Social Cohesion: Building Homes is Not Enough

by Beate Engelen

One year on, the shattered Sichuan villages near the fault line at Mianzhu had made a new start. The local economy had been kicked into high gear. Red bricks, piled high along the roadside in front of nearly every homestead, were gradually replacing the heaps of rubble and debris from the time right after the earthquake. The villages had changed color from gray to red and the sound of concrete mixers filled the air. Demand for bricks was soaring, pushing brick factories back into business for a while which had been closed because they hadn’t been profitable anymore. Almost all young villagers in the region, men and women alike, had signed up with one of the local construction companies. By building other people’s houses, these young farmers were trying to make some money to eventually build their own homes.

How Amity helped

In Woyun, Amity had pushed hard all year to give farmers their new homes as quickly as possible. Cheques were signed as soon as farmers were able to attest that they were in fact building their homes earthquake-proof.

These efforts seem to have paid off. The earthquake-proof structures in Woyun were erected much more quickly than in any of the neighboring villages, says one village official. Most of them are now finished. Many farmers from the neighborhood visited Woyun to study the architectural sketches of earthquake-proof houses, which had been given only to the people in Woyun by compassionate architects from Hong Kong. Many farmers from neighboring villages seem to have copied the Woyun sketches because they are so good.

In addition to subsidizing new homes, Amity had handed out warm winter clothes, blankets and large metal containers to keep harvested crops dry and out of reach from ravenous rodents. All of these goods and donations were greatly appreciated by the people in Woyun. But an NGO cannot be content with meeting only material needs, however welcome this is. There is much more to rebuilding a village than this.

For a community shaken to the core by a disaster it is no less important to regain civility, trust and a public spirit than to build new homes for everyone. Or in the words of Confucius mentioned above, it is the “rites”, the civic virtues, that need to be restored. How was this to be done?

Three main goals had to be reached in order to bring the community back on its feet and “restore the rites” in Woyun Village: a) Convince the villagers that they can trust the NGO (Amity in this case); b) create an environment in which villagers trust each other; and c) develop a community spirit so people have fun together.

Trust the NGO

It is, of course, a banality to declare that an NGO needs to be trustworthy in order to do a good job. But how can you prove your credibility to people who have had mixed experiences with promises in the past? Not every farmer in Woyun was convinced from the start that the Amity Foundation, which was not very well known, actually told the truth about wanting to subsidize everyone in the community. Some people, fearing that funds for building their homes might dry up all too soon, tried to bend the rules. By secretly bypassing safety measures, they thought they could lay hands on their part of the money first. Amity had to develop strategies to put doubtful people at ease without cutting back on safety standards.

The trust offensive started with Amity opening its own office in the village, equipped with modern communication devices and manned by staff from Nanjing headquarters, who worked 24/7 and slept on pallets in one of the two small rooms. The fact that villagers could drop in any time to seek advice or make complaints made a big impression on the community.

A next step included a lot of legwork. Amity staffers Gong Sheng, Shu Peng, Yue Yaomeng and Shu Junsong soon became familiar faces. They walked tirelessly up and down the mud paths, signing cheques, giving advice and convincing people to observe safety standards.

Key to winning villagers’ trust was a high level of transparency. Outside the office, a list on a billboard included every single person who had received funds or was entitled to receive funds soon. Everybody could check the list and, in case of doubt or disagreement, complain right away.

Trust your Neighbors

For the long-term perspective of the village community, however, it was even more important that farmers trusted each other. Could they rely on the their neighbors and fellow villagers even though everybody had ample needs? A series of participatory activities, which Amity conducted during the reconstruction period, put solidarity among villagers to the test.

The first occasion for such a test came up when the poorest family of each of the 16 village groups was to be selected. Each village group was asked to agree on the most needy family, who would then receive an extra CNY 1000. At first, most of the farmers hurried to declare their own family to be the poorest. But finally, after a lot of discussing and soul-searching, a consensus within each village group was reached and the actual poorest family was selected. Village solidarity had won.

Strengthen the Community Spirit

Ultimately, a village needs to establish a community spirit to solve its problems in the future. In Sichuan, this had been lost; not just because the destructive earthquake brought each family to largely mind their own private problems. Social cohesion of rural communities has been on the decline for many decades.

It first came under pressure when the commune system was dissolved in the early eighties, even as farmers’ material conditions improved greatly when private agricultural production was officially sanctioned. Farmers became lone fighters in their struggle to survive right up to the earthquake in 2008. But reconstruction poses an opportunity to reverse the trend towards less and less community spirit.

In order to strengthen social cohesion in a community, it greatly helps to create commonly shared memories. In Woyun, the farmers decided to give it a try. With support from Amity staff Shu Junsong, a festival, the first of its kind, was organized by villagers to celebrate Spring Festival as a community. Various kinds of performances were organized, but the singing contest clearly beat them all. For weeks before the event, Shu Junsong recalls, small singing ensembles rehearsed their tunes in private homes to prepare for the big day.

The event succeeded in promoting public spirit. Of all the help Amity has given, says Liu Yingquan, an old farmer from Woyun Village, initiating social activities was the best part: “It made us all more self-confident to face the future.”