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On the occasion of the 2001 Aga Khan Award for Architecture, Robert Ivy talked with His Highness the Aga Khan about the architectural, social, and environmental issues facing Islam today. The following interview was conducted at Aiglemont, France, on August 31. Due to the events of September 11, the interview has recently been updated. An abbreviated version of this interview appears in the February, 2002 issue of RECORD. Robert Ivy: As Imam of the Ismaili Muslims, you lead a far-flung religious community that is an important branch of Islam. You have personally expressed an affinity for Islamic architecture. We fully appreciate your belief in the traditions and teachings of Islam. But, in light of the events of September 11, we must ask how you view the actions of Islamic radicals toward Western culture and its peoples? His Highness, the Aga Khan: I should start by saying that I have been exposed to several cultural traditions. As you probably know, I have a degree in Islamic history from Harvard. As I said recently in an interview with Connaissance des Arts [interview conducted by Philip Jodidio, Connaissance des Arts, January 2002], I think there is a massive gulf in the understanding and knowledge between Muslims and non-MuslimsI mean particularly the West and the Islamic world. What we are talking about in reality is a strong minority of people committed to their own particular interpretation of Islam, who seek to impose it on others. I do not believe that the totality of the Islamic world recognizes the Taliban interpretation of the faith as being representative of its own view. There is no unanimity in Islam with regard to this interpretation. Generally you will see as much diversity in the Islam as you do in the Christian world today. But the West does not really understand the pluralism of the Islamic world. RI: Architecture, which you espouse, can be understood as one of the languages of peace, yet we, the West, are at war. HH: I also noted in the recent interview that one of the forces of change for all civilizations unfortunately has been war. Conflict situations are driven by concepts of victory, power, and elimination of inherited culture, and not by the underlying values of civilization. There are many interpretations of Islam within the wider Islamic community, but generally we are instructed to leave the world a better place than it was when we came into it. The Aga Khan Award for Architecture seeks to make a better place in physical terms. This means trying to bring values into environments, buildings, and contexts that improve the quality of life for future generations. The value system of Islam, in terms of the interrelationship between what we call dina and dunia, thats the world and faith is very particular in Islam. In a sense they relate to each other in an ongoing way. Thats how the value system of Islam carries into everyday life, into the way you exist in society, and clearly into the things that you do in society in a material way. RI: In what ways do these values permeate the larger world? HH: This affects not only your family life, it affects your role in society, it affects the way you run your economic affairs, it affects the way you develop your home, and what happens in and around your home. So, there is a continuation of the Islamic value system into the physical environment, which is quite interesting and really special to Islam. I think that much of the great Islamic architecture reflects that. Some years ago a professor talked to me about a major doctoral thesis at Harvard (in which) a student had demonstrated how the Taj Mahal was a reflection of the conceptualization of heaven on earth--and the relationships between spiritual eternity and the foundational nature of life on this earth. So, in that sense, I think, the Islamic context is very, very important. I think you can find the premise in many other situations. Its not specific to the Taj. RI: The need for global understanding and mutual tolerance has never been more keenly felt. And to those purposes, the awards come into play. Youve now been conducting the Aga Khan Architectural Award program, administered by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, since 1977, through eight triennial cycles. In what ways has the program evolved over time? From your perspective as founder, has it affected the physical environment? How have the issues you addressed either changed or remained constant? HH: As the award program has continued, we have learned we needed to have an impact on valuesethical and aesthetic value judgmentsand we needed to affect cultural value judgments. Therefore we had to influence opinion leaders. We also had to accept the reality that the industrialized world was dominating the processes of change in the Third World, in particular in the Islamic world. And, that domination resulted in educational processes that were shaped by the First World. So we felt we had to assume more of an educational role. The award program was not intended to be primarily educational, and we didnt want the award program to become a school. This is why we established the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture (AKPIA) at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. RI: Yet you have described the award programs role as catalyst for improvement of cities and societies in Islamic areas. HH: The need for addressing issues such as historic cities in the Islamic world was constantly being put back on the table in one form or another. Yet anything connected with my development interests is automatically disallowed in the award process. I ended up by wondering if there could be a bridge between what I was doing in development and the cultural context of, for example, the historic city. This led to the Trust for Culture to create the Historic Cities Support Program. It is a remarkable bridge between cultural support, and, at the same time, development support for communities that very often are marginalized and underprivileged. RI: How do you see the Trust for Culture and the Aga Khan Architectural Awards interplaying with the need for rural populations to find work and the problems that they face when they get to the city? Im sure that affects the communities that you deal with. HH: Its difficult to