being made. I also know that just giving someone a project with my grant money won’t make a difference in the long-term. Health projects that go into a community and build a health clinic to stop people from dying of disease don’t consider what will happen to that health clinic when they leave. While the failures were originally related to ICT4D projects, I think that no matter what sector you choose to go into, they are important to keep in mind to create a sustainable, beneficial project for a community.