ETP - Center for Sustainable Development

Open letter to ETP Slovakia - Center for Sustainable Development, Kosice

This letter is to congratulate ETP on another successful year of development, and to offer a little bit of personal volunteer support. The work with the Roma seems especially important, but also among the most potentially controversial. I recall an earlier conversation I had with a representative of Habitat for Humanity, about how some Slovaks objected to the special help given to Roma, but not poor Slovaks – and how one project was politically defeated in a local election.

My own view is that too much of the Roma culture fails to support private property, individual responsibility, and obedient respect for laws and contracts. I see that ETP is sincerely oriented towards helping the Roma improve their materialistic circumstances – but fear that without a change in culture, material help merely creates a culture of dependency. Habitat, a program I’ve supported for over 20 years, seems to have one of the best self-help components of any aid group, trying to maximize independence. Yet even Habitat is less “sustainable”, than I would prefer.

There IS a model for sustainable development and poverty reduction – profit oriented businesses. They are sustainable because of the profits, and reduce poverty through trade and production of desired goods & services. It might well be the case that there is excessive consumerism in rich countries; in fact I would even agree that materialism has caused some spiritual poverty. Nevertheless, for reduction of absolute material poverty, no other model has been as successful. And I suggest ETP attempt more to copy this reasonably successful model, rather than attempt to create an alternate model – it seems that such aid attempts since WW II have all too often resulted in resources wasted on such experiments.

What I would like to discuss is how ETP can help support Roma businesses:

What programs have been tried? What have been the results? How public are the results?

[In looking through http://www.bcarn.com/ , it seems this link fails, today. The ETP link was working: http://www.etp.sk/BCARN/DOC01_SK.htm But there was little detail there. Training, Organizational Development, Regional Study Trips, Internship Program. ]

It seems clear to me that there should be Roma owned/ controlled construction companies; security agencies/ local police; legal support/ arbitrators; retail/ wholesale merchants who buy and sell goods; Roma bankers/ financial advisors; Roma restaurant workers, restaurant owners, and musicians; Roma clothes makers/ repairers; Roma car repair workers; and maybe even Roma farmers. But I don’t hear of many employed Roma (where are they employed), and especially little of any small Roma businesses. The Roma community will never develop without Roma entrepreneurs.

The above comments have been relevant for the past 13 years that I’ve lived in Slovakia – except that the EU aid/ complaints about Slovak treatment of Roma seem to have ignored these ideas. I don’t think the EU employs many Slovak Roma (or should that be Roma Slovaks? – unfortunately, I think they are more Roma than Slovak; that’s a bit of the problem.) I wonder if ETP has hired any Roma. If not, a certain internal “affirmative action” seems called for.

This last week, with the recent tragedy in the Tatras, seems an excellent time to suggest some positive possibilities. Attempts to clean up the Tatra mess could be tied with an attempt to create Roma businesses. It seems that this year and next, there should be a high abundance of pine wood, and therefore it should be available at fairly low cost – some additional effort at supporting Roma who are in wood working businesses should be more successful than usual. Habitat might, for instance, support construction of wood-frame houses, perhaps more so than brick houses (depending on the price economics.) In any case, development of low cost wood furniture, for any new houses, seems a clear opportunity.

The capitalist model of development: starting with capital for tools (and entrepreneur organization), add resources, add labor, produce products – sell these products at higher price. The revenue from sold products pays the price of the resources, provides wages for workers, provides salary & bonuses for managers (who will initially be the entrepreneurs), and finally a profitable return for the owners of the capital.

Obviously, if ETP can help provide good quality, low cost organizational support, and find low cost initial capital (eg a 10 year loan with first year grace period and a couple years of interest only repayments), the likelihood of a successful, sustainable business is increased. I’m no expert in sawmills or furniture making, but because they are fairly labor intensive, I’m certain there is reasonable opportunity for helping create successful Roma businesses. Yes, there is also competition in these areas – but one advantage of competition is that the likely prices for selling product becomes fairly well known. Cost control and low cost capital become significant advantages. Being local is also an advantage, so many small local city/ village workshop furniture makers might be, with good coordination, very competitive with Ikea supplying massive factories – with the locals having a potential quality advantage in “made to measure” customization.

I’m willing to help provide some business advice, if there are some small projects I can work on. I’m also very interested in supporting greater transparency of the enterprise – where, as a condition of the organizational support, more details of the business are made public. And perhaps support the generation of additional capital funds through making quarterly, even monthly results, public through the internet. Perhaps this would be a good time for a “Mentor” program, where Roma who actually want to attempt to become entrepreneurs could get an individual, like me, to volunteer advice on business issues. The Mentor would help ask the important questions: what should be done, in concrete steps. The entrepreneur would actually do the steps, and discuss the results and the next steps. Were such a program to exist, I would like to volunteer. (Model: Junior Achievement)

This letter is rushed for time, since it is already late for inclusion in the meeting this week. Yet I have been thinking of similar business support ideas for the Church, under a theme of “Jesus was a Carpenter” – and perhaps have clubs in many cities for fathers and sons.

For transparency, there is a new phenomenon called Blogs (web-logs), where folk who spend a lot of time on-line, can put links to interesting articles or ideas. I suggest that ETP begin looking at having a group blog, in Slovak, which can be done for free with Blogger.com, or some other blogging software/ company. I can offer my own help and experience in this area if any are interested.

I expect to publish this letter on my own blog at http://tiggergrey.blogspot.com/ Liberty Father, though my main blog is at tomgrey.motime.com (Liberty Dad). Visitors and comments welcome.

Finally, there has been huge advances in telecom capability, and especially Voice over IP (internet protocol). Please consider downloading the free program from www.Skype.com, which allows you plug in a headset/ microphone into your computer, and use it as a free, long distance telephone. The quality is excellent. All NGOs with unlimited data connection to internet should be using it. I’m at TomGrey (in Slovakia – call me, if you wish!)

With sincere wishes for a fine meeting, and a fine future year,