Small-Scale Aid Agencies Making Big Changes in Africa

Roberto Lora, a young Italian who likes to break rules when it does some good, chuckled at his two-room cinder-block schoolhouse, with a do-it-yourself roof, in the middle of nowhere.

“That ugly little thing took a lot of work,” he said. “But it just may do some good.”

Clearly enough, it already has. Lora’s tiny voluntary aid agency has energized this small village north of Maputo, giving it a school, a health center, training courses and a sense of community.

Lora founded Prolide--a Portuguese acronym for Progress, Freedom and Development--on a fluke, early in 1995. He was riding his battered motorcycle by Tenge, and he stopped to ask a question.

“The place needed help, so I decided to help,” he said. He scrounged a few thousand dollars from larger agencies. Mostly, he enrolled local volunteers.

Lora exemplifies a new breed of aid workers in Africa, who work at a basic level, learning as they go along rather than importing fixed ideas. When they find something works, they spread the word.

He bounced regularly up a 30-mile bad road to supervise school construction. When it was done, the Mozambican government sent three teachers for 300 students. A single nurse runs the dispensary, built the same way.

Prolide expanded to projects elsewhere, using small grants from U.N. and Western donors. In each, Lora brings in experts on growing crops or community development, but he follows the villagers’ lead.

“They know better than we do about these things,” he said. “We must improve their knowledge in specific areas and help them get what they know they need.”

The main thing is to start young and train the women, he said.

“You have to do a lot with the schools,” Lora concluded. “Then you can begin to change the mentality of the people to adapt to new things. Parents follow their kids.”

Rafaele Povo, who at 21 does well selling tiny fish, sugar, rice and peanuts at Tenge’s outdoor market, is thrilled with Prolide. Her kids are healthier and happier. And her customers are richer.

“The whole village has changed,” she said. “Now people work together and stay here.”