Hands-on Development Training for a Proactive Chinese Civil Society

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For the average urban Chinese, the country’s severe environmental problems are no secret. Newspaper stories and radio and television programs increasingly cover issues such as air pollution, desertification, water and energy shortages, and global warming. “Have you breathed the air lately?” exclaimed a Beijing taxi driver recently when asked if he thought China’s environmental problems were serious. “We are one of the most polluted cities in the world!” Another popular topic is China’s poverty, especially in the less-developed western regions.

When asked for solutions to these problems, however, the reply is often less assertive. “That’s for the government to solve,” the Beijing cabbie said. “I am just a taxi driver. We don’t know anything about these national issues.” Such a response—deferring to the government for solutions to all economic and environmental ills—is natural in a country where until recently, all jobs were provided by the state. Even though a plethora of nongovernmental groups has emerged in the last decade, the notion of a career addressing environmental and social issues still means research or government work to most Chinese.

Increasingly, however, recent college graduates are looking to China’s growing civil society sector to forge their career paths. Yet these paths remain as uncertain as the solutions they aim to find. There are no degrees in NGO work, and few organizations have the staff or resources to offer internship opportunities for students. As a result, Chinese NGOs routinely complain about the absence of skilled workers, even as students from the top universities in China bemoan the lack of job opportunities.

The Yunnan Institute of Development (YID), based in Yunnan Province’s Yuxi prefecture, may help close this gap. Established in 2001 in partnership with Yuxi Teacher College, YID offers an intensive 11-month training course for anyone interested in learning about and practicing development. “People come for a variety of reasons,” says project leader and head teacher Elizabeth Axelsen. “Some come to get some experiences in life, and others want to pursue a carrier in social work or development work.”

Because China’s social and environmental concerns are growing, more people are searching for solutions, Axelsen notes. “China has realized that it cannot simply say ‘Ah, we are behind in development, we just need to develop now and ignore environmental problems.’ It has realized that it will cost more to clean up later, and that in fact you can make money doing it cleaner.”

To address these issues effectively, China needs to develop a strong civil society sector with many more people engaged in solving development and environmental problems locally,” says Axelsen. Toward this aim, YID trains both Chinese nationals and foreigners in a curriculum that includes global poverty and hunger, environmental issues, childhood development, culture, construction basics, economics, and health, including an intensive focus on HIV/AIDS. This training is grounded in ongoing development projects that the Institute itself implements throughout Yunnan.

“Much of our work focuses on education and on children as the hope for future sustainable development,” Axelsen explains. “But we also recognize that you have to help the entire village, including the ecosystems, in order to help the children.” This philosophy gives YID a holistic approach to development projects, which include not only education, but also economic training for farmers, health education and services, and environmental projects that span renewable energy installations, eco-friendly toilets, and tree planting. “You can’t create sustaining development if you don’t connect it with education, and you can spoil a whole development project if you don’t take care of the environment in the process,” Axelson observes.

YID provides what Axelson describes as “holistic training” for the next generation of engaged global citizens. “Our education is 25 percent studies, 25 percent courses, and 50 percent experiences. We call it DMM—Determination of Modern Methods—a very different way of teaching here in China.” Participants in the development studies course, for example, spend the first half of their training in the classroom, attending lectures on theory, global and Chinese trends, and solutions as well as participating in a wide range of activities. “In the classrooms,” says Axelsen, “we present the theory in the context of the larger problems, with details on the situation in China, and always with an emphasis on what is being done, and what more needs to be done.” Participants later apply this knowledge through projects in the community. “Students learn how to organize and mobilize,” Axelsen explains.

The trainings place a strong focus on active student participation, including using student presentations to conduct large portions of the courses. “Students in China are not usually given training in how to give effective presentations,” Axelsen explains. “But that is what they will have to do when they go do real development work in the field. In this way, they learn to see themselves as teachers, and become capable of capturing the audience and using many different methods.” She notes that conducting classes in this way also allows participants to learn from each other and to recognize that everyone has something useful to share.

Armed with an understanding of different problems and potential solutions, teams of participants then spend five months in the field implementing specific YID development projects. Applying theory to the messy reality of the field can be frustrating, Axelsen says. “People in these impoverished regions cannot read. They cannot write, they do not understand the theory or techniques of proposed solutions. So you need to take the time to train them, and train them again, using many kinds of methods to bring about the message.”

Axelsen adds that sustainable development requires careful thought, long-term investment, and a lot of patience. Course participants “have to be careful not to impose solutions, because then people will simply resist it and then it won’t work. And then you’ve simply wasted a lot of time and money.” To have a real impact on a region, she argues, the students must be able and willing to adapt their solutions to the local context, to involve many people in the process, and to make plans together with local partners.

This patience and flexibility is one of the key lessons that course participants can learn from YID’s approach to implementing successful development projects. YID provides a model for complementing existing government efforts. The government “brings the hardware—the roads, schools, clinics—and we focus on training and education,” Axelsen explains.

The region’s biogas projects provide a good case study of this approach. “The government has constructed many biogas systems in rural areas. But too many are not working properly due to lack of training of the farmers,” says Axelson. So YID, in cooperation with the local entities, has established training sessions, providing villagers with booklets that contain drawings and photos outlining the biogas technology and safety. In addition, the organization is in the process of training “biogas leaders”—at least one per village—who understand the systems well enough to explain them to other villagers and can help fix systems that need repair. “Step by step and village to village, we are making the systems work,” Axelson explains.

YID course participants also learn to think critically about indicators of success in development projects. “It is…a question of how you measure your success. Do you count the number of biogas systems you administer?” Axelson asks. “Or do you count the number of households actually using them?” These, she notes, are two entirely different things. “We don’t fool ourselves into thinking we have done a lot to help a village’s development by counting how many seminars we give. We can’t, because what if we come back a year later to find that the participants only understood half of what we taught?” YID development trainees are therefore encouraged to focus on results and outcomes rather than inputs.

Working with biogas also allows the students to quickly grasp the interconnection between environmental stewardship and increased quality of life. “There are so many benefits when a biogas system is functioning,” says Axelsen. “It is essentially wasted gas from the pigs that is captured and used at no cost and very little labor input. Three pigs produce enough gas to cook two meals per day for a family of five. And the biogas means that they do not have to collect firewood, or breathe soot from wood and coal—one of the reasons for the rise in tuberculosis in the region. And,” she adds, “it is clean burning and low in carbon emissions.”

Getting course participants into the field ultimately turns them from students into actors. “They go to work in the field and they realize, ‘Wow, there is a need right here right now for this,’” observes Axelsen. She notes that many of the trainees have gone on to raise funds from friends and connections in order to support new community projects, such as a preschool. A proactive, solutions-oriented mindset is something that, according to Axelsen, “lasts a lifetime.” And a generation of life-long problem solvers is what China needs if it is to solve its social and environmental woes.

Lila Buckley is assistant executive director of the Global Environmental Institute, a Worldwatch affiliate based in Beijing. Outside contributions to China Watch reflect the views of the author and are not necessarily the views of the Worldwatch Institute.

China Watch is a joint initiative of the Worldwatch Institute and Beijing-based Global Environmental Institute (GEI) and is supported by the blue moon fund.