A (second) note on faith and aid workers

Overview
I recently presented and commented on our survey data relevant to faith and aid workers.  Just before this post went live EvilGenius was putting out two mini-polls on that topic.  As with our longer survey, many respondents were generous with their time and offered extensive and thoughtful comments.

EvilGenius asked first for the respondent’s views on the net impact of religion as a force for good or bad in the world.  Though this question is clearly very complex, there is precedent for asking it.  The Tony Blair vs Christopher Hitchens debate that took place in Toronto, Canada back in 2010 examined the same question, specifically, “Be it resolved, religion is a force for good in the world”.

The second mini-poll is a bit more specific and probes into the question “does being faith-based impact the efficacy of aid organizations.”

I’ll present some data on both of these questions and then conclude with some observations of my own. Please note that the response rate to both of these mini-polls was low and we are very interested in more viewpoints.  If you are reading this and have not yet take the polls please do so now.  Each is here and here and below.

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Is religion force for good in the world?
The specific question was “Based on what you’ve seen and what you know from your experience related to aid or development work, is religion on balance a force for good, or a force for bad in the world?”  The vast majority of those who responded to this question indicated “I have an inside knowledge the aid, development, or charity sector/industry. I work or have worked for a charity or NGO, an institutional donor like DFID or the Gates Foundation, a beltway bandit like DAI, or I have been a consultant to one of these kinds of entities.”

The results, though clearly tentative, are dramatic.  An anemic 13% of those responding felt that on balance religion was a force for good in the world.  The rest were either not sure at 35% or, actually a majority at 52%, felt just the opposite.

Below are responses representing all three choices.  I have highlighted what I think are particularly salient points.

First, on balance a force for bad.  I have included two since this was the majority view, with the second representing a view evoking Marx:

• “To begin, I think that it is difficult to say on balance whether it is a force for good or bad, as many of the effects of religion are not necessarily quantifiable or equivalent, but considering the harm that is caused by religion, which cannot be negated by its good impacts, I’m comfortable saying that it is a force for the worse in the world. Between the manipulation of religious beliefs to oppress, marginalize, and dehumanize people, often by religious authorities, and the conservative and reactionary character of many religious institutions, religion causes great harm around the world, especially when it comes to social justice. Being from the US, I’m very aware of how religious conservatism is a major driver of polarization and oppression in my country. That being said, I think there are many benefits of faith, and I know many people who are driven to good due to their faith or spirituality. From what I have experienced of the world, I think faith is seldom if ever an actual cause of things like oppression and conflict, but due to its fundamental and existential place in many people’s lives, it is susceptible to manipulation by people with power, especially those who have some form of religious authority. Faith and spirituality drive people to seek justice and make the world a better place, but religion can be used to exclude certain people from those deserving of sharing the betterment of the world. Finally, being an atheist, I find that many people still think having faith of some form is a prerequisite for being a moral person, and in many situations, not least at home in the US, I am not comfortable revealing my lack of faith. This I think gets at one of the greatest problems with religion, that it tends to prevent people from accepting without judgement others who are different from themselves, which is absolutely critical in the modern world if we are to successfully live together and achieve the aims of social justice and development that we strive for.”

• “Divisive regressive tool for social control.”

Next, on balance a force for good:

“The majority of people in the world are religious. The majority of people in the world live their lives peacefully (and are only unfortunately caught up in conflict if they are in a conflict area). Their faith brings them personal strength, and meaning as well as strengthening and organising communities. At the local level (which is ultimately the level aid should be concerned with), religion is a mostly a force for good.”

And finally, I am not sure:

“I see the strength and support it can give people, and a platform from which people perform generous acts, but I also see how it excludes, marginalizes, or encourages people (from many faiths) into more extreme posturing on issues of social justice and compassion.”

“I see the importance of faith + humility and understanding. No faiths can be proven and the religion I believe in is no more evidence based than another faith. I therefore cannot say or think that my faith is the correct one but it is just something that speaks to me in my heart and is very personal. I wish religious institutions would promote understanding and knowledge of different faiths. I wish they would not preach their way as being the only correct path. I wish they would also encourage enquiry and address the limitations of their histories and sources. Sierra Leone provides the perfect example of different faiths living harmoniously, ‘Jesus loves Allah’, ‘Allah loves Jesus’ written on cars.”

To the respondent who wondered, ” Can we get away from these dichotomies? I will point out that though the question is certainly very complex, as is evidenced by other’s responses, pushing people to take a position on the question does generate useful dialogue.

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Faith based aid organizations ‘bad’?
The next mini-poll generated some thoughtful responses as well.  The key question was, “Irrespective of anything else, does the fact that an organization is faith-based or not faith-based have an effect on the quality, and ultimately the impact of its programmes and interventions in the field?”  The results to this, 55% ‘No’ and 45% ‘Yes’,  and what went behind these responses is hinted at in the followup question.  Here are the quantitative results indicating the a majority of this small sample felt, of course, that it all depends, but minority opinion was biased toward non-faith-based organizations.