summarize such a complex question in a short answer, but one of the driving questions is how people perceive opportunity. They will perceive opportunity through the inherited perception of previous generations in the family, or they will perceive opportunity through communication, or they will perceive the downside, which is risk. If the notion of risk is very high in certain environments, people will try and remove themselves from those environments. In looking at the rural issues, I think one needs to start with what the risks are. Its interesting to see how rural communities look at risk--in terms of health, in terms of physical security, in terms of corruption, in terms of conflict. They have a certain number of what I would call downside risks that theyre looking at that affect their attitudes to the rural environment, because they assume that those risks dont exist in the urban environment. But, because theyre not in the urban environment, they dont know what are the risks within the urban environment. RI: You are describing a kind of naïveté, but a kind that can be changed. HH: Then comes the issue of opportunity. I think the issue of opportunity is whether the rural environments of the developing world and the Islamic world can change sufficiently positively, so that the sense of opportunity will be stabilized and enhanced and people will say, future generations of my family do have as good or even a better opportunity by staying in the rural environment than by moving to the urban environment. Thats a difficult equation, it really is. But, I think that where the award can have an impact is in education, first of all to educate people about changes in the rural environment--which are positive and which ones are damaging. Secondly, its to cause the changes in rural and physical environments to be appropriate to the rural environment. (As an example), a large part of the Islamic world is in that seismic belt that goes through much of the Islamic world. You can look back in time and you will see thousands of people killed by earthquakes at different times in our history, and yet seismic construction in rural environments is unheard of. People who build for themselves do not know about seismically sound construction. Most of the construction in rural environments is self-built. Its not architect-built. The question is, how do you get that knowledge into the rural environment? How do you teach people how to build in a safe manner? Clean water,
sewer systems, open spaces, sports areas, you know, theyre
all the things that are part of everyday life that need structure
in the rural areas. By recognizing small medical centers, handicraft
centers, (the awards program is) saying to the rural population
of the Islamic world, you dont have to go through architects
and big, mega-projects to improve the quality of the physical
environment. You can do magnificent projects that will serve
you well.
RI:
Are the social issues you encounter in these emerging nations
changing? HH:
Yes, because civil society is changing. If you go back to the
1950s, you see colonialism and poverty in the Islamic world.
You also see the effects of the cold war, and essentially government-driven
processes of change, such as centralized economic planning.
You see the need to create a sense of nation in a number of
countries that were not yet independent. Today you
have decision making by independent governments. Nationhood
is now an accepted notion. You have economic change resulting
from a process of market forces rather than dogmatic attitudes
toward economic change. You have areas of extreme wealth in
the Islamic world. You have countries that are emerging from
a colonial past. The cold war is over. And you have an awarenessperhaps,
to me, one of the most importantthat in most parts of
our world, the rural community dominates. The numbers of people
in rural communities in the Islamic world, plus the difficulty
of addressing the problems of development in rural communities,
is a central issue. For example, people who build for themselves
do not know about seismically sound construction. How do you
teach people how to build in a safe manner in the rural environment?
RI:
Unlike other award programs in which highly touted architects
dominate the shortlists, this program regularly confers honor
on lesser-known individuals and communities. What effects have
these decisions produced? HH:
Thats one of the things which the award has tried to respond
toits looked at how society causes change, not how
architects cause change, and its tried to help societal
processes to improve the processes of change. Youll
see more and more small rural projects, which are considered
highly important to be put together by village organizations
or non-governmental organizations working in rural environmentsbecause
that is an important aspect. We have been driven in the past
in the industrialized world by the notion of the urban environment
and the architect functioning in the urban environment. I think,
at least as far as the Islamic world is concerned, the award
has brought a massive change to that (notion). I think
the second area weve hopefully had an effect on is the
notion of pluralism. You cannot deal with a world like the Islamic
world by rejecting the notion of pluralism. Historically, it
is part of that world. The faith of Islam recognizes and sustains
the right of people to be their own masters of the judgments
that they make. By premiating different types of projects and
different environments and different countries with different
architectural traditions and languages, its enhanced the
notion that pluralism is an asset. I think
the third one is perhaps one which is less easy to define, but
nonetheless important--which I would call high-tech applications,
high-tech projects. In the 50s, 60s, and 70s, many high-tech
projects were essentially extrapolations of high-tech buildings
in the industrialized world. It has been important to (encourage)
those buildings to become more appropriate to their own environments,
to their own building industries, and to their own symbolic
values: for universities, airports, or hotels. I certainly
wouldnt want to say that the award has covered all categoriesit
hasnt. And there remain areas where the award has not
been able to premiate projects that it considered really important.
