Dear Editor,
The recently announced plans for the transformation of Melanie Damishana and Non Pareil represent what could have been an excellent opportunity to demonstrate genuine participatory community development. Unfortunately, from what has been reported, it appears instead to be a significant lost opportunity.
Let me be clear: there is nothing inherently objectionable about better drainage, safer roads and walkways, improved lighting, fire hydrants, green spaces, recreational areas, better organised commercial activity or investments that improve people’s quality of life. These are all potentially valuable interventions.
The issue is how we arrive at them.
According to the report, engineers, architects, planners and development specialists spent several months surveying the community and preparing an assessment and proposals. Residents were then invited to comment on those proposals and identify anything the technical team might have overlooked. The Chairman of the Buxton/Foulis Neighbourhood Democratic Council has also reportedly stated that the council itself was not consulted beforehand. (Kiskadee Watch)
That is consultation, perhaps, but it is not meaningful consultation or participation in the design of one’s own community.
There is an important difference between asking people, “What kind of community do you want?” and arriving with plans already prepared and asking, “What do you think of what we have decided?”
Imagine someone coming into your village, studying it, deciding where businesses should operate, where vendors should be located, how public spaces should be used, what should be moved and how the community should function — and only afterwards inviting you into a room to comment.
In plain Guyanese language, that feels like eyepass.
And it does not have to be this way.
Melanie could have been the model not only for physical transformation but for a new approach to participatory development in Guyana. Residents could have been involved from the outset through community mapping, household consultations, focus groups, design workshops and discussions with women, young people, older persons, persons with disabilities, vendors, business owners, religious organisations, community groups and the elected NDC.
The people who live in a community possess knowledge no technical team can obtain simply by surveying roads and drains. They know which areas flood first. They know where children walk to school, where elderly residents struggle to move safely, which businesses support household livelihoods, where women feel unsafe at night, where traffic creates danger, and why certain informal arrangements exist in the first place.
That knowledge should shape the plan — not merely be invited to comment on it after the plan has largely been conceived.
This becomes even more important when proposals involve reorganising mechanic shops, spray-painting businesses, entertainment establishments and roadside vendors. The Government has indicated that vending would not be displaced but reorganised into cleaner and safer locations, and that some commercial activities would be moved into designated areas. (Kiskadee Watch) These decisions potentially affect people’s livelihoods, customers, transportation costs, income and established social networks. Those affected should therefore be part of designing the solutions.
Participation is not an inconvenience that slows development. Participation is part of development.
It improves decisions, identifies unintended consequences before they become problems, builds trust and, perhaps most importantly, creates local ownership. People are far more likely to protect and sustain infrastructure and public spaces when they have had a genuine role in deciding what is built and how their community evolves.
The President has described Melanie as a pilot for an initiative intended eventually to reach villages across Guyana. (Kiskadee Watch) If that is the intention, there is still an opportunity to get this right.
Let Melanie pilot something more ambitious than concrete drains, walkways and streetlights.
Let it pilot participatory village development.
Start with the community, not with the drawings. Sit with people before deciding for them. Ask residents what they envision for their village, what they value, what they want changed, what they want preserved and what trade-offs they are prepared to make. Let kids and young people build their ideal villages in Minecraft and other gaming systems.
Government certainly has a responsibility to lead and invest. Technical professionals have an important role to play. But communities are not empty spaces waiting to be redesigned by experts. They are places where people have built lives, livelihoods, relationships, histories and identities.
Development should be something we do with people, not something we do to them.
That would be genuine transformation.
Yours faithfully,
(Name and address supplied)
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