Just up on THIS Magazine. Based on a previous article published in the Guardian (UK), this post takes a closer look at Canada’s role in the Cambodian draft NGO & Associations Law.
Slate just published a scathing – and refreshing – article on NGOs working in Cambodia. A number of the author’s comments ring true for aid and development work anywhere in the world. In particular,
The point here is not that every seemingly good cause is a fraud and that all international aid groups are poverty pimps (though some certainly are). It’s that people should bring the same degree of scrutiny to NGOs as they do to corporations and governments (and the media for that matter). And nowhere is a jaundiced eye more warranted than in examining the do-gooder community of Cambodia.
Silverstein also highlights the relationship between the corrupt Cambodian government and NGOs. One approach of choice by NGOs is working in the ‘back end’:
Gauntlett declined to comment for this story, but Wildlife Alliance provided a general response: ‘The blame game doesn’t work for groups like us inside Cambodia. We have to be careful and build alliances that are sometimes uncomfortable. It’s delicate because the government can shut down an NGO whenever it wants. But we work on the inside, quietly, and get things done. We’ve been able to get things done and reverse concessions by working quietly inside the government and reminding it of its own legal obligations.’
But, when is this simply just not worth it anymore? Silverstein concludes the article with the following:
The NGOs desperately want access and the basic equation is that the government grants it to them in exchange for their silence about corruption or anything else remotely controversial,” says the Western expatriate who has worked on land issues. “At a certain point you have to ask yourself, ‘Where is this going, and what are we accomplishing?’
Sunrith Ham, Deputy Director of Monitoring & Protection at LICADHO, works with a number of human rights victims in Cambodia including the Dey Krahorm community (pictured above). Members of the community were evicted from their land in 2009 for ‘development purposes’ and moved to a relocation site. Their former land remains vacant.
At first face, working as a lawyer in Cambodia seems like a disheartening experience. Corruption is endemic: the rich and powerful bribe judges to have cases found in their favor and use criminal sentencing to deter resistance from members of the community. The police, acting under the instruction of the government, often comply in the harassment and arrest of human rights activists.
Someone recently asked me why anyone would continue working within such a broken legal system. I think Sunrith’s story is a good example of how coping with difficult circumstances in the hope of helping suffering individuals starts with a personal decision – one intimately connected to culture and religion. In the end, perhaps change makers are not inspired by a single defining event, but rather an uphill struggle led by instinct.
Sunrith graduated with a legal diploma from a Phnom Penh university in 1997 at the age of 22. The government appointed him as a law clerk in his hometown. As a government employee, he was making $20 USD a month. His first experience with the evolving Cambodian legal system was not a positive one. He recounts how a woman’s child was arrested and arraigned in front of the judges. The mother offered them a bundle of money carefully tied with a rope made from banana leaves. The money had clearly been saved up – diligently, meticulously, through hardwork. She bought her child’s freedom; the judges did not complain.
Religion and culture can deeply influence a person. In Cambodian culture, and particularly in Buddhist families, youth are taught to obey their superiors. But, Sunrith was different. He felt he had received two messages: to listen to people older than him; but also to question decisions like those made by the judges at the provincial court. He says his religion, Buddhism, also helped him make the difficult decision to leave his clerking position: “I didn’t feel like I was doing a good thing. I felt that if I was not making people feel better, I was not taking the right route.”
His parents were surprised by his decision. As a class-conscious family in a class-conscious society, they were delighted that their son had found work with the government. Despite this family pressure, he left this position to permanently move to Phnom Penh, the country’s growing capital, some 160 km away.
Sunrith’s first job was as a typist. At first, he was content. He was financially independent as the new job paid more than the government. However, after a few months, he began questioning his decision: should someone with a diploma in law work as a typist? Could he push himself to do more?
Soon he decided to leave his relatively comfortable position as a typist and began volunteering and then interning withLICADHO. He spent the first five years working with the Prison Office. Cambodian prisons, notorious for their horrific living conditions, became a second home to him. While others would express fear or disgust towards prisoners, Sunrith was happy to talk with them, bringing them bananas to help the day past faster. Seeing people energized and rewarded by his presence clearly made him happy.
Eventually, Sunrith transferred to LICADHO’s Human Rights Monitoring Office and this helped him make the decision to become a practicing lawyer. “You see injustice from case to case, but as an observer [a human rights monitor who tracks human rights abuses] you cannot express yourself, you are not in the system.”
