What's Concentric About Development?

When we first encounter people who are hungry or sick or thirsty, our first instinct is to feed them, arrange for medical care or provide clean water.  In an emergency situation this is the appropriate thing to do, but often attempts to raise people up out of material poverty in the long term bump up against some of the hidden dimensions of poverty and are not to easy to see.  These dimensions include aspects of spiritual brokenness as well as systemic weaknesses that undermine the best development efforts.  

It helps to picture physical, spiritual and systemic conditions as concentric circles with suffering people in the center.  Their physical conditions are easiest to identify and seem easiest to address.  The next circle out is the spiritual dimension that is probably closer to the root of the problem and essential to address and this is where many relief and development organizations stop.  But even the most well intentioned efforts to address both physical and spiritual poverty often fall short of their potential when they are undermined by broader national and international systemic constraints.

The figure below illustrates this.  

There is another level at which development can be thought of as concentric as well.  Often local efforts to solve people's problems are undermined by the regional or national legal or public policy environment.  A good understanding of the interplay of these at various levels is essential to good development in our opinion.  Sometimes a change at the national level can have huge impact at the local level.