Removing Obstacles
a strategy for self-sustainability
More self-sustainability means having more autonomy and less reliance on external funding, expertise or decisions. It means having a larger capacity to choose and negotiate with other initiatives what’s best for your project and what’s not. It means an increasingly equitable participation, which will lead to development models that are more comprehensive and relevant for all, that is, more sustainable. Know more
Many development projects become more self-sustainable by devoting special efforts to removing obstacles that may be negatively impacting their self-sustainability.
Extreme dependence on external resources, poor capacity to identify or solve problems, lack of political support and beneficiary community distrust are some of the many factors that can hinder an initiative’s efforts to achieve interventions that are comprehensive, relevant to their context, and developed with the equitable participation of their different stakeholders, i.e., self-sustainable. For this reason, some projects spend time, resources and special efforts identifying these obstacles and removing them.
Some initiatives, for instance, train, educate and empower the communities they work with so that they can help solve development problems and gradually take ownership of their projects. Others devote efforts to raising public awareness or trying to advocate for decision-makers to build a political environment that is more favorable to their causes (changing public policies or laws, attracting more economic support, etc.). Still others make careful evaluations on how they are managing their resources to eliminate dynamics or decisions that may be straining their budgets (i.e., should we continue bringing water pipes to this population, or would it be better to build a well?).
There are many obstacles that may be impeding the self-sustainability of projects and many different ways to remove them. Take a look at how these initiatives have done it!
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