Sunrith says that some days he is exhausted and considers leaving the legal profession. Yet, his friends and colleagues convince him that if he stops working, human rights defenders will have a difficult time finding a trusted lawyer to represent them free of charge. Around LICADHO, Sunrith has the reputation of a formidable lawyer: someone with a chilling confidence in front of the Cambodian Supreme Court, the country’s highest judicial body.
While he acknowledges that changing old societal practices would be difficult, he does believe that he can help change the attitude within the courts in Cambodia. To fight corruption and injustice, Sunrith hopes that the next generation will not be taught to accept the orders of their superiors, but rather to question authority. He says that future legal professionals should not concentrate on whether or not there is law, but rather on implementing the existing law and abiding by the rules set out within.
Working with LICADHO, Sunrith, who has been in the thick of human rights activities in Cambodia since the late 90′s, does note some positive changes. He says that the number of political killings has decreased substantially. Rather, the government is now using the courts to dissuade people from challenging them. The fact that the government’s weapon is no longer primarily the gun, but rather the law, is seen as a step – although a twisted one – forward.
Watching community activism in action also seems to give Sunrith renewed hope. He speaks admiringly of the communities living around Prey Lang forest who came all the way to Phnom Penh a few weeks ago to protest the destruction of their forest. He advises the residents of Boeung Kak lake, another community being evicted from their land, to believe in their struggle. “How can you change injustice? How can you change the attitude of the government? Hope comes day to day, from the people. It does not come from institutions or the policymakers.” He says that while Boeung Kak lake residents may lose their homes, in the end, they have set a fighting precedent that will hopefully grow and overcome the “cancer”of corruption and exploitation ailing the country.
Cross posted on the McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism blog.
Recent articles on the Three Cups of Tea scandal offer some important lessons in aid and development communications. First of all, check out Kristof’s article:
I worry that scandals like this — or like the disputes about microfinance in India and Bangladesh — will leave Americans disillusioned and cynical. And it’s true that in their struggle to raise money, aid groups sometimes oversell how easy it is to get results. Helping people is more difficult than it seems, and no group of people bicker among themselves more viciously than humanitarians.
And Margaret Wente writing in the Globe and Mail:
Maybe the moral of this story is that, if it’s too good to be true, it’s probably not true. And doing good is harder than we’d like to think. When it comes to our good intentions, we have every reason to be humble. After all, if all it took were goodwill and three cups of tea, we’d have this thing licked by now.
Both articles highlight that aid and development is much more complex than publicity makes it seem – and there is a danger to this. This danger seems to play out in two ways:
First of all, honesty is key to successful development programs. There are several facets to this. How can you ask your recipients to be accountable for the funds they receive if you are not? Moreover, donors, while they do not have a right to get involved in the tangible programming, do have a right to know where their funding goes. This is an elementary principle to all public institutions. Finally, if one does not realistically track how funds are being spent and what impact they are having, how can one learn to develop better programs?
Secondly, by simplifying the message behind aid and development we are taking out so many of the important nuances and debates that challenge people to think and learn for themselves. I have only met a few people (see Texas in Africa, Good Intentions are Not Enough and the Katine Project) who have managed to successfully present a complex problem in digestible, but still challenging terms. It is not a talent that comes easily, but something that we must prioritize.
In support of Good Intentions Are Not Enough‘s goal to teach smart giving and their “Day Without Dignity” campaign. A more substantive post can be found here, “Breathing Meaning Into Sustainability.”
During the presentation on Women of Kireka earlier this week, a student, originally from Rwanda, asked me how she might go about making a similar investment in East Africa. She also asked how Women of Kireka had come to meet people like Hadijah and Project Diaspora, who are key to making the business run. It was hard to answer the latter part of the question, as much of it was based on a fortuitous set of circumstances. As for the former, I tried to emphasize that duplication was a concern and that, after trying to understand whether the kind of investment you wanted to make was a sound and welcome one, whether the structures to do so already existed. I was sent this article – “To Help Africa, Sell Diaspora Bonds” – earlier today, and I think this might be another viable avenue that ties into what Project Diaspora is aimed at facilitating, but on a much larger scale:
In other words, Africa needs not only greater investment in agriculture, but also in roads, ports and other facilities that are vital to moving the land’s products to consumers. Fortunately, part of the solution could lie with the almost 23 million African migrants around the globe, who together have an annual savings of more than $30 billion. Tapping into this money with so-called diaspora bonds could help provide Africa with the equipment and services it needs for long-term growth and poverty reduction.