Here are a couple representative narrative responses that articulate some of the nuances.

“Truly, my answer is “depends.” I have seen both stellar examples of how FBNGOs leverage faith to the advantage of the population they serve and terrible examples how faith is used to excuse bad projects. Ultimately, the failures are due to bad management, which exists regardless of faith.”

“Depends on the context that the organisation is working in. If a faith based organisation is working in communities of the same faith then they can be more effective than others as they can engage deeper with people’s worldview and behaviour. However if working outside this context or in communities hat are not religious then their impact would not be different to non faith based organisations.”

Concluding thoughts
Religion is a major social force all over the world and has clearly shaped most of our past and clearly much of our present (see: ISIS).  Understanding this force is critical for this who concern themselves with effective aid.

Let’s continue the conversation.  EvilGenius has been busy as well so click here for an AidSpeak blog post on this topic.

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.  Again, if you have not done so already, please take the time to give us your thoughts.

“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 nearly 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.

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

  

  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 we 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.

Would you recommend this line of work to young people in your life?

To state the obvious, being an aid worker can be dangerous physically and mentally; many deployments can be existentially challenging in all senses.  The career trajectory of an aid worker can generate hinderances to ‘normal’ home and family life.  For many aid workers, the early career bloom of idealism soon withers and turns into rock-hard realism and even cynicism.

In other words, being an aid worker ain’t no walk in the park.

Given the nature of this line of work, the responses to Q39 are very interesting and perhaps speak to the deep conviction of many aid workers that what they do is valuable and meaningful.  We asked, “If someone you are close to (a child or mentee) wanted to become a humanitarian aid worker, would you encourage him/her, or would you try to discourage him/her?” and the response was overwhelmingly ‘yes!’  If you combine the ‘Strongly encourage’ and ‘Encourage with qualifications’ you get a rousing 92% affirming that they would recommend to youngsters that they should become humanitarian aid workers.  That there were no significant differences between the responses of males or females is at least mildly surprising. Here are the data for the whole sample.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What do these data mean?  I’ll stand by my observation that this is a positive sign for aid workers and that though many may have lost some of the initial idealism with which they began their careers, it is a path they would recommend to young people.

Let me know if you have thoughts, feedback or comment.

 

 

“At this point, I have seen too much as a emergency aid worker and feel it is unlikely I would be able to get a job outside of this field.”
–31-35 yo female expat aid worker

 “Not sure if I can do this work forever but don’t know how to turn my back on those that I committed to work alongside in their fight for justice and survival.”
–18-25 yo female working in HQ

“Injustice merits a response and the longer I work as an aid worker the greater I see the injustice, particularly the ways in which aid and the UN perpetuate and cover up injustice.”

Why do you remain in this sector?

First this
In a recent post I presented and then commented responses to Q’s22-24, with an emphasis on examining reasons people gave for getting into the humanitarian aid and development sector.  This post expends that conversation.  Q22-24 ashed about why respondents became aid workers and then remain in the sector. Q28-29 delve into questions regarding the level of idealism held and Q59-60 ask the respondents views on the future of humanitarian aid work.  All of these questions are clearly interrelated and will be the grist for my next several posts.  Stay tuned.

Overview
Q24 was a followup question asking “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?”  While many of our open ended questions generated robust response, with 614 of the 1010 people who started our survey taking the time to write something, this question obviously struck a nerve.

Let me begin with the words from one 36-40 female expat aid worker who exemplifies the honestly and seriousness with which many our respondents approached their answers.  She also articulates a wonderful sense of duty to the sector, remaining active despite frustrations and trying to make positive change from within.

“These are really difficult questions! I have asked myself many times recently why I remain working as an aid worker. In the last few months I have wondered if I might be better off working in a different field. Over the years my commitment to children’s protection has probably increased as I’ve learned more about the areas I am particularly passionate about. But my commitment to the international humanitarian system has significantly waned. I have remained because the more of the world I see and the way that international organisations respond the stronger I feel the need to contribute and challenge the way we do things to improve our understanding and our responses. But I have altered the type of work I do and with whom I work.”

This next respondent nails the complexity of trying to address the “why?” question with any single answer.

I do still feel called to love the poor, and by loving them in tangible ways by enabling them to come out of poverty and injustice. I no longer feel like I can make the change, but create the space. I don’t develop or cause development, that’s the job of the community itself. I stay in the field because I like it and I’m good at it and I’m compelled by the suffering of the world and feel that I am to respond to that compulsion by direct work rather than giving money alone. The motivation changes day to day, somedays I need to pay the bills, other days it feels good to do your work well, or you love your team. Some days it really is about the children and the community. Most days it is a mix. -26-30 yo female HQ worker

Can’t turn back
One theme struck powerful note with me.  Many responses reminded me of research I had done years ago on soldiers who volunteered for second, third or more tours of duty in Vietnam.  Why go back to a danger zone when you could be home and safe?  The answers were many, somewhat interrelated and foreshadow central themes in the answers given by many of our respondents to Q24.  Why a second (or third) tour?

