By Christy Wolyniak

“Let’s donate our clothes, you’re helping children in Africa.”

It’s an age-old line told by parents to children that perhaps many still believe. But from a business perspective, the donations can be damaging -- free clothes can be sold on a cheap market and leave another child’s parent unemployed.

That’s the perspective of Ballardite Dan Lavin, a business accountant who also runs the Community Initiative Program (CIP) in Sierra Leone. He calls the gifting of goods such as clothes and buildings “anti-development,” or organizations unwittingly doing more harm than good with their aid.

More than an accountant, Lavin began working with the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone 23 years ago in the village of Makrugba near the base of the Kangari Hills. He made a friend there named Sullay, who started a relief organization following the war. After Sullay passed away, Lavin was asked to continue the organization, which under his stewardship would become CIP.

Lavin’s business skills helped him create working solutions, not by coming to a country with initiatives already cemented, but by meeting in the villages with his team of five Sierra Leoneans and discovering what their actual needs were.

“The most important test is not what happens when you’re there, but what happens when you leave,” Lavin said.

When it comes to giving aid, he poses the question: After organizations spend millions of dollars to set up a new school, hospital, provide clothing or food, what happens after all of the volunteers leave?

Lavin says a surplus of U.S. aid is leading to unemployment, as local businesses cannot possibly compete with the price of “free.”

“Our biggest problem is organizations that come in and give things away, when we’re battling to get people to stand on their own feet by giving them tools to do that,” said Lavin. “… Our organization is fighting against other organizations who do things for them, giving everything away for free. CIP is based on getting (the community) involved and being their own solution.”

Gifting new buildings, while initially positive, can often turn into a negative. When a building is not affordable by a community’s standards, upkeep of the building also becomes unaffordable. Moreover, by taking away the responsibility of building infrastructure from the government, a culture of dependency is created, “opening the door for corruption and greed instead of responsibility and independence,” Lavin said.

As one might guess, Lavin has a different approach. He goes into the community to find out how he can help people help themselves.

“When people are asked to identify what their real issues are, they always come up with ‘we want this, we want that.’ We don’t bring in cement. Whatever solution to their problem is a shift from wants to needs and it is that shift where eyes become opened,” said Lavin.

Lavin discussed the idea of community-based schools (CBS), where the community is responsible for resurrecting a building, transforming it into a school and funding it. The village of Makrugba started their own school in 2012, serving 73 elementary students who, up to that time, were walking five miles each day to the nearest village to receive their education.

Recently in May Lavin traveled back to the village to check the progress of these community-based schools. Communities are building schools for themselves and raising their own funds and discovering teaching methods that are both affordable and easily replaceable. Wooden blocks are being used to teach spelling and basic mathematical applications to students.

Lavin and his team in Sierra Leone met with the CBS teachers to challenge them to think of new ways to utilize the resources available to them for educational purposes.

“A true community-based school provides their own structure, pays their own teachers, and is as independent as possible . . . Teachers are paid by parents directly, or the community farms a plot of land owned by the teachers. Desks and benches can be made locally, and repaired periodically as necessary,” Lavin explained.

CIP purchased the first set of textbooks for the school, though replacing texts in the future will be the school’s responsibility.

Lavin’s organization also consults villages on the idea of for-profit libraries, as most communities want to have a library. He stated every library should have a garden, so that students who cannot afford to pay the monthly fee, which would provide funds to purchase books, can work in the garden and sell the food in order to support the library.

“When they realize that they could keep all the profit by providing a library to an undeserved area, and that their knowledge and experience of running a library can make them a profit, libraries and the availability of appropriate books would prosper,” said Lavin.

Animal husbandry is another topic Lavin’s team touches on, stating that members in the community use goats and chickens like a savings and checking account.

“It is common to see villagers heading to the local weekly market with a few chickens, simply seen to them as carrying their check book to the market.”

Lavin’s team helps train and educate individuals on how to make a proper and profitable goat house, which must first be approved by a consultant. A goat loan -- four females and one male -- can result in 13 animals at the end of one year if the female produces eight offspring. The farmer is responsible for the care of the animals and then pays back one goat to the program and one to the consultant.

Back in Seattle, Lavin has been able to generate involvement from some of his accounting clients.

“Vasuda Salon was so encouraged by what’s going on, they took all of their proceeds from one day and donated it. New Roots Organics (based in Ballard) has sponsored our program for years,” he said.

In the end, Lavin’s involvement in Sierra Leone can be summed up with another old line: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

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