Nothing new, here. This stuff is obvious to me. But some of you very clearly did not get the memo (or maybe you just didn’t read it):
Outside-in: Aid is about bringing things, ideas, people in from the outside. It just is. It is time for you to deal with that basic reality.
Development is often about outsiders identifying problems that were not immediately apparent to locals. It is also often about those same outsiders bringing in ideas for solutions that hadn’t previously been thought of by those same locals. Not saying the locals weren’t or aren’t capable. Sometimes it takes an outside perspective to identify problems and solutions.
I’m not saying don’t critique Aid. But stop pointing that ideas, solutions, approaches are “from outside.” Of course they are. That reality is not a new one. Neither is it necessarily a bad one.
Critiquing critique: And while I’m on the subject of critique. First, aid and medicine are such vastly fields different that comparing them is practically not useful. I mean, if ever there was a discipline that was about imposing solutions unilaterally from the outside – anathema to the ethical aid worker – it would be medicine. “I’ve run some diagnostic tests. Here’s what’s wrong with you. Here’s the cure. If you take my word for it and do what I say, all will be well. Otherwise you’ll die.” And there are a whole bunch of other dis-similarities as well. Medicine is highly regulated; aid, not at all. To practice medicine, you need a medical degree and also certification; to practice aid, you only need someone willing to hire you (or a visa to Cambodia). I could go on, but you get the point…
Pardon the imposition: Maybe I’m the aid-world equivalent of the Prince of Darkness, but I don’t see that very much development is actually being imposed on anyone. I have personally walked out of more communities than I can specifically remember where the local leaders said straight up that they didn’t want the kind of help I was in a position to offer. In fifteen or so years of doing this job, I have never interviewed a single beneficiary who was pissed off because she or he had been forced to receive aid or participate in a project against her or his will.
A far greater concern than something being imposed from outside is simple INGO laziness or unwillingness (for whatever reason) to follow best practice. For every hair-brained solution a problem can be found which can be spun in a manner which warrants the delivery of said solution. For every container of used clothing donated to help “the poor”, a third-world community can be found that will take possession of it. Is it bad development? Yes. Does it annoy the hell out of me? Yes. Should it be stopped? Yes. Imposed on anyone? No.
Love your Mothership: Yeah, see.. HQs are a reality of INGOs. I don’t know about all organizations, but everyone on my HQ-based team has at some point in the past worked in the field. And at least 80% of those in the department that my team is located in have worked in the field. And I mean, speak-another-language, maybe even married someone from there, years-long stints in the field – not just short, little visits. By contrast, nearly every field colleague who whinges and moans to me about how those sitting in the HQ “don’t get what it’s like in the field” has never him/herself worked in an HQ.
You’re seeing the irony here, right?
Enough with the complaining about HQs.
Aidsluts: One thing that really makes me grumpy are high-maintenance donors. Even worse are NGO staff who interact with these donors on a regular basis but who fail to put the smack-down on their nonsense…
To Private Donors: uh, hello… aid is for the beneficiaries. You do not own anything. Stop making a “feeling of ownership” a condition of your donation. And stop being so high-maintenance: we get half a million USD from the Gates Foundation on the strength of a few phone calls and a short proposal; We get $1.9 million from OFDA on the strength of a proposal that takes two days to write. Stop yanking our chains for your measly $50,000.
To NGO Private Fundraising Staff: Stop coddling the donors. When they come to you with positively dumb-ass ideas, say so. Stop making me do your job and end up looking like the bad-guy in the process. Stop believing that if we play along now, they’ll come around to our way of thinking later. Analogy: remember that if you go out with the guys you meet while working as a stripper, they will always think of you as a stripper…
Overhead: I must have been running with the nerd-herd for too long. I thought the issue of overhead as an indicator of efficiency had been resolved and fallen by the wayside. Apparently not. Get it through your head now: an organization’s claimed overhead rate tells you absolutely nothing about how effective or efficient or how cutting edge that organization is or isn’t. Don’t let some charity rating website or fancy NGO “efficiency” statement convince you otherwise.
Aid optional: Go ahead. Write your strategies, plans, goals, SMART objectives, and process, proxy, output and impact indicators. Intellectualize about the nuanced meanings of “empowerment” or “sustainability.” But remember: at the end of the day, aid is about increasing the options open to the poor. The option to go to school. The option to take a sick child to a clinic where it can be properly cared for. The option of living in a place where there is not an ongoing war. The option to work for a fair wage. The option to not be trafficked and forced into sweatshop labor or sexual slavery. The option of life instead of death. If you cannot articulate the results of your program or project in terms of expanded options to the poor, then you’re either inarticulate or you’re not doing aid work.
re:Outside-in
I think a lot of the current debate (if it passes for that) is short-circuiting the statement “aid dependency is bad” down to “aid is bad” without proving the intermediating statement “all aid creates dependency”, because obviously they can’t.
Indeed. There’s a bit of a jump in logic that seems to be happening on the part of many aid “critiquers”.
I’m sighing with pleasure reading this post. I get so fed up with people criticizing aid for the heck of trying to appear smart and hip when they actually don’t know what they’re talking about. I agree with it all -so much so that I don’t have anything clever to add.
J – Great post, as always.
I must, hmm, grumble a bit at the ‘Love the mothership’. I admit I usually bitch about the HQs, and my brief stint at UNIDO HQ had confirmed my impression (because they’re the most goddamn inefficient organisation on the planet); but I’m quite sure it’s not the case for every organisation.
On a different note, I agree with JMT. ‘Aid is bad’ is apparently the new fad. And without going into a Sachs-ian type of response, I’m hoping this will go out of fashion before irreparable damage is done.
Mo-ha-med: Please think of my blog as a safe space. No need to filter or hold back. Go ahead… tell us what you REALLY think about UNIDO HQ!
… and as someone bouncing back HQ-wards for a while as of next week, the point re: HQ work its pretty salient. For me country office / field work, well there’s generally a lot more hours in the day of it, but the goals are more clearly defined, more tangible, and usually you have the benefit each day of merely trying to make progress and find solutions for exactly what’s in front of your nose. Once you’re back in HQ, you’re more often trying to write a policy or guideline that finds the least-bad / least burdensome approach to a systemic problem, that can be applied in the first instance in maybe 60 countries. Or peering dimly into the fog of the future to resolve or steer around the hurdles 1,2,5,5+ years down the road. Ugh. pretty unenviable really. I think I just talked myself out of it. too late!
Keep your chin up, bro. While I would still much rather be in “the field” right now, there are definitely rewarding moments in HQ work. Oh yeah, and it’s actually important work, too!
its all good, chin is up, HQ and wife are based in the same town. win!
> I don’t see that very much development is actually being imposed on anyone
no… not in your example… but at a macro / national level, there’s no doubt ’structural adjustment’ & radical liberalization “development” policies were imposed by the WB & consensus govts in the 80s, 90s – with a lot of stick and not much carrot.
Without recanting any of my position on this issue, I agree that you raise a good point.
It seems that there is a lot of lumping current in the discussion (and probably also the thinking) about “aid”, such that many do not clearly distinguish between the “aid” that gets implemented primarily in places like Brussels, Rome, New York and Washington D.C., and the “aid” that gets implemented primarily in places like Kivu, Cap Hatien, Battambang, and Badghis. Those places are worlds apart, as is the “aid” that happens in them. We need to be clearer about which we mean in our critique, defense, etc. of “aid.”