News 24 of 217

Tapping Diasporas for Development

2009-06

This article first appeared in the March 2009 issue of UniWorld/UniMonde, an insert in University Affairs published by the Association of Unversities and Colleges.

Ads like this are now circulating in Canada’s Ethiopian diaspora, thanks to a pilot project supported by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) — and whoever lands the job can expect a big welcome. 

“We have 120 hospitals in the country but without highly qualified physiotherapists we don’t have regular rehabilitation services,” says Atinkut Alamirrew, head of the Department of Physiotherapy at Gondar University in northern Ethiopia.

Mr Alamirrew is 24 years old, and his six other colleagues are just as young. All were among the first cohort of students to graduate two years ago from Gondar’s new physiotherapy program.

“We don’t have any senior staff — people with academic and clinical expertise — to teach us or update our knowledge,” he says.

This situation should change in 2009, as Mr Alamirrew and his colleagues become part of a pilot project to explore new methods of boosting development by tapping the energy and expertise of Canada’s Ethiopian diaspora.

The 18-month pilot grew out of solid research, funded over a number of years by IDRC and led by the Association of Higher Education and Development (AHEAD). A group of Ethiopian Canadians founded AHEAD in 1999 to raise money for bursaries and textbooks for medical students in Ethiopia. Its efforts were limited, however, by a lack of capacity, funding and partnerships.

In recent years, AHEAD has broadened its focus to include research on diaspora engagement in development work and efforts to mobilize Canada’s Ethiopian diaspora. AHEAD’s research has revealed a disconnect. Diasporas in Canada and other high-income countries maintain strong emotional, social and financial links with family and friends in their countries of origin. They also give generously to international development. But few mechanisms exist to harness the power of these communities for productive development initiatives in their countries of origin.

The pilot, therefore, tests a new connecting mechanism. Beginning last August, AHEAD teamed up with two non-government organizations, CUSO-Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO) and VSO Ethiopia, to recruit and place expert volunteers from the diaspora in short-term assignments at universities in Gondar and Jimma, in northern and southern Ethiopia. To augment the impact of these assignments, volunteers and host organizations will work together before and after the placements. The research team will also document the experience, plan a second phase and establish a network of stakeholders in the two countries with a view to turning the pilot project into an ongoing program.

“This is something quite new in Canada, working with diaspora groups on long-term development, and keeping volunteers involved after they return,” says Theo Breedon, the CUSO-VSO National Volunteering Development Officer.

In the past, diaspora groups have tended to focus on fundraising and emergency relief —but that is changing. In addition to the Ethiopian initiative, CUSO-VSO is participating in development projects with groups of Guyanese and Filipino Canadians and working on a financing framework with the Canadian International Development Agency that could support diaspora volunteering over the next five years.

Bathseba Belai, who carried out the AHEAD research, says that while many Canadian immigrants want to help with development, they don’t know how to do so. Their representative organizations do not have the capacity to run programs, or they are very busy establishing a career in Canada. “A lot of diaspora professionals do not have six months to stay on site, so three-to-six week assignments are more realistic,” she says.

Ms Belai was part of the three-person delegation of CUSO-VSO and AHEAD representatives that visited universities in Gondar and Jimma last November to identify potential volunteer placements. Physiotherapy training — the first of four assignments during the pilot — would fill a gaping hole in Ethiopia’s medical system. Wracked by famines, wars, and a mounting burden of HIV, the country is near the bottom of the United Nations human development index; in other words, in need of healing hands. By further training his fledgling faculty, Mr Alamirrew said, Canada would kick-start hospital rehabilitation in his country, benefiting thousands of Ethiopians, including accident and stroke victims, patients recovering from surgery, and the soaring numbers of people suffering common side-effects of newly available HIV antiretroviral therapy.

Mr Alamirrew and his colleagues teach in English. But what they really need is an Ethiopian Canadian with some Amharic, the first language of his faculty, and a familiarity with Ethiopian ways of teaching.

Mr Alamirrew’s commitment, and that of other university leaders, impressed the CUSO-VSO and AHEAD delegation. “It was very humbling,” Ms. Belai recalls. “I came back really wanting to fill these placements.”

Jim Boothroyd is a Vancouver-based writer

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