Leadership is the Key to Sustainable Community Development in Ecuador

• Main Author: Cornell Menking
• Language: English
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: community development; Ecuador; leadership; moral leadership; sustainability; Sakha; Sakha Republic; Siberia
• Online Access: http://cnx.org/content/m16915/1.1

I come to the field of educational administration from a rather unorthodox background. The search which led me to education began as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Sierra Leone. I left there frustrated with what passed as “development”. I heard the term “sustainability” thrown around and saw nothing sustainable about what was being done. I saw not only short-term improvement in people’s lives, but also an incredible waste of resources and a feeding frenzy of development officers getting fat on NGO and western government funding. Sadly, in the years following my service in Sierra Leone, I also saw the peaceful Sierra Leoneans turn into symbols of humanity’s darkest side (referring to the gruesome civil war in Sierra Leone). It was depressing, really. Fate took me next to working with immigrants in New Mexico with a literacy project. I found the results of education much more rewarding and tangible. My belief in the potential of education was confirmed once again as I next worked with English teachers in northeastern Siberia in the Sakha Republic from 1993-1996. I decided education was always the common denominator in any “sustainable development” approach, so I returned to the U.S. and the University of New Mexico for graduate degrees in education. It was my doctoral research on an educational project aimed at sustainable community development via “moral leadership” and “personal and social transformation” that is the topic of this article. In my opinion, this is a example of a community development project that deserves the blue ribbon label of “sustainable”. My purpose here is to simply introduce educational leaders, as briefly as possible, to this model. I will conclude by suggesting how further exploration of “moral leadership” might help educational administrators and professors improve their practice.