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Arnhem Human Enterprise Development
A Project in Responsive Development in a Remote Indigenous Community
Why Warriors is embarking on a new Human Enterprise Development project with the aim of changing the face of development and service provision in North East Arnhem Land by being fully available to facilitate the desires of the
Yolŋu people. The project involves placing a small trained facilitation team (initially 2 people) on the ground. The team's role would be to facilitate, at the request of local motivated individuals and groups, the success of ideas and endeavours that are held in the people's hearts. The facilitation of local people’s aspirations will use methodologies that are designed to effectively support the people while ensuring they retain control and maximum participation in their endeavour. The goal is to remove the blockages and bring together the support needed to enable the people to do beautifully the visions in their heart, to fulfill their potential and in the process bring hope, prosperity and new possibilities to desperately demoralised communities.
Why?
What will it look like?
Methods: Enterprise facilitation and Cross Cultural Communication
How can you Help?
Meet the facilitation Team
What does the facilitation team do?
Keep Informed
Why is an alternate process for development needed in Indigenous communities?
What we know from our experience, is that most personnel working to help Indigenous people, including ourselves at present, work on the basis of grants and contracts that are ultimately determined by external policy, rather than being driven by the passions and desires of the people. Furthermore the necessity for personnel to deliver the services they are contracted to provide prevents anyone from being available to hear and respond to the requests of local individuals. We intend to create and demonstrate a mechanism that responds quickly to the people in the reality they live, the needs and dreams that they have.
What will this project in responsive development look like?
Under this proposal facilitators will be made available to help people in one community to succeed in whatever dream, or endeavor that they have a passion to achieve. The outcome is ground up development driven entirely by local motivation. We do not really know what is out there in the peoples untapped passions because few people have the opportunity to simply be available to listen. From what we do know of the Yolngu peoples motivations, economic development will be an inevitable, and key, outcome of facilitating everything people want to achieve. However, what we are envisaging goes beyond the business/economic domains, to an unrestricted facilitation process delivering economic, social and educational outcomes. Consequently the direction that the development takes all depends on the motivations and ideas that exist in the people themselves. This foundation in local needs and motivations adds local ownership and sustainability to the communities development.
We know that there is huge potential amongst the Yolngu people, despite the depressed state of many remote Yolngu communities, and each new success we facilitate will open new opportunities, ideas and hopes. For example:
- For one person their dream could simply be to control their diabetes so that they can live to teach their grandchildren to be strong men and women. We could do whatever it takes to get that aspirant the educational, medical and lifestyle support they need.
- We know one young man who once asked, "I want to be able to write in my own language so I can write songs". We could facilitate that with a volunteer from a CDU language course perhaps. Who knows how many might join him adding to the literacy capacity in the community.
- What about the man who wants to move back to his isolated home land so that he can raise his family away from the negative behaviours in communities, to a place where they can hunt again? We could facilitate that. Chances are, from his homeland he might feel empowered enough to begin building an income, instructing his children, managing his land.. etc. Are you seeing the possibilities?
In our past work we have heard people raise all kinds of such ideas from business plans, to self improvement goals, to social services such as traditional post-natal care centres. The usual development process often takes such great ideas and seeing the idea, the service, as the solution, will do everything to make the new service succeed, but often at the loss of local participation. Too many Indigenous ideas result in enterprises controlled and operated by outsiders. There is a lot of confusion and difficulty experienced by Yolngu people trying to navigate the western world, which operates very differently from their own. In this setting well meaning outsiders can often do things for Yolngu, which actually leaves them behind, and takes away their control over their vision. In this project we see the aspiring person as having the solution within them and we will do everything to help them birth their vision. This project is designed to support the local visionary as the principle agent in creating and maintaining local endeavours. Through this project we hope to demonstrate that the solutions and the keys to sustainable development exist in the power of people themselves, once they are resourced in response to their needs.
Method and Approach
Clear strategies and appropriate methods are needed to deal with some of the difficulties in responding to people's callings on remote Indigenous communities. To achieve this vision we want to bring together two complementary methodologies that we believe will be a powerful and effective combination in Arnhem Land.
Enterprise Facilitation
The 'Enterprise Facilitation' model was developed by Ernesto Sirolli. His book "Ripples on the Zambezi" is a great read for anyone interested in community development, particularly in economics, and it outlines his approach. The basics of his philosophy is "never initiating- never motivating" but working to build the human resources to overcome the limitations that prevent aspirants from success and ensuring that everything is founded on the person's own passion and sweat. Sirolli has a tremendous wealth of experience in respectful enterprise development in struggling communities, both in Australia and abroad. Enterprise Facilitation has been used specifically for business development, but can also be applied to all forms of human enterprise. We have shared our vision with Sirolli, of applying the method to anything that people are called to, and he believes it takes his philosophy back to its roots, and he is excited to bring his work together with ours. He is partnering with us in this project.
Cross-Cultural Development
The second methodology that will be guiding the project is the 'Aboriginal Resource and Development Services' (ARDS) capacity building methodologies for developing communities effectively in the cross cultural, cross-language environment, much of which has been assembled and developed by the work of Richard Trudgen. Some important parts of the methodology are described in his book 'Why Warriors Lie Down and Die’. The ARDS methodology provides a framework for effective communication and training in the cross-cultural setting, with a grounding in local Indigenous language. The ARDS methodology has been formed through more than 35 years of working closely with the Yolngu people, learning from the successes and mistakes of the past. It emphasises educational approaches designed to fill the knowledge gaps that prevent many Indigenous people from succeeding in a world that is new to them, dominated by "white man's" language, laws, ways, and diseases. This methodology provides a mechanism to use effective communication with local people, identify dangers that arise from cultural knowledge gaps, and to facilitate training. It is the application of this methodology that can enable the Enterprise Facilitation model to be effective in this cross cultural setting.
Keep Informed
Consider if you would like to become involved on any level- if so, please let us know.
We invite you to keep informed by reading our blog, or becoming a supporter of AHED .
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