• A deep allegiance to the people with whom they served, as in “I can’t leave them back there alone after what they have done for me”.
• A sense that they would not fit in any more back at home; the war had changed them in ways friends and family might not understand.
• No one would be able to understand what they had seen in the war back home.  It is best to remain with people with whom I can share.
• An inner desire to reach individual potentials -mental, physical and spiritual.  Being in “the shit” was real, intense, and brought out potentials that would have remained mostly dormant in civilian life.  Back home defines banal.

This final point is worth a deeper look.  It is my view that, in general, that humans seek intensity, meaning, and deep, human connection to those around them. In the words of Erich Fromm, they simply seek to be fully born, and the ‘conveyor belt’ life outside of aid work can seem quite pedestrian. Deployment in a conflict zone is richly intense, as many aid workers can testify.  I also believe that people are naturally motivated to feel a sense of accomplishment (happiness? self-actualization? wholeness?) when they are stretching their mental, physical and spiritual capabilities.  Many of our respondents appear to stay in this sector for exactly these reasons.  Why not go home instead of being redeployed?  One respondent mused that it is sometimes “…difficult to differentiate between loyalty and stupidity.”

Point taken.

Here are a few more choice responses that help illustrate the above.

“There are still so many emergencies and so many things to improve in the world. You do get addicted to the job and it’s hard to settle back in life in Europe and a “normal” job.” –30-34 yo female HQ worker

“At this point, I have seen too much as a emergency aid worker and feel it is unlikely I would be able to [do]a job outside of this field.”  –26-30 yo female expat

“Stubbornness. Sheer stubbornness. The work does not get better, easier or more rewarding but I stick at it. I feel like a rottweiler that has bitten into a leg and will not let go even though it’s been bashed over the head with a heavy metal frying pan.”  –-30-34 yo female expat

“What else would I do with my life? Live in the suburbs and drive kids to sports activities?”  –36-40 yo female expat

“Yes. Having been in war zones I now want to make sure my work has some impact on the people caught up in them. Working on other issues now seems irrelevant when you know kids are getting shot at.”  -26-30 yo male expat

This last one sums up the feelings of many.  What the aid worker does matters in a life and death kind of way and going back to “traditional” work would be “meaningless.”   Leaving the sector meant for many  going into the for profit sector and that would be impossible given their sense of what they wanted to do with their life.

“Working with likeminded people with similar value sets. Working somewhere were the goal is not about raising profits – but about making the world more safe, equitable and just. (however – often think it would be MUCH easier working elsewhere).” –-40-44 yo male expat

Basic commitment remains
Here is a great example from a woman staying in the sector for what I believe is one of the most important reasons, namely passing on wisdom that comes from experience.

“I think my overall reason, the underlying moral call to action, remains the same. As I get older I am also driven to stay in the field because I think I have more to offer based on previous experience. Finally, am a passionate believer that aid organisations can and must do better at communicating with disaster-affected people, and his motivates me to keep on, because there are so few of us who seem to be advocating for this and know how to do it.” -31-35 yo female expat

Many indicated that they stay in the sector despite having lower expectations in part because it beat any alternatives.

“That belief in a more just world hasn’t changed. However, my understanding of the complexity of the structures that fuel inequity has deepened. I have accepted that I can impact only a small fraction of the problem, but that the efforts are worth doing. That said, in my current role, I am quite overloaded and unhappy with the shift of focus in my role, so am considering leaving to pursue a PhD to deepen my knowledge even further in my area of interest.” –41-45 yo female HQ worker

“Sometimes, just sometimes, I feel I am achieving something, a cog in a bigger machine.” –30-34 yo male expat

I find it not surprising but rather a little saddening that this young woman quoted below so soon feels a sense of futility in her efforts.

“I still am learning every day about what makes change happen and what makes communities work – I am much less convinced that I can have any noticeable effect on communities, but since I came here to learn, I am still learning.”  –18-25 yo female expat

 

Called by God
There were many respondents (doing the numbers now) that mention being “called” to do humanitarian aid work of some sort.  Just short of 6% of the total sample indicated that they came to aid work initially because “They felt called by God or a higher power.”  Not infrequently these respondents note a change in their feelings in this regard as the years of service pass.

“Now that I’m here, it’s probably a good thing that I sit behind a desk in the US and am not more directly involved in relief or aid work, and I’m not spreading my arrogance and “wisdom”. I don’t have a special skill set (even with an MA), so I feel it would be more foolish of me to work in the “field.” So I continue as an aid worker because it interests me and I like to travel and work with colleagues from all over the world, and I like that in the long run what I do makes a difference to people (as opposed to a career in the private sector.) The sense of excitement or adventure I was seeking in the beginning still impacts my decision to stay, but I’m definitely more jaded about my feeling that God called me to this profession. It’s still true, but it’s far more complex than that now.” 26-30 yo female HQ worker

“Still called by God to help provide dignity through humanitarian assistance.”

