"human beings are sacrificed to abstractions: a holocaust of individuals is offered up to ‘the people.'"

ok so this quote was made by benjamin constant in 1813 in relation to the french revolution, but i think about that idea all the time... albeit in a less guillotined manner...

like today at work, when i was on the 20 minute walk down the red dirt road between the lua nova shelter and the bus stop, chatting with one of the residents. it was such a good way to end my day. i simply love the conversations i have with the girls here. as i am basically acting as their therapist, my days are almost entirely spent in long talk sessions with each of them. it's wonderful how much i learn, and makes all the frustrations of brazilian bureaucracy and disorganization so worth it.

so today this girl was telling me about her former crack addiction, how she used to neglect her baby daughter for days at a time when she was on a high, and how lua nova completely changed her life. how now she not only loves her daughter now but realizes she can make a new life for the two of them and give her daughter new opportunities she never had...

i ask you, what better way to end poverty and drug abuse than giving drug users and those human beings trapped in poverty a reason to live? and the means to create a new life?

but having worked and studied international development these last years in oh-so-many facets it's so obvious how removed this simple truth is from policy. i blogged about this lots from my gray desk in UNICEF's headquarters earlier this year. ah, i shudder to think of it! i was trying to write new policy papers and toolkits for donors to stop just throwing aid money at government ministers and instead focus on people themselves in the form of civil society organizations. i can't say how unpopular this is, or how if anything it's simply a token consideration never taken seriously.

this girl today was telling me that there are so many others like her, who just simply lack the opportunity to change. no one gives them any credit at all. the norm for girls like her is to take their children away and put them in a penitentiary facility (a lot of them have engaged in heavily illegal activities at the age of 12, 13.. so hard to think of...). but instead lua nova - and raquel, it's founder, who really is so visionary - is saying: we trust you, you are capable, and furthermore you can create a new generation of change with your own family.

so back to constant's quote: the aid community would sacrifice all these capable individuals to the abstract notions of PRSPs and SAPs and other absurd grand schemes that do little more than result in shiny reports and ministerial mercedes. yes working on an individual level is tough beyond words (see: all the posts below), but if the individual does not change, what is some PRSP going to do?

and in other instances of human beings sacrificed to abstractions, on the other side of the world refugees by the thousands are streaming into thailand from burma in the wake of election violence... see this video below... and read more here and here. also read my friend thelms blog - she is currently working on the thai/burma border and is pretty much amazing.