A note on faith and aid work(ers)

Posted on: October 12, 2015 | By: Tom Arcaro | Filed under: Aid Worker Voices book

Besides [being a] calling it was also a sense of adventure.”

-41-45 yo female HQ worker

“None of the answers above describes why I because an aid worker, but I did choose the ‘closest’ response. It was never a life-long dream to provide aid to those less fortunate than myself. I’m not sure if I really have a strong, concrete answer. Compassion? Righteous anger? Indignant injustice? Fighting against “The Man”? God’s calling?”

-36-40  unspecified gender HQ worker

“I think it is a bit disrespectful to ask about the level of idealism of aid workers. Aren’t people working on a 9-5pm job idealists too thinking they will have a better life and get promoted? I think aid workers have an aspiration, something guide them and do not lack a sense of realism.”

-26-30 yo female expat aid worker

A note on faith and aid work(ers)

Inferences from the data
We did not directly ask questions about faith (or lack thereof), but both our quantitative and qualitative data do shed some light on the topic of faith and aid work. A significant subset -nearly 1 in 5- in our sample (17%) identified as working for faith based organizations.  The World Bank lists faith basednearly 500 such faith based organizations around the world ranging dramatically in size, reach and mission.

As I looked through all of the quantitative data I found few differences between those working in faith based versus non-faith based organizations.  The numbers were fairly comparable when looking at demographic data such as gender, race, and education level.  The faith based workers did tend to be, on the whole, slightly younger than those working in non-fatih based organizations.

There was one dramatic exception.

Q22 asked, “Which statement below *best* describes your primary reason for becoming an aid worker?”  Below are the results comparing those who reported working in faith-based versus non-faith-based organizations. Of note is that while almost a third (29%) of those in faith-based organizations indicated that the primary reason they became an aid worker is because “I felt called by God or  higher power.”  By contrast only slightly more than 1% of those based in non-faith-based organizations indicated the same.

Wow.

Screenshot 2015-10-12 08.41.14

Q23 asked,  “Please elaborate on the response you gave to the question above on why you became an aid worker” and nearly 60% of the respondents chose to take us up on that offer.  Many gave specific mention that there was a strong social justice component to their motivation, but that is grist for a separate post.  Below are some comments from the faith-based respondents.

26 of the 94 -28%- respondents from faith-based organization specifically referred to God/bible/being “called” in their narrative answer.  Here are a few:

  • As a Christian, I feel God gave me a passion to work with those in need especially those in East Africa.” 
  •  “I think God had a large part in my becoming a humanitarian aid worker. But I could have stated home and helped people. My skills and passion were more focused on issues of global poverty and injustice. So put them together and I
    This is the word cloud from the 94 responses made by faith based organization workers.

    This is the word cloud from the 94 responses made by faith based organization workers.

    followed my dream of becoming a humanitarian aid worker.”   31-35 yo male expat aid worker

  • “In my opinion, there is very little difference in my feeling called by God and my following my dream to provide aid to those less fortunate than myself. I believe I have dreams and passion and skills that God uses for the good of others; at the same time, I believe Christians are called to do justice for those less fortunate in some way or other. In my case, it is working in development.”  26-30 yo female expat aid worker

There was this comment from an aid worker in a faith based organization that stood out:

“I have always engaged in work with a social conscience. I ‘fell’ into this work in the 1980s as a destitute backpacker in West Africa. Incidentally, I am an atheist.”  31-35 yo female expat aid worker

Big differences not there
One place where perhaps one could have anticipated a difference in responses is Q28  “Regarding your sense of idealism, which statement below best describes your experience?” and Q29 which asked for a narrative response asking about changes in the respondent’s level of idealism.  The numbers differ little between those working in faith based versus non-faith based organizations, and that a slightly higher percentage of faith-based workers reported lower levels of idealism compared to their view before becoming an aid worker.

In Q59 we asked the respondents to give their views about the overall direction of humanitarian aid work and the numbers indicate that the faith based workers had a consistently (though slight) more optimistic view of the impact being made.

I’ll end this post with one of my favorite responses.

“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).”  —36-40 yo female HQ worker

Concluding thought
To what extent does faith play a part in aid work?  Given the nature of our data the best I can do is make a few inferences.  For a small percentage it seems to play a crucial role, but for most aid workers it does not appear to be a major factor.  My view is that Screenshot 2015-10-12 19.59.45we are wired to seek fairness and justice. Like most physical attributes, this wiring is not binary but rather distributed within a population likely in something resembling a normal curve.  Were there tools of analysis sophisticated enough we would find that aid workers generally come from one end of that curve, the end that accents the human need to ease pain and, ultimately, to do unto others as we would have them do unto us.  Some are -yes- called to do humanitarian aid work, but the calling is being done by forces from within, not from ‘above.’

Yeah, I just said that.

As always, contact me with feedback on this or any post.  The two most recent EvilGenius mini-polls linked above are directly relevant to the topic of this post.  If you have not done so already, please take the time to give us your thoughts.

Tom Arcaro

Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers

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