As director of Kindle Orphan Outreach, I rely heavily on the rest of the management team for how we should respond to various situations. We often spend much time talking through issues to reach a consensus. And many times I have decided that they know better than I do, or else that this is another example of cultural preferences, and I just go along with the others.

But there is an issue that has continued to trouble me through many hours of discussion over the past three years. And it’s not an issue that is unique to Kindle. It’s in Malawian newspapers and in a letter from the heads of many international organizations to the President of Malawi. And last September I decided that it was time to go ahead and make the change at Kindle even though we hadn’t yet reached a consensus. I was warned that this would bring difficult times upon us, but I believed that it was a necessary change, whatever the outcome.

And now those difficult times have arrived! So what is the issue? Allowances. It is customary in Malawi that attendees of any sort of training should receive money for coming to be taught. And as of this year, Kindle will no longer pay allowances for people to come to trainings. There are many reasons that we have made this change. Here are just a few:

  1. Many people don’t come to trainings for the teaching; they just want allowances.
  2. It gives the impression that training has no intrinsic value, and as a result often it doesn’t. There’s little incentive to do your best if you know people will come no matter what.
  3. Many of Kindle’s donor partners, who pay for the trainings, are opposed to allowances.
  4. It discourages community ownership and destroys true partnership. Kindle decides to have the training, plans the training, pays for the training, and pays the community to come. Members of the  community play no meaningful role in the process.

Since we have made this change, many of the most powerful chiefs in our area are saying that they will not come for training unless we agree to pay them. Even more than that, they are forbidding anybody else from coming to Kindle for training.

So now we need wisdom to find a way that those who truly care about the teachings can continue to be taught, while still respecting the local leadership.