ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with important choices in haw a program is implemented. There are always local people with capacities for planning, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating non-governmental organization disaster programs even when, in the midst of a crisis, it appears that people are traumatized and unable to work. Agencies can support local capacities by hiring nationals to operate their emergency programs. However, just employing local people does not guarantee that a project will be developmental. There was a refugee emergency. One agency sent several expatriate staff. The assignment of one of these people was to think only about the development implications of the program. One agency had been working with the refugees on agricultural production. They realized that the refugees were using inappropriate methods adopted from commercial farming and that the "right" ways to proceed with this soil type and rainfall pattern were unknown—even to "experts" from Khartoum.