 

Options limited
Many reported feeling “good at it [aid work]” and now only have skill sets relevant in this sector.  Some noted specifically that they  could not get paid as much in private sector. As one male put it,  I stay in the sector because “mo cash”.  Another male, one assumes tongue in cheek, offered “The phat stacks of cash”.  Though many respondents voiced similar sentiments, I find it interesting that by a wide margin males were more likely to explicitly mention money as a motivation.

“I’m trying as hard as I can to become an ex aid worker. it’s not easy to transition out of the aid world, especially in today’s economy.”  –36-40 yo male HQ worker

“Many of my initial reasons are still in place, if (greatly) tempered by cynicism about the aid and development industry. At the same time, I am now around 15 years in (post- grad school), as is my spouse; there is a certain element of “if not this, then what?” present in our decisions….it is, to some extent hard to imagine changing to another field, or at least to one that is radically different. After so much time gaining expertise and competence in this field, it seems daunting to start again all over in another one…even if I could figure out which other one I would choose.”  –46-50 yo male expat

The comment above could have been made by a worker in virtually any other profession.  Lateral moves within a job sector can and do happen with regularity throughout one’s career, but radial career change is daunting and, frequently, means settling for less pay, responsibility and status -at least initially- in the new position. And so as I get deeper into using these data to understand the world of humanitarian aid workers I am finding more similarities than differences to other types of jobs.

This of course raises the basic question about how to define this sector.  Our survey conflated relief work (e.g., emergency responder types) and development work and thus lumped together responses from workers in very different realms.  That said, my sense after reading thousands of narrative responses (many respondents took the time to write answers to all of the open-ended questions, some just a few) is that any one person, especially those beyond the first years in their career, could have served in many places along the continuum from ‘pure’ emergency response to long term development work.  In a sense field itself is conflated.  We will continue to explore what makes working in this sector unique.

In my next posts I will further this conversation.

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

“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.

 

“Interagency coordination is far from functional and effective – it will never work as long as agencies exist in such disparate ways and they have their own funding, programs, priorities, personalities. Territorial and personality battles take up far too much of my time. I have to constantly undertake delicate diplomacy to get things done – but where is the shared vision and clarity of purpose?! ‘One UN’ is a far-fetched fantasy as long as agencies continue to obsess over branding, turf-wars, and pissing contests.”
–46yo male expat aid worker

The Crisis Caravan:  Inter-agency coordination (updated 9-15)

Q56 touches on what has been euphemistically called the “crisis caravan.”  The results below indicate that well over half (53%) of our respondents thought that there were frequent or even constant problems related to inter-agency coordination and cooperation.

Here’s the data on Q56:

 

Yeah, well, yawn.

The world is a complex mess and, of direct relevance to this question, there has been a constant and perhaps dysfunctional increase in the number of entities that are responding to humanitarian crises around the globe.  At least 50 “big box” NGO’s and literally countless smaller and/or MONGO organizations appear whereever there is a major humanitarian crisis. How many in the “crisis caravan?”

Too many to count is the most accurate number I can come up with.

If there are communication problems within humanitarian organizations (as discussed in my last post) it stands to reason that of course there will be even more complex and distressingly pervasive inter-agency communication issues.

When Polman wrote her book she was looking backwards, writing about what was.  No one sober looking back at 1994 and Rwanda or post-quake Haiti can disagree with her very critical observations regarding the big picture:  seen from the advantaged perspective of frozen time and access to all of the ‘data’, the crisis caravan seemed then -and perhaps seems now- quite a hot mess.

But is it really?  Our respondents seem to think so.

So, what has been, is being, and will be done to address this problem?

Has been and is being done:  A couple answers appear immediately.  First, two words:  cluster meetings.  Secondly, the Core Humanitarian Standard is the most recent demonstrative example of concerted and coordinated efforts in the sector to articulate and make public universally accepted standards for humanitarian responses.  Read the history of this development here.  This and other efforts emphasize common standards that will, if adhered to, will enhance coordination and cooperation.

What will be done:  I’ve thought about this a bit and here’s what comes up.  We live in a world dominated by a species that is wired to desire justice and to have empathy for others.  There will always be a steady supply of those who want to help others. And, given the trend in American higher education in the last 15 years toward more and more “service learning” programs and “social entrepreneurship” pathways, the stream of do-gooders coming from the US will not dry up any time soon.  Just the opposite -bad news coming- I predict that there will be an even increasing number of MONGO’s started in the coming years.  More do-gooders and MONGO’s means inevitably and inexorably that the ‘crisis caravan’ will look even more chaotic in the coming years.

What will be done?  The well intentioned organizations and individuals working to enhance the sector and to address all of the ‘crisis caravan-esque’ issues will continue working, innovating, messaging and, in the end, being always frustrated that their best efforts will never be complete or perfect.  Their ernest work will be counterbalanced by the nature of the beast: more MONGO’s, the inherent problems of communication in all and any bureaucracies, and, perhaps most distressing, the tendency we all have to “put out the fire closest to us.”  The world, as I noted above, is a complex mess, and so far there is no ‘silver bullet’ to be found, though many seem fixated on finding one.

