A Demonstration Project In Every Time Zone

• 24_Demonstrations.bmp: The Twenty Four

Economic Development Trek - Sungai Lui

-- David Rebstock

Global Human Demonstration – Asia Economic Development Trek – 1977

By late 1977 the ICA had initiated 24 demonstration Human Development Projects, one in each time zone in the world.

We had an overall set of principles for development that included economic development when the projects were initiated:

- We always worked in the poorest of the poor communities . If we could demonstrate a dramatic transformation there it could be done anywhere. - We always worked on everything in a community “Economic,, Human and Social Development.” The Economic included cooperative agriculture, commercial servicesl, and appropriate industry.. - We always defined the underlying contradictions, those issues that block future development. They might be Economic (no means of earning a living), Health (an inadequate water system), They were underlying in the sense that we helped to identify the underlying reason or reasons for the blocks. - People in the communities do their own development . - Local Self Sufficiency replaces Economic Dependency. - Although sometimes making seed money and appropriate loans available is helpful, just throwing money and food at a project doesn’t work in the long run.

You must recover the spirit of a community and then the human motivation will be sustained.

At that time, a series of economic and health treks were initiated to accelerate progress in these key areas. Hale Prather and I were assigned to visit five projects in Asia from October 1977 thru January, 1978. The first project in our trek was Sungai Lui which is a small village about 40 miles north of Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.

We arrived in Kuala Lumpur late at night after a 20 hour flight from Chicago with significant jet lag. We reached Sungai Lui after a ride through the jungle. That area was primarily made up of old subber plantations that were being converted into Palm oil plantations. The rubber plantations were left over from before WW II when the world started making nylon tires and there was no longer a big market for the rubber.

On arrival I went to sleep upstairs in a barn above some goats. At 3 a.m. some dogs got in with the goats and made a ruccas. Then at 4:30 someone with a very loud loudspeaker on the top of the minaret started his prayers. Allah Akbar! God is Great! God is Good! I didn’t get much sleep and certainly knew I was in a different world.

The culture shock didn’t stop. At breakfast I looked out the window and saw six men carrying a shrouded body out of town on a wide plank. An elderly woman well known in the community had died during the night and a 4 day wake was about to start. At least this gave us some time to get our feet on the ground before we started our work

Significant economic progress had already been made in the project. They were in the process of building a water supply, agricultural shed, and a community market. During a previous visit to the project a man knocked at the door during breakfast. He had a back pack sprayer on his back and I asked the project leader what he had come for after he left. He told me that heavy steel like grass had built up in the rice patties while the communists occupied the town years earlier while the whole village had moved to safety in a regional town. After they returned in a couple years the grass couldn’t even be cut with a machete. The project had bought some one-time kill herbicide to kill the steel-like grass and the backpack sprayers so they could treat the rice patties and re-plant rice. The man had brought his 5 gal tin to get 50 cents worth of spray. In one year the community had become self-sufficient in rice by eliminating the steel like grass.

Economic Development Sungai Lui-1977 p. 2

Our first meeting in the village was with some women who wanted to start a sewing industry. We had had a dozen wool gloves sent from a factory we knew of in Hong Kong and we wanted to see if they could sew them A staff member, my translator told them that we wanted to see if they were interested in a sewing contract. They had one old treddle sewing machine in the community center where we were meeting. They quickly grabbed the gloves and started sewing. I asked the translator if we should tell them what we wanted to do. He said “too late now!” They sewed the fingers on perfectly in a few minutes, dropped them on the table and asked “whats next” Later after we were gone they built a building and started an industry sewing factory smocks, school uniforms, service and even military Uniforms.

We held several meetings with the work groups to brainstorm other Economic ideas such as marketing the community grown green chili cash crop, bamboo poles and making rattan furniture. Later we did market research in the regional town and Kuala Lumpur in all these areas.

We attended a community wide meeting led by members of the community where they gave reports as to what was going on in the Stakes and Guilds (Neighborhoods and Work Groups) and made plans for a Workday that weekend. The workday was organized to paint the new community market shed that had just been completed and they had participation from each stake in the workday which was the first time that happened in quite some time. We had a great celebration afterwards.

We met the head man of the village at the end of the meeting. John Gibson said that previously the head man had taken him aside and asked him if we did “Prayers” John answered that we did. We had been doing a daily office in a bedroom with the windows covered every morning. We had committed to the village from the onset that we would not prostelitize in any way from the beginning. The village headman said we must be praying because how could we do what we do and live the way we were if we didn’t have some sort of a spirit foundation. Two of the Pillars of the Muslim faith are Prayer and Alms which for the Muslims means Obligatory Brotherhood to treat all with equity and justice and that means caring for all equally.

-- DavidRebstock - 06 Oct 2006