Effective rural development means knowing what people need

Alisa Tang

Sanitation, water and lighting projects among those being provided in a challenging rural environment


When Papua New Guinea's National Aids Council asked ATprojects to develop products for people living with HIV/Aids, Steve Layton turned to a woman in the final stages of the disease. She was ill and was no longer able to control her bowels, so she carried a bucket to their meeting at the project office outside the city of Goroka.

"She sat there on a metal bucket because she was dripping constantly. I asked her, 'What's your biggest problem?' She said she couldn't walk to the toilet." She then stood up, turned around and held up her dress, showing him two holes where the bucket handle had bored into her thighs. The team went to its workshop and devised a bucket toilet, portable and easy to clean, with a standard toilet seat.

ATprojects paid attention to their advisers' deteriorating health, as well as discrimination at home and in their communities, and devised a fairly lightweight personal hygiene kit, which includes the bucket toilet, a portable shower and a canvas rainwater catchment for safe drinking water. With support from the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), ATprojects has distributed 6,500 of these kits. They exemplify the basic principles of ATprojects: to tackle development projects through appropriate technologies that are sensible, and use available materials, sustainable in rugged, underdeveloped Papua New Guinea.

Layton, 57, from Portsmouth, UK, began his career as a metal worker. He landed in Papua New Guinea 33 years ago, working with Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) at a workshop in Goroka for a provincial water supply project. There, he met his wife Miriam, began 20 years of development and investment work, became fluent in Melanesian pidgin, and in 1998, with Miriam, established ATprojects in Mount Gahavisuka park. Its headquarters is a self-sustaining compound powered by the sun, wind and water. It harvests rainwater and grows its own fruits and vegetables.

Next to the composting pit toilet near the Laytons' thatched home, a few men from ATprojects' staff of 60 create fibreglass moulds for concrete slab toilets, as part of the ATloo sanitation project to move Papua New Guineans away from open defecation. The staff has also focused on water and lighting projects.

"We're trying to demonstrate here the options for rural development," Layton said. He criticises the inappropriate decadence in which some foreign aid and development workers live while 40% of the 6 million inhabitants are below the poverty line. "People will take on development projects and live in high-cost houses, with electricity, running water ... unless you're willing to live in an environment where the people are, and demonstrate you can do this, you have no credibility among the people. How can you communicate on an equal footing with people? Development is all about communicating with people."

Layton describes ATprojects as a social enterprise, which has teamed up with AusAID, Oxfam, the Clinton Foundation and the Calgary, Canada-based renewable energy organisation Light Up the World. With the Canadian body, it is trying to install lighting at rural clinics, an undertaking in honour of a Papua New Guinea-born Canadian killed in Afghanistan. Light Up the World chose ATprojects, with its established networks and Layton's interest in solar and LED technology, to take the lead.

"I got in touch with him … and asked about his organisation and Papua New Guinea to learn – if we were to try to implement this project – what would be a good way to go about it. I got a real good feeling from Steve from the start," Christoph Schultz, programme director for Light Up the World, said by phone. "He knew it was a very ambitious and challenging project, and he wasn't trying to sugarcoat it. He was very frank about the challenges of operating in Papua New Guinea."

Government data indicate that there are 1,820 aid posts around the country, including 200 in the Eastern Highlands, but Layton told Schultz that of those 200 there were only about 100 actual structures serving as aid posts. The team so far has installed 306 systems in 224 health facilities in nine provinces, benefiting more than half a million residents.

In Goroka, ATprojects continues to ask the local people about their needs and devise solutions that are as local as possible. "We say we have no ideas; the people with ideas are the end users," Layton said.

At an annual workshop for 45 people living with HIV/Aids and their carers, many of whom are cast out by their communities, participants review products and team with engineers to develop new ones. "They're more than willing to give up the remaining time of their life to do something helpful," Layton said. "Some won't come back to the next workshop – it's quite common. So we line up and do a hug ... because we might not see each other again."

For his contribution to rural development in Papua New Guinea, Layton was appointed an MBE in 2002.

Papua New Guinea, about the size of Sweden, has a wealth of natural resources and one of the world's most culturally diverse populations, with some 800 indigenous languages. However, widespread corruption and tribal conflict have been obstacles to development.

"It's unfortunate that we're growing because the need is there," said Layton. "If there were no need, we wouldn't be growing. Papua New Guinea is a very rich country, but unfortunately the resources are not reaching the people on the ground, so more and more people are asking for our services."

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