Gretchen Ferguson with members of an indigenous craft cooperative in Churicana, Bolivia. | Photo courtesy of Gretchen Ferguson

While growing up in Saskatchewan, Gretchen Ferguson was struck by the status of the First Nations around her.

“I wondered why people thought it was OK to have racist attitudes. I saw how they struggled in school and with the system. I saw injustice,” says Ferguson.

Her passion for social and economic justice grew from there until she found herself in Nicaragua for graduate studies. In Latin America, she found her cause: working with NGOs, universities and communities to foster economic and social development. Later, in Bolivia, she recognized the opportunity for local, indigenous people to apply Community Economic Development (CED) to take control of their own futures.

Community Economic Development

CED is simply working together with what you already have: local assets.

“[It involves] mobilizing all kinds of connections, resources, knowledge and skills – it’s a group of people coming together to make viable projects that benefit an entire community,” says Ferguson.

While the concept is simple, CED goes against the status quo. In most underdeveloped areas, governments or NGOs identify needs within a community, focusing on what they “lack,” not on what they can build from. Consultation with locals is superficial, whereas CED demands that locals drive projects.

Nonetheless, there is room for experts to support locally-driven development. In Bolivia, this means building greenhouses with indigenous knowledge of how to make adobe bricks combined with expert help in greenhouse design. Greenhouses grow kitchen vegetables –
normally ill-suited to the high elevation and arid conditions of the Bolivian highlands – that help counter child malnutrition and food insecurity.

NGO and municipal staff are finding new and surprising advantages to the collaborative approach.

“Staff used to take fully-prepared projects into their meetings with locals but now they see the value of planning together. This creates ownership on the part of locals. The projects now belong to them. That makes a tremendous difference,” says Ferguson.

According to Ricardo Poma, a traditional indigenous leader from Bolivia, CED helped the locals see that they are not poor and that they are rich in land, traditions and social relations.

“Most communities have resources of some kind which CED helps them to re-discover,” he says. “It also helped us see that we have to make change in our community ourselves. We can’t wait for NGOs or the government to fix things for us.”

Bolivian projects

The Bolivia CED project, started by Ferguson, was selected as exemplary by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (now Universities Canada) for its contributions to engaging marginalized populations in development.

To begin, she approached SFU’s Centre for Sustainable Community Development and sought funding from the Canadian International Development Agency. She coordinated the project for six years while pursuing a PhD in Geography, which also focused on indigenous-driven local development in Bolivia.

“Planting seeds is what makes it all worth it [and] then watching them flower,” she says.

SFU students previously involved with Bolivian CED projects have moved onto working in international projects and indigenous education at SFU and UBC, human rights work in Colombia and Corporate Social Responsibility with a Canadian mining company.

Two-way street

When it comes to development work, the focus tends to be on uplifting the impoverished community with no attention given to what we can learn in return.

“It’s not a one-way street. Canadians can learn from the values of ‘social relations,’ the concept that building relationships is just as important as productivity or efficiency in work,” says Ferguson.

In Bolivia, meetings start with connecting with the people involved before getting down to business, explains Ferguson. It helps to make sure things get done by ensuring deeper roots. It may take longer, but the results of projects tend to last longer.

Now that Ferguson has been awarded her PhD, she will continue to spot worthwhile projects for SFU students and faculty to apply research in sustainable community development in Latin America.

“I’m good at finding opportunities and putting together the right people and resources to make things happen,” says Ferguson.