Unsustainable Rambling.

I have been thinking a lot about sustainability lately.  Around here that is a dirty word, so much so that we have turned it into a drinking game and if you say it out loud, someone will surely shout "drink!". We use it a lot. Environmental sustainability, economic sustainability, project sustainability.
Hyman and I are currently working on a proposal, due today at 3:00pm, (He is doing a final edit right now, so there is nothing for me to do, I am not just slacking off!) and one of the questions we had to answer was how we would make the project sustainable after the three year funding period ended. Well this is an interesting question. When at the beginning of a project, the idea of the completion is both daunting and exciting. I mean, if we pull this off the the Mankosi community will have a community hall complete with vehicles, volunteer accommodation, a weekly market, and trainings available to basically anyone who has the desire to learn.  But what if no one does??
Thats the thing about creating a project for a community of people. You just never know if it is going to be successful until it is over, and sometimes even later than that.
I recently spoke with the initiator of the Mdumbi Education Centre who came back for a visit after almost 3 years away. She said that the Ed Centre is at a point now where the teachers need to decide whether they want it to go on or not, because if they do nothing it will collapse within the year. This project has been the success story of Transcape. A thriving preschool, afterschool enrichment, and adult learning centre where people from the whole community could come to learn for next to nothing.  Well now we are out of funding, ideas, and motivation and somehow the show must go on.
There really is no way to guarantee the sustainability of a project. In school we learned that participation was the key. Without community ownership there is just no way the project can be sustainable. So ya throw in a couple of participatory workshops, a few community surveys, and hire as many locals as you can jam in, job done right? No.
Three years ago when I was here the first time, we created an holistic HIV program. Completely participatory, community driven, and "sustainable". Today, Transcape doesn't really have an HIV program. It completely fell apart.
So what is it. What is the key to sustainability??
Basically there isn't one. You never really know when you start a project whether it will be the one to stand the tests of time and save your community from complete destitution.
I think the most important thing I have learned while working at Tata Spargs' or Vukani Backpackers, is that it isn't the responsibility of the development worker to ensure the sustainability of the project. Now yes, it is wise for the development worker not to fly off the handle and create rediculous projects, but in the end, even the most practical of projects can fail if the beneficiaries don't take over the responsibility. The tricky part about this, for the development worker, is that it often doesn't happen until the project seemingly crashes. Sometimes it takes a complete demolition of the project for the people involved to wake up and take responsibility of it. And more often than not, it doesn't look anything like it originally did.
So is this a failure than? Was your project sustainable if it crashes and then picks up in a manner different than your original intention?
I think not. When working in a different place, language, culture, than your own, you struggle to undertand simple phrases, let alone the complexities of day to day life, business, or development. So how is it possible to create a project idealy suited to that society? It's not.
So why do we keep trying? Why when so many projects before have failed, do we dare to think that we could ever create a new one and that this time it will work? Because perhaps the projects before aren't failures. Perhaps they are still in progress. Taking the shape that fits with this community. Making themselves sustainable in ways we never thought to imagine. Drink!