These diaspora bonds would be in essence structured like any bonds on the market, but would be sold by governments, private companies and public-private partnerships to Africans living abroad. The bonds would be sold in small denominations, from $100 to $10,000, to individual investors or, in larger denominations, to institutional and foreign investors.
Preliminary estimates suggest that sub-Saharan African countries (excluding South Africa, which doesn’t have significant emigration) could raise $5 billion to $10 billion a year through diaspora bonds. Countries like Ghana, Kenya and Zambia, which have fairly large numbers of migrants living abroad in high-income countries, would particularly profit from issuing diaspora bonds.
Another exciting lecture coming up at the McGill Faculty of Law in Montreal, QC.
A couple of months ago, there was a rather large debacle around I Wear Your Shirt when they tried to launch 1 Million Shirts. I wrote an open letter at the time commenting on this initiative. Instead of blocking out the constructive criticism being offered by development professionals, they eventually ended up closing the project and starting “Free Days on I Wear Your Shirt For Non Profits and Charitable Organization.” Time constraints prevent me from writing a longer post, but I would like to commend I Wear Your Shirt’s responsiveness to the development/aid community and applaud their effort to contribute in an innovative way ‘at home’.
A friend sent this to me this morning. Fascinating (not least because of the excellent drawings!). The main point is that charity (development, aid) is not bad, but doing charity using money made in the systems that make the poor suffer is immoral (and ridiculous, when you think about it). These interventions are simply “remedies” that prolong the actual disease. I also really liked this extract: “It is much easier to have sympathy with suffering than have sympathy with thought.” I think that’s something you could say big pushers like Enough in their blood minerals campaign ascribe to.
Benefit of having a library at your fingertips (and a good one), Autesserre’s book came in yesterday. Now in my hungry possession. I’ve only managed to digest Chapter 1, but my first impression might dictate my thoughts on the rest of the book, or at least influence my reading.
The concept of organizational culture (or corporate culture) is inherent to any “industry” – whether it be aid or banking or being a professor. Each profession and its environment comes with rules – norms – that have been developed over a long period of time. Did we think aid or development was an exception to the rule?
@tmsruge’s first comment to me is that the aid industry is so worried about its own survival that it leaves no room for innovation. I’m not really sure that is the key issue. Unfortunately, I think humans do as humans do and we often end up with the same organizational product.
Finally, are people naive enough to think “do-gooders” get a free pass to not be seen as controlling and hierarchical as the next human? Anyways, it seems like a pretty smooth read so I would urge you to dig in and let me know what you think.
From Taking the Rules of the Game Seriously: Mainstreaming Justice in Development in the World Bank’s Justice for the Poor Program:
Beyond just correcting failures in the conception and practice of justice-sector reform work, development needs to address the larger issue that most development processes fail to even consider rules systems,9 despite the routine invocation of popular expressions endorsing the importance of “understanding the rules of the game.” Rules underpin all aspects of everyday life and are the key to understanding how conflicts form, escalate, or get resolved. Yet, development, by design, puts all these rules systems in flux; it reorders society and alters the distribution of rights, responsibilities, and resources. Moreover, it alters social relations, especially those pertaining to gender, occupation, and the relative political strength of particular social groups. As such, it is inherently accompanied by conflict. By establishing legitimate spaces and processes for negotiating competing interests, aspirations, and interpretations, development actors can potentially become part of the solution to such conflicts.
OXFAM has recently launched its “Channel 16.” Thus far, it looks like a platform for OXFAM to aggregate information on a few specific emergency areas they work in (Afghanistan, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda) while offering limited means of the public (abroad and in the field) of getting involved via social media. What do you think?
Thus far, on Twitter, @gentlemandad observed that the site (and I concur, this jumped at me right away) only offers one number to SMS reports too. Whether you are tapping an international humanitarian audience, a general audience, or the people affected by conflict, I would think the site needs an SMS number per emergency country at minimum. From the same observer, apparently the IPadio contact numbers are not terribly useful if you are not based in Western Europe or the US. Once again, a good amount of people who might be interested in these OXFAM campaigns will be based outside this region and often active in or around these emergency zones.