Thinking in terms of the big picture is a luxury many of us don’t have when confronted with the immediacy of current crises.  We are, and must remain, given the life and death urgency of the now, stuck in the weeds.

As always, please contact me with questions or comments or add your thoughts for discussion over at Aid Source forum which accompanies this project.

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And now more on the survey results…

The relationship between the “home office” and the “field”

“Well, HQ is HQ and the people there are just different. Not necessarily ill-intentioned or stupid (although it seems that way at times), just different.” –26-30 yo female expat aid worker

Yes, we are aware of the increasing blurring between what can be called “home office” and the “field” and also that many aid workers are neither and both at the same time.  That said, here are some interesting results from our survey questions that simply asked for an overall perspective.  Below we look at both the quantitative and qualitative results from three questions, Q50-52.

Q50 results below indicate a pretty negative view of the relationship.  Our results indicated a microscopic 1% indicating that “The field and the home office are completely in sync regarding important matters like priorities and processes.” A hefty 40% indicated these two realms were “rarely in sync.”  Why is this?  One broad-strokes answer is the truism that as bureaucracies get larger -and a good percentage of our respondents are from “big box” organizations- communication and coordination are structurally more complicated and, hence compromised.

Here is one narrative example to illustrate:

“Generally its all down to regular communication and putting faces to the names. The home office sometimes push “top-down” priorities that they want to see be coherent across all active programme-countries, and sometimes need to step back from their perfect plan and accept that it can’t be copy/pasted across different sites. On the other hand, I have seen the field staff exaggerate how ‘badly understood’ they are by the home office (sometimes to excuse a lack of progress…its so easy to blame things that the home office ‘just don’t understand’ about the conditions. But sometimes, it really is just due to bad field-management!..that makes it hard for the home office to know the difference).”  -26-30 yo female expat aid worker

This next respondent nails my point:  “This [lack of sync] applies to all organisations with HQ and regional offices, not just aid work.”  –56-60 yo female consultant

So, here is the quantitative data from Q50 and Q51:

 

Q51 results are interesting in that it gets a bit more personal, our question asking about the current organization of the respondent.  The “rarely” response, like Q50 above is still low at a paltry 9%….less than one in 10.  The “rarely” response is still high, but now that the respondents are talking about their own organization the number is 29% (as compared to the 39% reported about the relationship in general in the industry.

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Here are some specific narrative responses that flesh out the numbers above.

First these two from what I would call a reality-based perspective:

• “Much of the decision making is done in the field and since the vast majority of employees are very competent, this works well. The biggest source of feeling ‘out of sync’ is in regard to human resources- both being able to staff the field adequately and taking care of people when they leave.” 31-35 yo female expat aid worker
• “Time zones, language/cultural barriers, personality differences, technological skill- these are just some of the challenges to attaining complete alignment between the 2 types of offices.” 18-25 female working in HQ

You can sense the frustration in these next three comments:

• “We are regularly left out of home office conference calls and group emails that include all other country offices in the region. I don’t know whether the home office forgets to include us or is being passive aggressive. Either way, we are a mess. The leadership of my country office criticizes our regional office and our HQ/home office regularly. It seems like the feelings are mutual.” -18-25yo female expat worker employed within the UN system
• “Put simply, there is an immense disconnect between reality and policy. Also, I often feel or am made to feel inferior by the hierarchy in which final decisions must go through HQ and are decided by people who are totally removed from the contexts. To make decisions, you must spent endless hours justifying a decision before you can make it. Can’t imagine what national staff must feel like (hence the indifference, I suppose).” –36-40 yo male working in HQ
• “Damn emails. The world was beautiful before emails and the immediate responses needed by someone at HQ. That’s why I like to work in the field where I can decide that the internet ‘didn’t work for several days’.”  –56-60 yo male expat aid worker

These next two are particularly insightful and speak to issues that most in the sector will recognize:

• “In my experience, the relationship between the field and home office is good when there is a close dialogue and working relationship between the Country Director and the Regional Director that the CD reports to. This being said with increasingly multiple reporting or accountability lines, I am not sure that the above really applies… It’s always a difficult balance, especially in high profile emergencies, between the field having space and support to make decisions and the home office feeling that its interests are being met.” –46-50 yo female HQ based
• “This is the result of having very high turnover at all positions including high level management ones. Some people came with centralization ideals, others with decentralization. Result: we find ourselves with two layers that develop themselves regardless of the other. Processes, procedures, and responsibilities are often blurry. “Home office” works 4.5 days a week from 8 to 4pm, “field” is 6.5 days a week from 7 to 8pm. “Home office” is gangrened with political and career building moves. Often, the field ends up flipping the finger and taking over everything. “Home office” then try to finds itself a justification to exist in terms of informal support line. Once in a while they get hormone rush, and they go top-down very strongly. At field level, you then choose your battles. Field has a strong feeling that they don’t need the “home office” to operate. The “home office” thinks that they are the captain of the boat. The whole thing could be a giant case study to analyse for a final exam in management.” –26-30 yo male expat aid worker

Indeed, this is a problem of organizational management, but though we can react to communication and sync issues as they arise, the bigger picture is that the problems identified above are inherent whenever organizational size increases.  The truism in the business sector that “big fish eat little fish” -and hence that there is a force toward the domination by bigger business entities- is somewhat also true in the aid sector, if only because the economy of scale.  That and, well, Max Weber was right in pointing out the bureaucratization inevitably leads toward quantification and depersonalization and to the overall phenomena of organizations acting in the interests of self-survival as an entity and hence straying from their original mission.