I think that for categories that it felt were very important,
buildings which are part of modern civil society, we have not
yet succeeded in causing (them) to look at the contextualization
a typical case would be the industrial estate, for example,
which is a remarkable phenomenon of economic change. In the
industrialized world, youve addressed it more and more
successfully; but in the Islamic world, not all of it, but in
much of it, the whole process of the liberalized economy is
the one thats driving that notion of change, rather than
the contextualization of that change. I hope that will happen.
Were beginning to see these questions being addressed,
but were not there yet. RI:
How did your concern for architecture and planning develop?
What previous experiences have prepared you to value the power
of architecture and planning? How did you develop this concern
for such issues? HH:
As a student of history, you learn about the cultural processes
of history. But after my grandfather died, I was looking at
the physical environment in the developing world, and I had
to ask myself what we were doing correctly or incorrectly, in
school construction, hospital construction, housing estates,
industrial estates and the commercial buildings. My sense was
that while there was a fairly good understanding of programmatic
requirements, the contextualization of those programmatic requirements
in our part of the world just wasnt happening. That had
a cultural downside to it; it had a cost downside to it. And,
particularly in the poorer countries, it tended to drive society
towards things like a consumer environment, towards harnessing
the top people in every profession because, obviously, the top
hospital people wanted the top hospitals at the time. And, it
introduced a value system that I felt had a number of risks
to it. But it also had another aspect, which was quite strange.
In the industrialized
world, the notion of physical change in urban environments is
constant, part of contextual thinking--buildings are torn down,
theyre rebuilt, sites get thrown together. In the developing
world, land is much, much more constrained than you would expect,
in terms of being able to change buildings (with changing) requirements.
That caused me to ask, if I built something now, and the life
of the building is going to be 25 years or more because we cant
afford to change things every five years, what is the flexibility
we need in land management, because programs change. That flexibility
was never designed into many of the projects in this part of
the world--that notion that you have to be able to mold and
remold and mold again(that) was simply not part of traditional
thinking. Yet if you look at the way, for example, health care
delivery has changed in hospitals between the 50s and today
50 years later, theres no commonality. The same
thing has happened in education. The process of educating people
has changed so radically. I think the need for a good physical
environment for the young is something that has grown also.
In fact, the children have got to get exercise and exercise
is part of good health and health is part of longevity. These sorts
of issues kept coming back. Thats when I started asking
myself, am I alone looking at these questions or are other people
looking at them? Thats where the awards started. RI:
Could you describe the contextual questionyou mentioned
that often, and I assume that you are referring to more than
just a stylistic matter. HH:
Its a value system. RI:
So much of recent international design has embraced the universaleven
nostalgia for the International Style. Since these awards are
intended for Islamic societies, have they identified places
and projects that are responsive to social, cultural, intellectual,
spiritual, or geographic specifics? Im trying to get at
a definition of what authenticity is or what real, appropriate
building for a specific place should be. HH:
I think that the best example of the problem we face is in the
architectural schools of the Islamic world. Some years ago we
made a survey of the architectural schools, and we looked at
the faculties: what was the education that the faculties had
received? The answer was 100% in the industrialized world. So,
the process of educating had been acculturated. It was another
culture, from another part of the world that was being (proposed)
as the correct illustration of the architectural profession.
RI:
Western, industrialized ideas were being imposed, in a way? HH:
It was a fact and it was related to a number of things. I dont
think it was necessarily an intentional colonial process. If
anything it was more linked to the notion of quality of lifethat
this type of building was likely to be a higher quality building
than a traditional building. RI:
Whether it fit or not. HH:
When we went through this process of beginning the award, the
group that worked with me came to the conclusion that we all
had a whole series of questions. When (the awards group had
completed) their work
and we started questioning, we started
discussing or communicating (the concerns expressed by the awards
committees and) those questions to communities in the Islamic
world. Not one of (the communities) asked why are you
asking these questions? All of them immediately responded
by saying these questions are the right questions to ask. They
didnt tell us what answers they wanted, but there was
quasi-total identification between the communities and the questions
that were being asked. That meant,
in effect, that the processes of change were no longer being
driven by architectural schools, which were not asking the questions
themselves. People started asking questions. Why do it this
way instead of that way?
