Why Development Projects Fail: One Size Does Not Fit All

Photo: AP
Members of the charity Oxfam demonstrate outside a meeting of European Union finance ministers in Brussels earlier this month. "Bankers," left, and "nongovernmental organizations," right, fight over a giant euro note.

This is the VOA Special English Development Report.

Last week we told you about FAILFaire, an event where people talk about international development projects that failed.

Many of these projects started as good ideas. Others had some level of success, but not enough to have a measurable effect on the lives of people in developing countries.

A nonprofit group in New York called MobileActive held the first FAILFaire earlier this year. MobileActive is made up of people and organizations that use technology to try to improve the lives of the poor.

Katrin Verclas came up with the idea for FAILFaire as a way to help nonprofit groups improve by learning from the mistakes of others.

Katrin Verclas: "The primary goal is to learn from failure and not to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. And for a community of practitioners to benefit from the lessons learned from other people so that we can do better the next time around, collectively as a field, and individually as organizations and practitioners."

Katrin Verclas says there are many reasons why projects fail, but one reason tops all others. She says development projects are not "one size fits all," yet many people try to import ideas as if they were.

What they fail to consider, she says, is the desires of the local people or their cultural, economic and political differences. She says the problem for many nongovernmental organizations and other groups is simply not knowing their audience.

AP

A Somali policeman helps a displaced Somali woman to carry food aid provided by a local NGO and the World Food Program in Mogadishu in May

Katrin Verclas: "Western organizations, or NGOs, or donors in particular have particular ideas about what might be alleviating a particular problem in a developing country, without a really good understanding of the end users or the beneficiaries."

The creator of FAILFaire says this is true not only with technology but other projects as well. Ms. Verclas hopes nonprofits in other industries and fields will create their own versions of FAILFaire.

A second FAILFaire took place in July in Washington. The World Bank Institute co-sponsored the event. To Katrin Verclas, it was a good sign to have the World Bank support such open discussions about failure.

Katrin Verclas: "We have a lot riding on this, after all. It