By Scott Lamb
Programs started by the state of Rhineland Palatinate have helped provide refugees in Rwanda with shelter and their children with schools.
When the Rwandan genocide began in 1994, the Germans in Kigali were among the last to get out. Around them, members of the Hutu majority began what became a 20th century tragedy: the massacre of an estimated 800,000 people from the country's Tutsi minority.
"We were the last to leave when things got dangerous, and the first to return afterwards," said Jürgen Debus, chairman of the Rhineland-Palatinate/Rwanda partnership association, which is run by the western German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The program pairs communitites from developed nations with Third World countries. When the Germans did return, they were better prepared than most to help: they had spent the past 12 years working to better the country. "We already had good structures," Debus said.
When it reopened later that year, the German office immediately began the job of helping the survivors. It installed water treatment plants and it even set up a "room of reconciliation" where Rwandans could gather and share their grief. Over its years in Rwanda, the state had also paired up hundreds of its communities with African villages and towns. When the need hit, the communities were ready and initiated numerous projects tailored to the needs of Rwandans they already knew.
For instance, Bad Kreuznach, a district in central Rhineland-Palatinate, had been working with the prefecture of Kibuye since 1983. Its "A Hut for Rwanda" program brought together schools and community centers to raise money to build homes and shelters for 197 families in the community of Bwakira. The relationship has proved long-lasting and today, Bad Kreuznach still runs programs in the town -- including one that provides local widows with goats to help them earn a living. Bad Kreuznach residents also built a primary school in the town of Mujyojyo.
Rhineland-Palatinate partnered up with Rwanda in 1982 after the German government made a plea for states to establish such tires with developing countries. The total amount of money spent -- around €48 million ($63 million) so far -- is less important than some of the other statistics. In almost 23 years of working together, the state has completed some 1,200 development projects in the Central African country. In total, more than 230 Rhineland-Palatinate schools, 50 communities and 25 state organizations are engaged in the partnership. Most of the work is done by private citizens.
Partnerships between cities and communities have existed since 1956, when then-United States President Dwight D. Eisenhauer launched sister city and sister state initiatives that would later spread around the world. But for the most part, the relationships emphasized personal, tourism and commercial exchanges. The Rhineland-Palatinate program became one of the first to deal exclusively with providing infrastructural development projects in Third World nations.
And it's exactly that kind of long-lasting, grass-roots assistance that German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder outlined during his New Year's address in Germany, when he discussed the world's reation to the Indian Ocean tsunami. "I envisage each of the big industrial countries taking responsibility for one nation," he said. "Our states for corresponding areas there -- our cities for their cities and our villages for their villages. This would show that we want to go much further than pledging money -- which is of course important -- and that we understand our long-term responsibility." Words like "responsibility" and "long-term" form the heart of partnerships like one between Rhineland-Palatinate and Rwanda, and Schroeder has promoted the program and called on other German states to initiate similar ones in tsunami-devastated South Asia.
A forward-thinking vision of aid
And unlike the temporary aid that swoops in after a natural disaster strikes, a war ends or a cease-fire comes into effect, the people of Rhineland-Pfalz have been working alongside Rwandans for decades, which has made them better able to respond to the communities' actual needs.
The idea is a different way of thinking about aid, one that goes beyond the pledges made and establishes a new paradigm for the way in which First and Third World countries might interact. It's an image of the positive side of globalization: Countries feel a greater sense of connection to other parts of the world and, increasingly, are taking more responsibility.
"It's a partnership between people, and thus must be personal, direct and transparent," explains Karl Peter Bruch, Rhineland Palatinate's state secretary for sport and the interior. Though the state government helps oversee projects being undertaken in Rwanda, the main work of its office in Kigali is to coordinate funds and connect Rwandans in need with those in Rhineland-Pfalz who can help them.
This gives the partnership the advantage of accountability. And that's important, since one criticism often levelled at aid organizations is that the money they provide ends up in the pockets of the government, not the people it is intended to help. "The money never goes to the government," Bruch says, "but instead to the office in Kigali, where workers then make sure that it gets to where it needs to go. That way we have absolute control over the money."
Rather than pouring money into a large and complex fund, where bean counting can be extremely difficult, the state focuses its money on smaller projects that can be easily tracked from start to finish, letting participants and donors follow their euros from the state capital of Mainz in Germany right to Kigali. The organization's Web site lets state residents select Rwandan communities on a clickable map to see what projects are currently in progress in Rwanda. Many projects are even documented with photos or video, and volunteers make several trips a year to Africa.
The projects' modest sizes also mean that almost anyone can help. Consider the tiny community of Holzenheim, population 900, which has had a partnership with the community of Birembo in northern Rwanda since 1988. Holzenheim is the smallest community in Germany to have a relationship with a Third World country. In the early 1990s, the town helped to build a primary school for 700 children -- the first in Rwanda to have electricity. "We are the smallest community in the association, but we are nonetheless very engaged," says Helmut Weimar, who heads the Holzenheim partnership.
Weimar is hopeful that others will follow the town's lead. He says it could "absolutely serve as a model" for others, and he is keen to see other German states and other countries, for that matter, export the model for developmental aid to the South Asians currently digging their way out of the tsunami rubble.
It is still too early, obviously, for such types of partnerships to be set up in South Asia. "There is a great need in the area," says Bruch, "but right now they are focused on more immediate things." Aid in the form of donations is still the best way to help for most people. But if partnerships like the one between Rwanda and Rhineland-Palatinate can be set up in South Asia and continued over the long-term, the effect could be transformative.
At least one German town has already taken up the call. The city of Bonn in western Germany has entered into an agreement with the hard-hit district of Cuddalore on the southern coast of India, where it hopes to provide direct aid for families and to set up a long-term arrangement with the district similar to the one Rhineland-Palatinate shares with Rwanda.
Baerbel Diekmann, Bonn's mayor, told the BBC that donations would be collected in Bonn's schools, kindergartens, companies and carnival festivities in the coming months. "I can imagine every Bonn school financing a house in Cuddalore," Diekmann said. "It's very viable because it's so concrete."
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