The point made in the last respondent’s comment that there is “very high turnover at all positions including high level management ones” cannot be ignoreed as a major factor impacting the overall efficiency level of aid organizations.  Two obvious impacts include (1) training new personal takes time, energy and both human and material resources and this constant drain inevitably impacts overall system performance and (2) institutional memory is constantly being lost as personnel come and go, hence the sense that some organizations are always recreating the wheel.  To be clear, these issues are not unique to the aid industry.

To go back to the sociologist Max Weber for a moment, he invokes the image of the stahlhartes Gehäuse or ‘iron cage’ in his ruminations about the inexorable rise of bureaucratization in the modern world.  He would look at the aid world and say ‘it is what it is’ (or some German phrase meaning as much).  Big bureaucracies will always be necessary and indeed the only way forward for social organization but they will always be inherently hampered by their size:  the bigger they get the less efficient they become…for many of the reasons touched on above, and more.

When I talk about the “iron cage of rationality” with my students I trot out an aphorism I coined may years ago to explain one important dimension of the problem of bureaucratization, this one especially relevant in the aid world when examining the need to “show results.”  Merging a thought by Blaise Pascal “Not being able to make what is just strong, one made what is strong, just” with my understanding of Weber I came up with “Not being able to measure that which is real, we tend to make that which is measurable, real.”  Where was the drunk looking for his watch?  Under the lamp post.  Why?  Because that is where the light was best.  Hence we forever spin our wheels, constantly inside the iron cage.

Sigh.

So I’ll end not with comments from our respondents but from my muse Max Weber.  To wit,

“When those subject to bureaucratic control seek to escape the influence of existing bureaucratic apparatus, this is normally possible only by creating an organization of their own which is equally subject to the process of bureaucratization.”

Yes, MONGO’s do seem like a good idea at the time….

And, finally, on a realistic (?) and melancholy note, also from Weber.

“Not summer’s bloom lies ahead of us, but rather a polar night of icy darkness and hardness, no matter which group may triumph externally now.”

As always, please contact me with questions or comments or add your thoughts for discussion over at Aid Source forum which accompanies this project.

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Written in response to Q7:  “Why does it have to be white as point of reference?”

Indeed.

You are as you are seen:  race/ethnicity/cultural identity

Branding is for all of us
Branding is important.  Indeed, organizations spend a great deal of time, effort and money to “get their name out there” and to have their logo be recognized as something desirable or positive.  The vast majority of all social entities -be they for-profits, political parties, social clubs or, indeed, non-for-profit humanitarian aid  organizations- worry about public relations and will make efforts to “spin” what is known about them using social media, press releases, advertising and a myriad of other techniques.

You and I do this as well constantly albeit not always consciously.  Sociologist Irving Goffman‘s work on impression management remains part of the canon, and his 1959 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life could be useful reading for aid workers at any stage of their career.

One of the key insights that I gained from reading Abu-Sada’s (ed.) In the Eyes of Others is that though an NGO -in this case MSF- may go to great lengths to brand themselves, people on the receiving end of aid tend to see the “crisis caravan” as a monolithic Western entity.  All of us, though we may try to “brand” ourselves as our own unique person (“I am truly wonderful! — in a complex and nuanced kind of way, of course”) find that sometimes we are not seen as who we think we are but more so a generic category like “female”, “white”, “young person”, “Western”.  And, yes, that does describe our modal survey recipient.

Indeed, in many situations despite our efforts to manage our identity, we find that we are as we are seen: “female”, “white”, “young person”, “Western”.

The race question
When writing the “race” question for our survey we wanted to get at the tremendous depth and complexity of this part of one’s self concept and in the end decided a more or less direct approach.  Q6 asked “Which below best describes you?” giving only “white” and “non-white” as the only possible choices.  That was the bait.  The followup Q7 then asked “Please use the space below to (1) react to the inappropriateness of the choices in the question above and (2) describe how you identify yourself based on common cultural-linguistic, ethnic, racial, tribal, national or other categories.”

Most everyone who stated the survey, 991 people, answered the “race” question (Q6) and 542 (56%) giving at least some narrative comment in Q7.  The bait worked, and in numerous instances the respondents were insightful, articulate, poignant and often hilariously funny.  As is the case when nuance is used, some did not appreciate our attempt.

Of note but somewhat predictable is that a higher percentage of “non-white” respondents chose to write a followup Q7 response, nearly two thirds,66%, doing so as compared to just over half, 53% of those identifying as “white.”  Not only did more “non-whites” respond, their average word count was about 19% higher as well.  They had a bit more to say.