RI:
If the right questions are raised, the right answers will emerge,
you hope. HH:
It was amazing because it went through the whole of the Islamic
world. The questions could address themselves to Sub-Saharan
Africa, to the Arab world, to Central Asia; they could address
themselves to Western China. But there was a sense of where
is our culture? Not culture in the sense of a capital "C"it
was a culture owned by the people. Where is our culture? What
is its place? RI:
Is that where authentic architecture comes from? By asking a
culture to define itself? HH:
I think so. When you generate questions, one of the phenomena
in doing so is that people come back to you and say, give
us the answers! Thats where it became a great deal
more difficult. I think one of the answers came from the award,
which was to give a new sense of value to traditional cultures,
traditional forms of expression, to show that modern materials
didnt have to be used to achieve the desired results.
It was, in a sense, repositioning these cultures in a value
system, or value systems. I think the award did that. And then
you come back to how fine this issue of repositioning of cultures
is. It may be achieved, but then the question is, what are the
sources of inspiration? And the sources of inspiration, the
sources of knowledge, come back to education. Education had
to be part of the overall process, not part of the award, but
part of the overall process. RI:
And how has the education component played out at Harvard and
MIT at the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture? HH:
(The question was) how to design an educational resource that
would have the maximum possible impact and at the same time
have a legitimacy to it, which would make it acceptable to much
of the Islamic world. I was a Harvard graduate, therefore I
knew about Islamic studies at Harvard. In the arts and sciences
I had been involved with MIT. I knew that their school of architecture
was very strong. Ultimately, people who are trying to reposition
what theyre doing will be looking at the most credible,
most competent resources. They are not going to address themselves
to a third rate institution. I asked
MIT whether they would be willing to put the entire program
togetherwith Harvard addressing what I would call, in
generic terms, a cultural component, and MIT addressing the
professional component. (They would be) building a system whereby
we would be able to educate people who are already practitioners,
or people who wanted to become practitioners. The whole program
went into place and the two universities had worked in a very
solid way. I think that the graduates from these programs are
now having an impact, whether they are museum conservationists
or whether they are practicing architects, or whether they are
research students. These individuals are having an impact wherever
they are. At the time
the Islamic world was not saying we only want Muslim students
in this program. There was considerable support that the program
should be open to all people from all backgrounds that had a
reason to want to work in Islamic societies, whether they were
Muslim or not. I think the split at this time is at least 50-50
of people from the Islamic world and people from outside the
Islamic world. Right from
the first days of the award, (it was exciting that there) was
the intellectual acceptance by non-Muslims of the cultural questions
that were being asked. And, I have to tell you Im enormously
grateful to the men and women who worked with me from outside
the Islamic societies, who said we will bring our knowledge
and our judgment and our competencies to sustain these, to develop
answers to the questions youve been asking, because we
consider that theyre very important. I remember the people
from Harvard and MIT saying this is a format that can be asked
of other cultures of our world. You have started within the
Islamic world, but it could very well apply to the Hispanic
world, it could apply to other parts of the world. There was
no sense of "normatizing" this towards the Islamic
world. The questions and the concepts were far outside the Islamic
world. RI:
Since these awards are intended for Islamic societies, have
they identified places and projects that are responsive to specific
social, cultural, intellectual, spiritual, or geographic issues?
What is authentic or real for building in a specific place? HH:
The award program gives a new sense of value to traditional
cultures and forms of expression that show modern materials
dont have to be used to achieve desired results. RI:
You include hotels among the premiated buildings. HH: We have
premiated a number of projects in tourism, and theres
a downside and an upside. In principle, tourism can be managed
if the right questions are asked. Beyond a point, tourists can
create a problem. But a lot of ministers of tourism, and a lot
of people running hotels or historic areas, dont look
at that, nor do they plan for it. You need to define what sort
of tourism you want. Cultural tourism is the most interesting
to us because we want to underscore the value of pluralism.