Another observation I would make at first glance: the front of the website is looking primarily for involvement, but not engagement. For example, the first headline “Join the Call to Put Afghan People first” is a voice-petition. I find that my eyes skim over “calls to action” regularly now, but the moment someone starts asking the Twitter and otherwise audience about a specific issue seeking feedback, the ball really gets rolling. We’re moving progressively towards a conversation where the final product – in some cases – would be a (incredibly successful) petition. Getting people’s blood boiling and minds moving.
What do you think?
Finally getting around to reading this document. From the Development: In Aid of New Approaches section (Chapter 9):
Remittances add up to half of aid budgets even within less-developed countries. One can’t help but wonder whether our best development program can be found in Open Canada’s liberal immigration policies; not only do immigrants get better lives here, they also send home money—and ideas and values, too.
Excellent article in The Walrus on Canada’s rather lackluster international performance. Quite a large section is dedicated to questions around Canada’s aid budget and its rather particular disbursement with competing interests between reducing poverty and investing in long-term regional trade.
The second defining feature of Canada, its multiculturalism, may be contributing to one of the most frequently criticized aspects of our foreign policy: our fragmented approach to development assistance. Influenced in part by the need to placate various diaspora and interest groups, Canada has developed one of the world’s most dispersed aid budgets. To illustrate, compare Canada and the Netherlands, each of which gave about 2 percent of the world’s direct aid in 2008. While the Netherlands donated to sixty-five countries, Canada spread its contribution among more than a hundred recipients. Such a spread makes it difficult to develop local knowledge and contacts, and so to use aid dollars effectively. Small-scale programming also places a heavy coordination and cost burden on the very countries we are trying to help, and increases the costs and management requirements for Canada. And the contribution we make is often so tiny that it cannot make a difference in even the poorest countries. Take Angola, which received 0.1 percent of its aid from Canada in 2008, essentially little more than a rounding error from both countries’ perspectives. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has estimated that during that year, sixty-seven of Canada’s 109 aid relationships were similarly futile — a greater number and higher ratio of “non-significant” relationships than for any other member.
I come at this from the humblest of perspectives. The following is based on personal experience and study, which, in the grand scheme of things, is nothing compared to the experts out there – most importantly, the Africans who receive aid and then the professionals and academics who keep the industry on its toes. Among others, see Aid Watch, Texas in Africa, Project Diaspora and so forth.
Dear Jason Sadler,
There are already a lot of intelligent people who have criticized your idea and offered valuable input. It would be very, very wise to take advice from them. This includes Texas in Africa, Project Diaspora (TMS Ruge), Good Intentions are Not Enough and so on.
Regardless, as you are soliciting thoughts, I would also like to weigh in. I have copied one of my colleagues here (Joseph Okumu, Executive Director of BOSCO Uganda), as well as TMS Ruge, both Ugandans who can help further this discussion in their own right.
For those of us who have worked in the continent as foreigners (and I am limited to East Africa – which holds some of the countries you indicated would receive t-shirts), this initiative – put bluntly – is a regretful waste of your time and money, others’ time and money, and the resources that go into shipping products and paying customs to/in another continent. And, as you seem a person aware of the value of time, perhaps you might be able to direct your resources into better and more informed investments.
There is a massive used clothing market here in northern Uganda where I live right now – and I’ve seen the same thing across the East African region. While this market perhaps benefited from the original dump of clothing aid which offered products to sell as a derivative, its expansion – and thus the provision of new jobs – is equally hampered by these free products.
A continued aid dump limits local innovation and opportunity. Instead of working towards locally sourcing (new jobs) products to make X and Y pieces of clothing, these countries absorb the free-hand outs from elsewhere and thus fail to develop new industries that would offer additional employment and income. Most people I know here are eager to implement new businesses that rely on locally made resources (which has the potential to be cheaper) and begin successful local, regional and international trade. Why not help out instead of hinder?
You might argue that there are people who are so poor that the above has no relevance to them – they just want their children to have a shirt and shorts on at all times. Well, this is somewhat true. However, these are the extreme poor and are best helped through specific organizations that have a long lasting relationship with these fragile communities. Either way, these communities will take your shirts – and then sell them to a used clothing broker to cover more immediate needs like health costs and food.