Some thoughtful examples to start
These first two examples hit well on both parts of Q7, with the first one well worth a close read, methinks:

“(1) I think the choices in the question reflect the notion that aid workers can be classified in just two categories: white (either North American or European, expats with higher salaries and more leadership positions than locals) and non-white (the locals from whichever developing country the organization is established, working alongside the white leaders, doing most of the grunt work on a lower salary. Much like the Lone Ranger’s Tonto, if that’s not too rude of an analogy). Is this notion inappropriate/politically incorrect? Perhaps. Is it false? I don’t think so. They’re simply caused by the resulting power dynamics in a context where whites are generally better prepared to handle the global networking required for the growth and expansion of an organization, and the non-whites/locals, who are better prepared to conduct all the field work without wreaking culture-shock havoc on the beneficiaries. (2) As for myself… I always say I have a nationality crisis. I was born to a Nicaraguan mother and an Iranian father. I have dual Nicaraguan/Canadian citizenship, and spent most of my childhood and adolescence between countries in a culture-neutral household (because of the cultural differences between my parents, my home life never mirrored the culture of the outside world, wherever we may have been living at the time), so I grew up as more of a cultural observer rather than replicating any of it. Physically, I’m ambiguous, people can never place where I’m from. I think and express myself more naturally in English, but I write all my “romantic, thought-out masterpieces” (I’m one of those frustrated writer people) in Spanish, I also speak French and I read and write Farsi (although the vocabulary has long been locked up in my brain, having fallen out of use when I was three years old). The only place where I don’t feel completely external to the culture around me is in an office full of converging personalities from all over the world where the dominating atmosphere is “tolerance”, not some unspoken attitude pattern that everyone seems to know except for me. And this is not because it sounds so “Oh, I’m a citizen of the world, y’know?”, but because everyone is just as awkward and culturally-misplaced as I am. But, for practical purposes, I am Nicaraguan in Nicaragua, and Canadian everywhere else (less visa issues).”

“1.a. i find interesting the number of choices (and the choices themselves) for Q#4 and Q#6 – i would be interested to hear why they were developed in this way. 1.b. I am not sure i find the relevance of the options under Q6, unless the goal is to determine a trend in the history of international development/humanitarian aid. if this is the case, it would be useful to see if the % of white humanitarian workers from traditional main donor countries has shifted in favor of non-traditional or non-donor countries. in addition, I think most people would not identify themselves as white or non-white (even if they were white) – not to mention that this implies that white would be the point of reference. 2. I am caucasian, but most beneficiaries I worked with were surprised/ disappointed I was not American, Candian or British. By name and accent I have been identified as: Italian, Indian, Pakistani, Mexican, Spanish, Russian, Arab, Turkish, Ukrainian, Polish. i find it less important to identify myself by standard ethnic categories when we live in such a mixed world, especially in a job where it’s more important how you adapt to the culture/ethnic group you work in, rather than the one you come from.”

To the point
And then we have the pithy:

“Outraged at above question, passed on outrage to the office, before seeing this question. Identify as White, British.”

Some appeared to dislike the question and judged:  “(1) This is racism and sexualism. (2) World inhabitant.” and others just the opposite: “I love this question but (predictably) fit into the categories above.”

Funny/Sarcastic
These examples made me smile, though all for different reasons.  The last one hits what was a common point made by many, i.e., whether we like it or not, color matters.

• 1. inappropriate response to inappropriate question. 2. I identify myself and others based on a complex correlation of the amount of stamps, number of passports held and whether or not a person uses a mac.
• I had to check with my colleagues about what my answer should be. I have a white skin, but the definition of white in survey usually is caucasian white, which I am not. I am Lebanese first then an Arab.
• 1) I get it, most expats are white, f*ck us for caring 2) Yooper
• I’m not sure “white” appropriately captures the whiteness of a white Canadian woman working in development. You should have used “pasty”.
• HA! I was wondering why that was so horribly stated. Points for humor. I am American, white, English-speaking, blue-collar-rust-belt SES, yet ultimately over-privileged in the grand scheme.
• White but not Anglo-Saxon. No post-colonial guilt trip.
• 1) Sadly reflects the world view in many cases. 2) Why can’t we all just have two boxes: human and non-human?
• I’m really white. White, middle class American. Blonde, even.
• Not surprised — when we’re “in the field” we are often self-identified as being either white or non-white. It’s icky, it feels wrong, and yet, there it is. Skin color tells half your story for you before you’ve even opened your mouth.

