By Benedict Reiners
Last semester, SFU students passed a referendum increasing student fees to allocate funding towards the charitable organization Schools Building Schools, which aims to build schools in Africa. The referendum managed to gain approximately 64% support from voters, something that may seem less impressive when you consider the fact that only 11% of eligible SFU students voted. However, if we ignore the voter turn out, and focus instead on the support that it gained in the election, one can see that there is at least some will to aid developing nations. But, perhaps if we were serious about trying to help, we should have considered more deeply how we were going about doing so.
Schools Building Schools is not unique in its purpose. In fact, its aim is one of the most popular goals amongst western charities: building things, and more specifically, schools. It is undeniable that there is a need for such developments in areas like those targeted by Schools Building Schools. However, when one looks at the number of charities developed specifically for the very same purpose, one must begin to question whether the funding targeting such projects is proportional to those bent towards funding other issues, such as the hiring of teachers, and the purchase of school supplies for the students who are supposed to be learning in these new buildings.
This disposition towards building projects is in part due to our society’s desire to see a visceral return on our investments. This desire is understandable, particularly since it gives us proof that we have done something and made some sort of difference. The problem is that education doesn’t work like that. There is no way we can viscerally see the education, or the improvement in quality of life that other kinds of work or donationscan establish and sustain, which tends to make us less enthusiastic about contributing to such developments. Yet this fact is evident in a variety of ways, not just through Schools Building Schools, whether it be what we do with our money or the mission trips that we send our kids on, in which they provide work as either unskilled labourers or under-qualified teachers, only to leave a few weeks later.
As a society, we shouldn’t stop helping with projects like those of Schools Building Schools. But we must put a premium on other projects as well, particularly those that will actually improve the communities in these developing areas. While we just keep building schools, many children cannot go, as they are needed to aid in supplementing their family’s income. If we are to improve education in developing nations, we must strive to ensure that it is fully and universally accessible, and that doesn’t end when we finish a building. This includes ensuring that families have enough of an income that they not only don’t need their child to participate in work, but that they can also afford school supplies, and ensuring that there will be teachers with a secure income ready to teach the children there.
In the end, the best thing we can do to help developing nations is to not oversimplify their plight. When we know that we’re contributing to building new schools, we cannot forget that the work is not yet done. On that note, there are few who are more in tune with the problems of a nation than those in a nation itself, and as such, it’s important that we work alongside people in these areas, and never assume that we have all the answers.