Having people visit sites or complexes that they would not normally
see or learn about can be very positive for societies that tend
to be rigid in their attitudes.We have to recognize the need
for tourism, but we also have to recognize that it needs to
be managed. Absolute freedom in the tourism field will end up
with serious consequences. RI:
And now youve established a new Web site [ArchNet.org],
which makes the full range of information so much more accessible
to a larger group of people. How do you see it functioning? HH:
I didnt want the Harvard-MIT program to be an ivory tower,
located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It had to articulate its
worth toward the Islamic world. We used to publish the magazine
Mimar. It was good, but we still wondered if this was the best
way to communicate this information outside MIT to the Islamic
community. Then, of course, the Internet broke down those barriers;
it provided an extraordinary opportunity. Since MIT is so qualified
in these areas of communication, it was the right resource to
make use of this activity. Im hopeful that when ArchNet.org
is officially launched, it will become a global resource to
people working for change in the physical environment in Islamic
societies. RI:
You presented the Chairmans Award this year, which is
not an annual event, to Geoffrey Bawa, the Sri Lankan architect.
What is the significance of that? HH:
It is an award that, after this year, will only have been given
three times. This award stems from the consensus of the steering
committee and does not have an independent jury. The people
who run the award, who watch how the awards work, and who note
over one or several cycles that a certain individual has had
a massive, lifelong impact, make the selection. RI:
I personally discovered Geoffrey Bawa through Mimar, which put
a name and a face to the architectural award program. In terms
of public recognition, however, award winners in the rural cultures
are more difficult to identify with. Names and faces are part
of contemporary media reality, where we tend to focus on people
rather than on ideas. Can you comment on that? HH:
You are correct, but constituencies react differently to the
prizes. Many village constituencies tend to look at other villages.
The process of change is not through an architect. It is through
people or through government programs. One of the things the
award has tried to do is get away from the notion that only
architects can bring about change. Creating
thought leaders in villages is very, very important. It indicates
to village organizations, isolated peoples, that there are certain
directions that they can follow in terms of enhancing their
own local cultures, (setting standards) in terms of the basic
quality that is required for the purpose of the project, if
its a place for the children or its a school or
a medical center. So, were not addressing ourselves to
the high profile architectural profession. Were addressing
ourselves to the majority population of the Islamic world. Thats
the target. When you go to the high profile project, were
talking about the major award, the Chairmans award, and
high profile projects in universities, or airports, hotels.
But please go back to the notion of civil society; after all,
the award has got to try to address as many aspects of civil
society as possible. One of the things the award has tried to
do is to get away from the notion of architects as the only
constituency that causes change.
RI:
The world is extremely dynamic and evolving at the moment, presenting
numerous challenges. We talked about cities. What about some
of the other challenges like environmental degradation or the
converse, sustainability? How can the awards address questions
of this type that are broad, societal questions? HH:
I think there are two issues there: one is the rural context
and the other is the urban context. The environmental issues
in the rural context are related to issues like land ownership,
live agricultural production, and rights of grazing, rights
of water usage, etc. There the question is really assisting
people to understand that the physical process of change can
enhance or degrade the inherited issues that they have to deal
with. Another question involves land planning in rural environments.
I might overstate this, but Ill say it the way I think
it is--its literally unheard of. Land planning in rural
environments simply is not part of village thinking, nor is
it part of architectural schools education. If we found,
at some stage, a village which had a perimeter of control over
land and they had rehabilitated the whole process, and developed
a high quality product, I would recognize and premiate it, and
use it as a case study. We actually started doing that ourselves
through some of our own programs of instruction. The urban
environment is a very, very different one. The urban environment
is one where there is more work thats being done. There
has been, I would say, a massive demographic pressure on the
urban space. And it is a very difficult issue to deal with because
youre talking about the livelihoods of people. So, protecting
and improving open space is something of an issue. (Oddly) enough
it used to be one of the characteristics of Islamic architecture
that the great buildings always had spaces around them. They
were internalized spaces or at least they were part of the periphery.
That aspect of our building has in many ways disappeared. RI:
How are you addressing the urban question? HH:
One of the things that the Trust for Culture is now working
on in Cairo, in Zanzibar, and in northern areas of Pakistan,
is to try to encourage people to recognize the value of open
space. And one of the (past) awards was for a reforestation
program for a university in Turkey, which was an enormous program.
