Juxtaposing doers and helpers in development

Abstract

A classic part of the community development process is people facing an acute economic or social problem connecting with others specializing in conceptual solutions. For example, South Asian villagers confronting chronic poverty may work with non-governmental organizations offering micro-credit schemes. These are two sides of the development relationship, the doers and the helpers. While the doers face problems that are unique to themselves, the helpers offer solutions that tend to be generic, applicable to a variety of contexts. In this paper we seek to bring some conceptual clarity to the relationships between doers and helpers in development, with a focus on the social sector that operates between business and government. We present a typology of the organizational forms involved in development, and then look at the gaps between helpers and doers and the approaches used to bridge them. Roots and roofs In the historical sense, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) tended to be both grassroots doers and their local helpers, functioning in communities (Boli and Thomas, 1999). But when we use the term NGO in the contemporary sense, we tend to think of cosmopolitan helpers: foundations and developmental agencies that function at national and international levels, with activities directed into many localities. It is in this latter sense that NGOs have been 'discovered as a new institutional form of development resource' (Carroll, 1992, p. 1), so numerous as to represent a 'global associa

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