Aid Worker Voices

Why did you become an aid worker?

“To make the conditions present for a life of human dignity for all.”

-36-40yo female expat aid worker,  white

“It comes down to this: there is serious injustice in the world, and that makes me really fucking angry.”

-18-25yo female expat aid worker, non-white

I think it’s a mixture of accident, the lure of adventure, and (self)righteous indignation over how messed up the world is combined with an (arrogant) sense that maybe I could make things suck slightly less.

-31-35yo female expat aid worker, white

 

Why did you become an aid worker?

An overview
Our personal lives seldom unfold in a linear, logical, preplanned fashion.  We rarely know exactly what external forces will push or pull us in various directions.  Even the assumption that we are sole masters of our fate, unfettered by cultural currents and eddies, can be called into question. Perhaps anthropologist Miles Richardson said it best in his essay Culture and the Struggle to Be Human: “Rather than thinking and then proceeding to act; we act and then proceed to explain.”

Here’s one respondent, a 26-30yo female expat worker, that states this nicely:

“It’s too simplistic. Yes, I wanted adventure… yes, I wanted to do something productive with winning the birth lottery… yes, it’s kind of an accident…”

This next statement comes from a 40-44 yo female aid worker in the sector for more than ten years who had indicated she became an aid worker “by accident”:

 “I would hope that I am no longer in it by accident, but to be honest, I am not entirely sure.”

Yup.

That said, what did our survey respondents have to say about their life-path decisions?

The quantitative data
That said, our Q22, Which statement below *best* describes your primary reason for becoming an aid worker?, put the respondent in a position of trying to explain the past.

Somewhat predictably, at 34%, the most frequently selected closed ended response was  “None of the above even comes close to articulating my reason for becoming an aid worker.”

Males and females responded very similarly to this question, though males were almost twice as likely to choose “I needed adventure in my life and being an aid worker seemed like a good idea.”  Females were slightly more likely to indicate the altruistic response, “I was following my dream to provide aid to those less fortunate than myself.” and also to say, in effect, “it’s complicated.”  These specific differences were apparent as I read through the many narrative responses.

 

Some narrative responses
The open ended invitation to elaborate on Q22 generated a very robust 596 narrative responses (out of a total of 1010 that started the survey), 410 from females and 187 from males.  Q24 asked a two-part followup  “What are your primary reasons for remaining an aid worker? Are your reasons for staying in this field different from the ones that brought you to it in the first place?” and 615 people responded (426 females, 189 males).

First we’ll take a look at some of the reasons people gave for becoming an aid worker.

This first example is both interesting and representative of many other respondent’s thoughts.  This 36+yo female aid worker working for a “bog box” organization indicated that she came into the field because “I felt called by God or a higher power.”  

She goes on to say,

“I bought into the Liberal narrative fed to me by my left-leaning university professors and supported by a guilty and near-sighted North America: “The Third World” was an innocent place “out there” where innocent good people suffered, because of the Big Bad West – due to All Catastrophic Colonialism -both historical and neo. I could not call myself a Good Person, a Good Christian, or on the Right Side of History if I didn’t Make The Sacrifice and Go Out There and Do Something (sorry for obnoxious capitalization).”

Why does she remain in this sector (Q24)?

“Salary and Benefits. Though no longer idealistic and no longer buying the narrative in Q23, I don’t see the aid industry as being any worse (or better) than anything else out there. It’s still more interesting than working at A-1 Insurance Company and more sophisticated than being a high school teacher…you do still get to travel and see and learn things most other careers do not afford you. Finally, expat colleagues are really great even when annoying. You can’t really go back. Besides, not sure what else I would do at this point. Yes, reasons are very different. But I’ve learned to accept a different narrative so it makes it ok.”

This transition from idealism in the early going to pragmatism in the later career seems a common pattern.  Here is a 26-30yo male expat aid worker’s description:

“Slowly changing indeed. Even if my organization is the biggest and most present actor in the medical emergency field, we still spend 65% of our annual budget in stable projects where the emergency is long gone and we don’t know how to get out. Which ultimately leads to a normal office job for me. It’s still ok, mainly because the challenges and level of responsabilities are much  higher than what a guy my age would be able to get at home. If I remain an aid worker in the next years, it will be because this organization offers a lot of opportunities to get more important responsibilities. The altruist feelings I had at the beginning are still there, but much less present.”

(White privilege) guilt seems a quite common force pushing people toward this sector.  Here are a couple typical responses.

“Ever since I was a child I felt like I didn’t deserve my privilege of being an upper middle class white American, and I’ve known since then that I wanted to dedicate my life to making the world a better place for everyone to live, but actually living in Rwanda and doing the expat aid worker thing sorta happened by accident. I thought for a long time that I’d be helping people in the United States.”  18-25 yo female expat aid worker

“I felt like the postcode you are born in, or on a larger scale, the country you are born in, should not dictate your opportunities for the rest of your life. It is a politically motivated decision to be an aid worker, I do not think the Western world deserves the right to the best standard of life.”  26-30yo male expat aid worker

So many of the responses were heartfelt and thoughtful, few more than this one from a 26-30yo female expat aid worker.

“I believe in solidarity and mutual aid; whenever possible, elevate and act on the priorities and needs of people advocating for themselves, for example in justice-oriented social movements. I do aid work for my job because it’s a way to offer help and resources at the moment when people most need it, with (I beleive) less harmful impacts than ‘development’ that’s done without the active centering of social movements. The rest of my (nonworking) life is devoted to organizing and solidarity activism. Aid work is my compromise: I get paid, I get to help, I get to learn first-hand what is going on and how, and I get to feed my cowboy streak without buying too deeply into a development project that dictates longterm distribution of resources according to funder pleasure. I realize this sounds naive at first typing, but I do really think that the longterm balance falls (generally, with many exceptions) on the side of humanitarian aid as a necessary, useful tool, whereas development projects led by foreign NGOs tends to undermine local organizing over the longterm. Philosophically, I’d rather be an advocate or researcher with Food First working to support the work of La Via Campesino. And I have been– I’ve participated in plenty of protests and campaigns against smallholder farmer-damaging free trade agreements and for local community gardens in US cities. But I also want to be a direct participant, embracing the moral dilemmas and engaging with (instead of studying) the complexity. Aid work seems like a good way to do so.”

There is much more to add at this point, but I’ll close with the assertion people gravitate toward life paths that makes them feel good and responds to their basic urge to have justice.

“I believe that we have an obligation to correct structural injustices in the world and enable each and every person to realize their full potential, irrespective of where they live or what privilege/underprivilage they access.” 36-40 yo HQ female

As always, please feel free to contact me with reactions, feedback or suggestions.

 

 

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