ABSTRACT
The remarkable success of the Chikukwa project (Chapter 7) surely owes a lot to the fact that it is an ‘embedded project’. The German couple who were the catalysts for the project arrived as schoolteachers in the Chikukwa villages. They wanted to live in the villages and belong to the Chikukwa community. They achieved this as they helped their neighbours and friends to save their villages from hunger and environmental catastrophe. With the assistance of their own Chikukwa organization, the villagers developed their committees and clubs and took democratic control to make the project work. The management team was initially those who had formed the first village club to look at these problems. A majority of future appointments came from local professional people who had already shown their commitment. This is a far cry from the standard modus operandi of projects operating in the African villages. Typically, projects are staffed by professionals who live in a larger town or urban centre, not in the rural areas serviced by their project. Commonly, an NGO or government project only works with the same people for a maximum of three years.
