Evaluating Country Programmes - OECD Online Bookshop

Evaluating Country Programmes
244
money, raising children, which make life challenging and frustrating. Even modern
conveniences become a source of frustration. For example, electricity quickly
becomes “essential”, and once this happens, power failures become a source of
distress, and not an occasion for contemplation as to how beneficial it is.
Second, increased access to the outside world tends to weaken the commitment
of people to the community as a social network and repository of values.
Young people acquire foreign ideas from television and movies that make them
less willing to accept the traditional norms and customs of their own community.
Schoolteachers are no longer community leaders or progressive elements. Before
there was a road, they had no choice but to live in the village; now they live in Turrialba
and arrive only for school hours.
Third, people are worried about the future. They worry about politicians in the
capital city, about powerful economic interests that might hurt the small producer
or employee, about deterioration in the quality of education for their children. In
sum, they worry about the same things most Americans worry about.
Has USAID made a difference in Aquiares and San Juan Sur?
When it comes to ultimate beneficiaries of development assistance, such as the
residents of Aquiares and San Juan Sur, the causal role of USAID cannot be separated
from other factors. Nevertheless, Agency activities left discernible footprints. In coffee,
the quadrupling of yields surely owes a significant amount to USAID-promoted initiatives.
First, US agronomists introduced scientific approaches to coffee production by
identifying nutrients lacking in the soil. This knowledge apparently led to significant
and rapid increases in yields. Second, USAID and other US government assistance to
coffee research helped develop and disseminate new coffee varieties that produced
higher yields and required less care. These improvements were probably introduced
into the communities through a variety of channels, such as extension agents, 4-S clubs
(the local equivalent of 4-H clubs), fertiliser salesmen, and word of mouth from farmer
to farmer. San Juan Sur has long had a 4-S club, the product of an early organisational
effort by US agricultural advisers who organised 158 clubs in the 1950s.
Collaborative efforts by USAID and the Costa Rican Government in rural
roads, public health, education, and water and sewerage, also touched the communities,
at least indirectly. In all these areas, important advances occurred in
directions that USAID was working collaboratively to promote. In recent years, the
restoration of macro-economic stability to the country has provided a more
favourable environment for people in the villages. A seriously overvalued
exchange rate prior to US – assisted stabilisation in 1982 – 84 heavily penalised
coffee producers and was probably a factor in the bankruptcy of the Aquiares
hacienda during that period. Coffee producers received substantially less for
their product than they would have if the exchange rate had been adjusted for
OECD 1999