Development is a funny thing. It is about dealing with people and human nature. Development is a lot of hard work, that is pyschologically generated. It is mostly about the use of human resources, not financial, or political.
DEVELOPMENT IS ABOUT 'PEOPLE HELPING THEMSELVES'!
Governments and NGOs can help people help themselves. But to succeed and create any kind of long lasting development, it has to be the actual people' helping themselves'. Without that, you have nothing, but a temporary intervention.
Governments of the centralist autocratic type, usually try to create development by helping people. They do things for people and communities. This of course fails in the long term. It fails, because it cheats people of the character strengthening attributes of learning to do it for themselves. The practical lessons of the school of hard knocks and mistakes and experience.
YOU CANNOT DO THINGS FOR PEOPLE and expect development! Won't happen. PEOPLE HAVE TO DO IT THEMSELVES at small local political committees and governing bodies. The larger government, or NGO can assist by helping with money, or material means; but they will stunt and thwart development, if they do it for the people concerned.
This is the problem with the style of governing in Belize under the population representation centralized autocratic parliamentary system. The central government does things for people as part of government departments and foreign loan programs. Then decade after decade they wonder why governing and development never works? It is simply the wrong approach in dealing with human nature. PEOPLE HAVE TO DO THINGS FOR THEMSELVES! Central government cannot do these things. The government can only give people things. But they cannot create development, which is a pyschological mind set, dependent on practical real life lessons that you have to learn by doing it for yourself.