On top of the other suggestions you have received, perhaps you could consider using donated funds to fuel micro finance (or full scale industry) initiatives that encourage local production through more experienced organizations or businesses (Acumen, for example).
Another example. There are hundreds of fabulous tailors in the used clothing market here who, instead of selling used clothing for little profit with little potential for expansion, make beautiful dresses, skirts, shirts and otherwise from regionally-sourced cloth. This both leaves room for innovation and provides jobs to people around the continent in clothing production. Perhaps you could invest here.
You could also consider visiting the region before going full-speed ahead with this project and meeting with organizations like BRAC, which are very experienced in economic development and were built from their own struggle against poverty and conflict in areas like Bangladesh.
Personally, I think the best way to measure a project’s worth is to determine whether or not your project and yourself will be necessary in the long-run. You should always have in mind that building local capacity means handing the reins over to a local person in the country of origin. You should also have in mind that becoming irrelevant means building the skills and capacity within a country to achieve the same goal. In this case, 1millionshirts is trying to solve a problem that cannot be solved externally, but only through targeted local development that gives people new jobs and trains them in marketable skills thus reducing poverty.
An onslaught of criticism to an idea you work really hard to build and implement is not fun. However, the bigger picture should make us all wiser and humbler. With continued dependency on aid and free hand-outs, these African countries you target might never emerge from poverty and make the same strides as emerging economic powers. Perhaps you could read Dambisa Moyo’s book Dead Aid, which is a good, if not simplistic, introduction to this fact.
Lastly, and I find this quite funny, I used to visit Toy Market in Nairobi. It’s a huge clothing market with hundreds and hundreds of used clothing stalls. At the peak of the day, the most common customer is a foreigner, re-purchasing the clothes that some well-intentioned American donated. This applies to clothing markets in Nairobi, northern Uganda and beyond. Worth a laugh, no?
[NOTE: There are a myriad of reasons why some countries are failing to emerge from poverty. The above is a simplistic snapshot of one such factor. For more information, please consult those who have dedicated their lives to trying to understand and influence the process of poverty. There are too many such people/organizations to name, but do note Yunus, BRAC and founders, Kiva (despite recent controversy), the Aga Khan Development Network, Samasource and Acumen Fund. All come with their own baggage, but are worth delving into if you want to move beyond the surface argument.]
1. Not surprisingly, Canada is slashing its foreign aid budget. Can we really blame them? As one less than eloquent Canadian said:
The less Canada has to do with the u n , the better. As near as can be see, the u n is bagman for various propaganda machines designed to redistribute western wealth by any means possible to corrupt governments with no desire to do any thing for anyone other than themselves.
2. And maybe we are better off withdrawing. William Easterly gives us a snapshot of the “worst kept secret in aid” – the recipient corrupt government controls the donor.
3. But, one of these corrupt governments is now being investigated by the ICC. Ocampo now has permission to investigate senior Kenyan politicians.
4. And there are ideas for how to improve aid. Owen lists Lawrence Haddad’s (IDS) top priorities. So where are these priorities being implemented?
@bill_easterly asked me to expand on my criticism of the Aid Watch blog.
I’m coming at this from the perspective of a student. While I work in the development industry, I have neither the responsibility nor knowledge to place myself as an expert or a well-placed critic.
As a student, I am always looking for information to build on my relative lack of experience. William Easterly, along with other top names in development, is a logical choice. He has explored alternatives to traditional development and, along with people like Dambisa Moyo, has injected some much-needed self-criticism into development overall.
His popular book, White Man’s Burden, as well as articles and public appearances have all helped inform the development debate. However, his blog does not do the same service.
Perhaps Aid Watch was meant as an outlet for shallow satire among the occasional interesting link and comment. There are probably many reasons why it took this form. Easterly is busy and there is no time to expand on the cloaked-criticism he makes; satire gets more hits and requires less thoughtful (time-consuming) writing; drawing on positive examples of development (or private sector, for that matter) as a way to showcase where development should be does not sell etc.
Whatever the reason, I personally (along with others and others) find this approach to critiquing the aid industry (which sometimes seems lazy) not terribly helpful and rather discouraging. Posts like this (a fictitious situation that highlights the oddness of poverty porn) and this only leave me wondering: What we could be doing better? What changes are necessary? What alternatives are there?