Perhaps missed the point

• 1) only albinos would consider themselves ‘white’ in my opinion. 2) I am me. I accept me. Just the same as I accept all those not me. Colour is irrelevant.
• The world thank god is not so black and white.
• Appropriate or not, skin color simply does not provide any meaningful data. Despite its limitations, a regional identity would be more significant here. In my case, my identification as a European suffices for this survey.
• This description works for me as I am white bread, but if I had to identify as non-white as my only option I would not be very happy! It is like colonizer or colonized. Possibly we could look at a description of pigmentally challenged vs not pigmantly challenged? But seriously I have never understood the value in these types of questions…

 

Thought provoking
There were many responses that underlined the main point I am making in this post.  Here is one that hits that perfectly:  “Those choices were very inappropriate. Yet, I am still white. It is not so much that to me, this is my most distinguishable feature, but living in Africa, it somehow seems to be so to others.”  Where you are in the world -your social context- has a big influence on how you are seen.  The following examples restate that point in various ways and illustrate the sad fact, again, that color matters.

• I’ve noticed that in the African country where I work, everyone who is not ethically African (black) is “white.” So I’m not sure how this question plays out with say ethnic Indian Africans?
• I think that there’s absolutely a place for this question, provided that we’re given the opportunity to react. Perhaps the question is halfway there, and you should be asking how we identify versus how we’re perceived. This probably comes from my time prior to entering the aid sector, when I worked with Indigenous Australian communities, and was familiar with extensive debates regarding whether you were ‘black enough’- I worked with a number of Indigenous Australians who appeared outwardly ‘white’ but identified strongly with their Indigenous heritage. So while these people were absolutely Indigenous, they were often treated as ‘white outsiders’ who had no place making policy decisions or managing community programs. It’s a complicated issue, but it’s often perceived as (pardon the horrendous pun) black and white. So maybe the question comes from this perspective and is appropriate in that sense. I would be really interested in hearing the discussion that took place around this question some day! As for me, I’m a white Australian of German and Namibian heritage. I was raised speaking English and some German. Aside from the cultural-linguistic/ethnic/etc business, I also identify as a queer woman.
• It sets up a dichotomy and forces one to choose between two categories that don’t best describe an individual. There are many more adjectives that I would use to describe me. It sets up a world view which I have to deal with on a daily basis but would like to see us move beyond.
• It would be best if it didn’t matter, but it usually does, and it’s most often the distinction above that does matter. you can’t list every race, every selection will be inappropriate to someone… I’m European.
• It’s pretty blunt. It’s certainly imbalanced and biased to see a global minority written down as a majority, and other majority generalised as a “other” group. Many expat aid workers are white, and are defined as such by each other and local populations (whether ethnically white or not), so the options reflect conversations you hear but it’s stark to see written down.
• In terms of how whiteness tends to inform differential treatment of and reactions to aid workers by both their organisations and the populations they serve, this split may be depressingly appropriate.

“White” and “non-white” differences
There was a slightly higher percentage (66%) of “non-white” respondents that chose to respond to Q7 than “white” (53%), indicating that this was a slightly more important question for those that self-identified as “non-white.”  What I have found in these “non-white” responses are the same patterns as in the “white” responses, mostly that identity is both incredibly nuanced and at the same time quite binary.  This one sums it up well:

“I am Filipino-American. Colleagues in the Philippines treat me as a local/national with a foreign passport. I have similar experience in other countries within South East Asia. In West and East Africa, I am often perceived as Chinese. In the Middle East, my ethnicity is often associated with hired domestic help. I am extremely proud of my ethnic background and cultural heritage but there have been times in the field when I wanted to look like the typical expat aid worker – 6 feet tall, blond and very white. The color of one’s skin shouldn’t matter especially in this line of work, but who are we kidding?”

Here are the “word clouds” from both. Quite obvious which is which.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aid worker voices regarding identity
Many respondents used this open-ended question to riff and reflect on their identity, and I was a bit surprised at the range of identifiers that were used beyond the obvious country/region of birth, etc..  “Atheist” was not uncommon as was “queer“.  Many used the opportunity to express a sense of global citizenship  (“Global citizen of Georgian origin.”) and/or anti-or a-nationalism.  One respondent simply wrote “nomad.”  Those who were comfortable as seeing themselves as fitting neatly into a category (e.g., German or ‘Murican) were one large group, but a roughly equal number went into some detail about how what they saw themselves as was quite complicated (as seen in many examples above).

What, if anything, can be concluded from the responses to Q6 and Q7?  Aid workers in general have a sense of humor but more importantly most have an in depth and critical sense of identity -both who they are and who they are seen as.  Most recognize the reality of white bias both within and outside of the aid industry and many struggle with the “race” question on many levels.  Those with more stamps in their passport will recognize the fact that “white” or “non-white” matters a great deal in some parts of the world (much of Africa) and less so in others. I will hazard that seasoned aid workers manage their identity as much as they are able in order to maximize their effectiveness (and/or personal safety) in various situations and locations, accenting or downplaying gender, race, SES, or other status markers so as to get by successfully in various contexts. But despite our very best efforts and intentions we are as we are seen by others much of the time.

As always, contact me with questions or comments.

 

Postscript

A question:  What does it matter how you see yourself or even how others see you -that is, what is happening in the minds of people- as long as the job gets done?  Perhaps the more important question is to what extent does your sense of self and how others see you in the field impact what you do, what gets done?