“Somalia needs a bottom-up approach”

For development to achieve its best result, it should always use a bottom-up approach, Fadomo Alin, Chairman of the Doses of Hope, an organization that works on integrating the poor and vulnerable back into society in Somalia, said with a passion.
“Involving people in decisions about themselves has always been a good measure,” Fadomo stressed. She said: “I have tested the approach.”

There are many times that international organizations have embarked on a micro-financing project without necessarily consulting the people involved to know their needs first, this AfricaNews reporter said. Development aid is mostly given to developing countries without consulting the people what their preferences are.

Fadomo did it differently. After she lost everything in the Somali war and migrated to The Netherlands as a refugee, she could not stop thinking about the other people left back home in Somali Land. “Ï will often think, so what are the other women like me who have also lost everything and do not have the chance to leave the country doing,” she stated.

This thought haunted her until she started the Doses of Hope in 1997. Her organization is involved in micro-financing, counseling HIV/AIDS people, training people in ICT and vocational skills, generally giving people in Somalia - located in North-east Africa - a sense and a reason to live after the war.

Fadomo emphasized: “At least, I can mobilize to give a dose of hope to the people who are victims of the landmines, those who are HIV, the blind and those who will otherwise not earn a living.”

Now, the micro-finance department of the Doses of Hope is almost operating like a bank. It has created over 7,000 direct jobs and has touched the lives of about 17, 0000 people in Somalia.

Fadomo recalled: “We started with nothing, we only had our brains intact.” She had to try and convince people to buy into her idea until she found two other Somalian refugees who bought into her idea.

She added: “But it wasn’t all rosy, Doses of hope had to deal with issues of trust. How were we to be trusted, three Somalians in a foreign land soliciting funds for a project but the solution to this challenge was persistence, patience and pursuit.”

However, she said their success was not without challenges. Fadomo said some of the women we started giving micro finance did not understand development in a long term and so they thought the money was for free and it was sometimes difficult retrieving.

Fadomo noted access to finance remained one of the major challenges that Doses of Hope had to deal with. Overall, she believes that Doses of Hope is a success today because of the bottom-up approach they used. ‘We asked the women what they needed and we tried to respond to it,” she said.

Fadomo does not want to apportion blame of why development aid is not working because she believes that leaders of the developing world also need to be upfront and to know what they want so that they can always present proposals.

She said she hopes in the development of women and the vulnerable in the Somalian society. On Somalia she said: “It will be well, maybe in the next 10 to 15 years.”

She advised leaders of the African continent to be more proactive and use the bottom-up approach to development.

Source:AfricaNews