But, I think ones got to be respectful of the fact that
the demographic pressure is so great, that these open spaces
are going to have to be protected tooth and nail. Theyll
go, otherwise. I would
say that we have lost some of the competencies in landscape
architecture, which were intrinsic to the Islamic world. Landscape
architecture is not part of architectural education in a lot
of the schools, and this brings me to the program at Harvard
and MIT. Now the GSD is part of the program; the GSD was, from
the beginning of the program, a target school in my thinking. RI:
Tourism can be both a boon and a problem, because it can introduce
stress to culture or to infrastructure. Hasnt it been
an important factor in your own planning for the Trust for Culture,
for cities, and for the awards? HH:
We have premiated a number of projects in tourism, and theres
the downside and theres the upside. I think on the downside,
in principle tourism can be managed if the questions are asked.
There is probably a level of throughput (of tourists) above
which, in a given site or a given building, there will be a
problem; a lot of ministers of tourism, a lot of people running
hotels or historic areas dont look at that. Because they
dont look at it, they dont plan for it. My belief
is you can plan for it, but you have to identify the problem
(first). The other
aspect to this question is (defining) what sort of tourism you
want. Were particularly interested in cultural tourism.
And, were particularly interested in cultural tourism(a)
because were interested in underwriting the value of pluralism,
and therefore having people visit sites or complexes which they
would not normally see, and which they learn about. We think
that cultural tourism is a very positive factor, particularly
in societies that would tend to be rather rigid in their attitudes.
The fact that theyll meet with people from other cultures,
other languages, is very important. We have to recognize the
need for tourism, but we have to recognize that it needs to
be managed. Absolute freedom in the tourism field will end up
with serious consequences. The reverse
question is how do you address that? And I think it can be addressed.
There are a number of different methods of doing that. Its
also a way of repositioning (a peoples) attitude to their
own culture, because very often people who live in a cultural
environment are no longer aware of it. When you enhance that
environment and you say to people, you actually have an extraordinary
asset--protect it, make it work for you, invest in itthat
cultural asset, which in many generations has been thought of
as an economic and social and physical liability, suddenly gets
turned around and they say this is actually something of real
value. Then they learn about it, they protect it, and they invest
in it. RI:
With regard to bringing about change, can you describe your
own experiences as a developer, working with architects and
planners? HH:
I learned at a very young age that the resources that we harness
to effect change are hardly ever going to be sufficient to meet
all the demands. Thats not true now in the entire Islamic
worldthere are some parts that are very, very wealthy,
and they dont need those resources. The parts of the world
Im working in are generally poor in resources. If you
are resource-poor, then you rely on financial investments. You
try to make investments in projects that can become self-sustaining,
so you dont have to keep investing in them year after
year, and they dont become burdens on society. Furthermore,
I have been looking at questions of flexibility of buildings,
and the way buildings have to adapt to changing society, particularly
in the social field. Also, I
give credence to the notion that peoples attitudes toward
home are modified if they have an acceptable physical environment.
When given the opportunity, people will improve the physical
environment they live in. They put a metal shade roof on a hut
or they move to a place where theres fresh water. The
physical environment is part of peoples psyche. So I think
that in terms of encouraging development, one of the most important
aspects is to help people live in better environments. RI:
How do you organize your efforts for the long term? HH:
There are a number of procedures that we employ, most of which
have three- and five-year planning processes. We look at our
resources and figure out their availability or shortfall. We
ask ourselves with whom should we associate to get things moving.
For example, in humanitarian aid, the spectrum of support entities
is very large, but support for culture is very small. Because
of the way AKDN [the Aga Khan Development Network] is structured,
it can bring this multi-input process into these environments.
Its not all the Trust for Culture. In addition to the
cultural branch, the AKDN is composed of an economic development
arm, and a social development arm. The latter one includes the
foundation, health services, education services, and planning
and building services components. This means we can build what
I would call a form of support net going into these environments.
That is just about the only way you can really create a sustainable
process of change. Just influencing one aspect, whether its
agriculture or commerce, doesnt really work in development.
Dont ask me why. The nature
of AKDN is that we go out into the field. Many development organizations
dont have this intimate relationship with the field that
we have. And its the intimacy that has given us a bit
of an edge in terms of understanding these areas. RI:
Thank you for your attention and time.
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