Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the process of turning a ‘mission’ into a ‘development project’ and how this was resisted by both the donors and the religious implementing partners

Paper long abstract:

Between 2008 and 2011 I worked as a development advisor in a project/mission in a remote area of the East Tarai. A faith-based donor agency funded a project implemented by a Nepali family linked to a Catholic religious congregation and two Catholic religious communities. The Nepali Catholic Church did not 'recognize' the project. The project/mission was not grounded on standard forms of official project agreements and documentation but rather on periodical paternalistic 'evaluation' trips that that donors undertook without the employment of any 'development specialist'. Employed at the very last moment when the contradictions within the project where leading to its closure, the donor organization hoped that anthropological research could be useful in understanding the ground reality and finding ways to engage the local community and the Nepali Catholic Church into active participation.

The objective of this paper is to show how the analysis of the local context, revealing that the local community had been completely ignored by this top-down venture, was at first accepted by the donors when contesting the Nepali partner corruption. It was then rejected when I questioned the donors' and religious partners' organizational practices which were not allowing the local community to voice their concerns. Despite the high funding turnaround, the donor agency functioned through pseudo-religious rhetoric based on 'trust' and 'good will'. In contrast, the Nepali Catholic Church followed a legal a managerial framework - typical of mainstream development - to implement their social development work.