Quandary - Measuring value and success

I’m in Uganda, catching up on a number of projects that I’m linked to through CRED, and more importantly catching up with a number of folks who are involved in those projects in various ways. Many of these folks make up my ‘Ugandan family’ and its always a joy to come out and spend time with them.

Yesterday one of the conversations led to us wrestling with the dilemma of how to measure the value and success of project, resulting in the following train of thought.

When it comes to the secular viewpoint, success is measured in quantifiable outcomes – number of people fed, number of children attending school, numbers, numbers, numbers. And value is measured in success versus money invested, so again its all about numbers and profit margins and budget spreadsheets.

And that’s all fine, and I totally get why some organisations and donors have to work that way. But as a Christian, working with projects that have a strong underlying faith element, where the focus is as much on the few as the many – these methods of measuring value and success just don’t stack up. And when they are applied to a project, the outcomes can mean that the project may look like it has failed, or at least not performed very well, due to the low numbers of people impacted.

But the quality of impact on those people can be really high and surely that is as much a measure of success as the number of people impacted. 

Take the Acholi programmes – the children we are helping to go to school will probably never be in a position to pay back the money that has been invested in their education, but as a result of selfless giving on the part of donors, those children do have the chance to learn, and get better jobs, and work their way out of poverty. They are being given hope. They are discovering that they aren’t forgotten. They are learning that they have value just like children from richer backgrounds.

And then there is the vocational training college – built in a rural bit of Uganda where the community felt ignored and where opportunities were almost nil. Investment in the area had come no closer than the town on the main road, it certainly wasn’t reaching into the rural areas, and so the local folks felt as though they had no worth.

But take the risk of putting a college there and suddenly the community feel significant, and valued, and listened to.

Those are the value of God’s Kingdom being put into action - values which essentially turn manmade values on their head and puts the last first, the weakest above the strongest, the vulnerable above the secure and the voiceless above the voiced. Those are projects where lives are transformed; where hope is given when before there was none; where those who felt ignored, unvalued and insignificant change to feeling listened to, valued and worthy; where risks are taken on behalf of those who are unlikely to ever be able to pay back in real terms

I’m not for one moment implying that this isn’t happening elsewhere. And I know that there are many folks cleverer than me who can work out how to show Kingdom values in a way that keeps secular donors happy. And indeed, there are programmes taking place across the world where Kingdom values are being shown but without the programme makers recognising them in this faith-related way.

But the conversation yesterday was a good reminder of how important it is to see each individual for who they are, and for what the programme means for them, and what they are getting out of it, without getting trapped into the numbers game. God is about names not numbers, God is about faith, and hope, and love. And the more we can show that in the everyday, the more we can help demonstrate that God’s Kingdom isn’t something just for the future, but that it is here and now, and we are invited to be part of it.