I get that a sense of humour is necessary and refreshing, but without combining humour and new information/suggestions/inspiration etc. I fail to see the value of the Aid Watch blog.
What frustrates me the most is that William Easterly undoubtedly has the knowledge, contacts and audience to make a regular impact in the development field by offering new ideas and well-argued criticism on Aid Watch that underline the basic structural and ideological problems of development in a mature fashion.
Others with equal time constraints (but unfortunately more limited audiences as they are not as widely published or read as Easterly) manage to do it. Take Alanna Shaikh, Texas in Africa (whose regular insight into Rwanda is fantastic), Aid Thoughts and Owen Barder as examples of what Aid Watch could be offering.
There’s a fine balance between retaining an audience that enjoys regular, limited commentary and those that want some new, in-depth information. To achieve this, I would suggest integrating some of the following in a 500-word + format:
1. Deconstructions of particular development projects. Tearing it apart and re-building an improved model or simply explaining how finances could be re-directed to have a more tangible impact;2. Features on “positive” development/private sector initiatives or approaches that can be integrated into mainstream development.3. Features on successful initiatives developed and run by those living in harsh conditions that have lifted communities out of poverty.4. Highlights of private-sector projects that have impacted low-income communities (other than micro finance!).5. More guest posts from inspiring development or private-sector individuals that are invested in changing the development status quo (or are simply well versed in being successful in any environment).6. Better informed highlights of projects like this one that are truly revolutionary to communities. Giving these guys encouraging publicity is also important.7. Maybe a bit too time-consuming (hire another co-author?) but regular weekly or monthly Q&A sessions via Twitter or other mediums about the aid industry and/or recent articles. This gets the audience engaged in some of that low-blow satire.
Latest article on World Bank’s You Think:
My first reaction to AMREF’s, Why We Need A Fourth Year in Katine, was “of course you need a fourth year in Katine!” Development doesn’t happen in four years, let alone five or ten. Aid dollars spent over a short period of time with little follow-up support are often wasted.
Well, times are a changing. On Friday, I started a mad trip around the world. I left Nairobi early in the morning to find myself in the Damp Spring of Vancouver’s Olympic-Laden City. A trip to my parents’ house on that little island in the Strait.
After several hikes on the island’s modest peaks, potential dips in the ocean and runs in the hill-filled woods, I’ll surrender to a new city: Boston. I will be spending the weekend: one sister, one interview, one social event and one workshop.
Following this, and by then I will be looking forward to the return, I land in Entebbe and bus straight up to Gulu, Northern Uganda to start work with Battery Operated Systems for Community Outreach Uganda Relief Project. Otherwise known as BOSCO-Uganda.
Full circle. The first work I did in East Africa was in 2007 in Gulu, Northern Uganda. Along with two fantastic colleagues, we designed and implemented the first HIV/AIDS awareness program for Concordia Volunteer Abroad Program. It was really the basics of working in “development” abroad. We were coddled. We were sheltered. We knew absolutely nothing.
The program has since grown and continues to give people transforming opportunities abroad. It also gives me a reference point for how naive I was. More importantly, it makes me realize how lucky I was to slip my foot in that door and use that one experience to build enough momentum for a lifetime.
Instead of jetting out of Uganda right away, I embarked on a fantastic trip. The bumpy, dusty, 18 hour bus ride from Kampala to Nairobi; the infamous Lunatic Express across Kenya to Mombasa; the hostel in the Mombasa bus park and the candy-like temple where all noise dissipated into vividly painted figurines; the women in flowing red coantinos and hijabs selling milk in yellow pint-sized jerry cans on the way to Lamu; the hushed streets and boisterous donkeys of the island-without-car; the white beached island of Zanzibar and the underlying pain of tourism; meeting Budr, shaping a life-long friendship cemented in our ship sinking in the Indian Ocean; the magical island and my first milky way with cups of sugary tea and sleeping under blankets on the island spit’s; morning runs in Butare among golden dust and sunshine and women walking to the market; the genocide memorials; Lake Victoria and the realization that suns set faster in different parts of the world.
