In this framing, the flow of resources and support, whether it comes from the chiefdom, district, national, or international level, is inherently one-way. It moves from the outside in, from the bottle to the cup. By dichotomizing resources and needs, an outside-in system de facto keeps them from coming together, creating cycles of codependency and depletion. The sectors in this system are all fragmented, and largely acting upon each other. The phrase “top-down” is often used to describe this system, which illuminates the hierarchy embedded in the framework.