During these travels, I was entranced. It had been a while since I had really had time to leave Canada and observe another slice of the world. At the same time, those disparities everyone talks about became much clearer. Least I sound like a cliche, I was a bit shaken that first time coming home to the streets of Montreal. Seizing inspiration found during my work and travels, myself and a group of strong-willed volunteers founded In Their Shoes, an NGO to raise awareness of poverty and conflict abroad in Montreal high schools.
A friend cautioned me that I would have to stick around to see the NGO find feet strong enough to survive alone. However, there was/is so much to accomplish. I moved to Aarhus, Denmark and studied at the Danish School in Journalism. I wrote from Copenhagen during a peek in riots among marginalized communities, primarily Muslim. I spent time listening to the Somali diaspora in Aarhus – chewing the beloved quat in below-freezing temperatures – and in the Sandholm Refugee Camp in Copenhagen. The grievances of young people stuck between two worlds. I worked through meetings at the European Commission, learning how to digest the vague words of parliamentarians. Finally, the summer after Kosovo’s independence, I arrived in Prishtina to write about grassroots post-conflict reconciliation in Mitrovica, the city divided. Months before I had devoured any and every book about the Balkans, hungry for a sliver of what I might stumble upon.
And in 2008, I returned to Uganda to work with Women of Uganda Network, my first introduction to information and communication technology for development (ICT4D). The potential of cell-phones and radios in enabling the “grassroots” to make their own decisions, improve their crops, influence politics and community news. Sometimes I think we are dreaming large when it comes to the potential of ICT4D, particularly the mobile phone, in transforming development. At other times, it is clear: there is room for self-made innovation in technology and no better avenue for “capacity-building, self-empowerment.”
In 2009, I started this eight-month fellowship working with the Aga Khan Foundation (East Africa). While not always glamorous, I have been introduced to a whole other aspect of development: the large-scale, well-funded and hugely respected development organization. No more legitimacy struggle, the Aga Khan Foundation and the Aga Khan Development Network carry a lot of weight. Of course, being within this system taught me the pitfalls: procedures, rules, regulations & slow-functioning. What you hear about UN-like institutions is no rumor. Managing a massive organization is difficult and it often means that creativity and innovation take a hit.
And, full-circle back to Gulu. This time I’ll be living 6km out of town on church grounds. A bit uneerving for an atheist, it’s also a great experience to learn more Luo, shop for mangoes in the nearby markets and run a muddy road into town once a week. BOSCO has shown itself immensely helpful and it reminds me of the merits of working in a small group. Apparently I’ve already been nick-named CNN because my name is difficult to pronounce.
It was hard deciding to work with BOSCO. I’ve been supporting their work since I interviewed them in 2008, so I had no doubts about the caliber of what they are doing and the motivation behind it. However, at the same time, I was getting used to people noticing the Aga Khan Foundation label. It was refreshing to not start a conversation with a lengthy introduction to your work because the UN official doesn’t understand. However, while I had choices in the pipeline to avoid this, including an internship with the UNDP in Kosovo, I am beyond satisfied with this decision. And for those who know me, it took a lot of mind-wrecking.
So, I’m back to a self-made title and job with many wide-reaching responsibilities. I’m excited about their work – ICT for post-conflict reconstruction. I have pitched their work to Oxford and was accepted based on a thesis focusing on this field. A time to kick-start research. A time to live in the now quiet Northern Uganda and not ponder the kidnappings, gun-shots and other ridiculous rumors (many true) that float Nairobi. I do not expect to be covering riots like theseany time soon (though I do hope to do some freelance writing and photography for local NGOs). Most importantly, a time for working ‘in the field ‘ in former internally displaced persons camps, on the grass in the church park, from the modest but well-equipped BOSCO offices. Nothing like change.
Of course, there’s one last thing to bring up. Being in “Africa.” All these blogs and stories and experts and people knowing everything from everything. It is embarrassing and often annoying to realize that I probably react and act the same way. I’ll take this opportunity then, to say, that if anything, I have been learning. I haven’t taught much, there’s not much I can teach, but have I ever been learning. Nothing teary or heart-wrenching, just life. There is nothing to romanticize, I would learn the same anywhere else in the world, absorbing from dozens of new faces, names and people. From new jobs and new villages, towns, cities. And, I am really looking forward to opportunities down the road that land me in the deserts outside Damascus (like my brother), or the streets of cities as dangerous as Mogadishu, or the frozen Northern Canadian territories, to continue learning.
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