A May 2022 report from VSO and Northumbria University in the UK says that changing how international and local volunteers work together, rather than eliminating the involvement of foreign volunteers abroad entirely, can decolonize humanitarian development, so that foreigners are no longer in control of decision-making and so that racist and discriminatory structures are addressed and dismantled.
The research, based on interviews and participatory workshops with volunteers, community representatives and VSO staff, found that there was no “one-size fits all” approach to designing and putting in place successful “volunteer combinations”. The report emphasizes that there is a need to adapt volunteer planning and management in programs based on local requirements and local learning.
The presence of international volunteers brings energy and donor attention to projects, whilst community and national volunteers enable effective engagement with local communities and increase the likelihood that impacts can be sustained due to their particular knowledges and longer-term involvement. However, there is no simple one-size-fits-all approach that can be applied to constructing a blend of volunteers, as the combination is dependent on the individuals within each blend, the environment around the project and the phasing of the work itself.
The report also warns that “community volunteers” – local volunteers, while crucial to the effectiveness of each blend, risk being sidelined.
Years ago, I was a part of an online community for humanitarian aid and development workers. It wasn’t a group for the sharing of best practices or professional development. It was a group for venting and kvetching.
The group didn’t last long in that form – as the group became more and more popular and new members came in, venting started to be frowned on, because of the expectation of such workers to always be positive took over – as it always does in the offline world. The snarky commenters were shamed into silence and the group became yet another boring, rarely-controversial discussion group for best practices and where to find jobs and funding.
One of my favorite times on the group were when conversations would break out about eyebrow-raising comments that came from funders. I loved the comments so much, I saved many of them. I just found them as I was cleaning out a hard drive and decided to share my favorites. No actual humanitarian groups or donors are named here.
These are reported to be actual comments humanitarian workers have gotten from foreign funders:
For the household disinfection kit you are proposing, could you please explain the purpose of the mop? I mean, I know people use it to clean their house, but could you write a justification to that effect?
Email conversation: Funder: “Hey, can you include some photos of children. They usually look good for fundraising”. Agency: “No. I cannot.” Funder: “Why not?” Agency “Because the project is NOT about children”.
Funder: “When refurbishing the health facility, ensure that a maximum of 2 coats of paint is used”.
After sending a very long and detailed report (according to the donor’s format and per their request), including photos showing the progress of each activity, I got this email response: “Hi. Can you give me some quick updates on the project?”
Funder, regarding the alphabetization component of a rural development program: “Why would women living in the desert need to learn how to read and write anyway?”
Funder: “We don’t understand why you want to do contingency activities due to increased fighting. Could you just solve the conflict?”
Funder: “Why do they need a gravity-fed spring water system? Don’t they have normal tap water?”
Funder said they would rather spend $200 US per day renting cars for a five-year project rather than actually buying cars, which would be far cheaper, “because we don’t support the purchase of assets.”
Funder, at our first meeting: “I thought you would be a man.”
I submitted a very long, detailed research report for a donor. Got it returned with feedback. Throughout the 120-page report there is a comment from the funder, stating “you should mention xyz government and UN report here.” The comments were given at least 20-30 times, and the comments got angrier and angrier throughout the report because we’d missed such an important document. Me in follow-up call with the donor: “I have searched all of the documents you sent that you wanted us to include and the Internet, I can’t find xyz report.” Donor: “It hasn’t been released yet.” Me: “errrrmmmm… Could you send me a copy? That way I would be able to mention its contents” (and actually know it exists which obviously I didn’t before). Donor: “I don’t have a copy.” Me: “errmmmmm… have you even read it?” Donor: “No, I just heard about it.”
Funder: “So are you actually a spy for the British Government?” Worker: (nervous, confused) “No, I am sure my Government considers me far too troublesome to employ” (i.e. sweary with an inability to toe the line), “Why?” Funder: “How else would a woman end up working in Mine Action here?”
Donor: “We are paid for a children’s rights project. We cant support you in a nutritional crisis.”
Had a potential donor call me at 3 AM local time, when I was helping with first response after a disaster, to say that they had decided that they wanted their aid to go to providing shelter to orphans and could my organization do that? At 3 AM, I had to explain that nobody knew which children were orphans as yet because they were still determining who had died, and that the first option would be to reunite children with extended family members rather than create a separate facility. They were noticeably displeased during this call. I clearly did not understand their humanitarian impulse to help ORPHANS. They didn’t give us the money.
Funder: “These photos don’t show a reality that would reflect the need for the kind of assistance you’re asking for. Do you have photos that more obviously show the effects of food insecurity and mass migration?” Many words for: put in images of starving children 🙄. For the record; the photos we provided were of adult women who had consented to having their photos taken.
As for myself, I had to help a colleague explain to the representative of a very large, well-known tech agency that Africa is not a country and that not everyone spoke English there.
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I have been uncomfortable for many years with the lack of guidance about the specific discrimination black volunteers and black professional humanitarian workers face when they go abroad. I’ve seen the discrimination, firsthand: at airports, in restaurants, in shops and even on the streets in countries all over the world without many black residents – including Germany and Afghanistan. And I’ve heard so many first-hand horror stories from humanitarian colleagues about what they’ve experienced. Yet, when I’ve tried to find guidance on how to be an ally or guidance for people experiencing discrimination, I’ve found nothing.
So I was impressed that the Peace Corps starkly and specifically acknowledged this situation and was frank about just how much harder it can be for black volunteers – specifically for Ukraine, but the reality is that this warning would be valid for a variety of countries where the Peace Corps has, or used to, place members, including Russia. The Peace Corps recommends that the Black volunteers react to racism in various ways depending on the situation, choosing to “remove themselves” from the situation for their own safety, get help from other volunteers or staff, or practice and explore self-care or coping strategies. It’s similar to the recommendations for women humanitarian workers – or women travelers: when you are in a country where you may not be respected, you’ve got to be prepared to deal with ugly comments and ugly situations and you won’t have the resources you have in the USA (not that law enforcement in my country always takes a woman’s safety concerns seriously, but I digress).
This article in the Atlanta Black Star says “Some have rebuked the Peace Corps for not doing more to protect Black volunteers.” One person tweeted that the Peace Corps shouldn’t send black Americans “to a place like this where you know they’ll be racially abused” and claimed that the Peace Corps was placing “the burden of educating racists” on the shoulders of Black members.
I think it would be a terrible shame if the Peace Corps didn’t send black Americans to Ukraine or anywhere in Eastern Europe or Asia or anywhere else where there is not a large black population, or if the United Nations didn’t send black African professional humanitarians to Afghanistan or elsewhere in Asia and on and on. Absolutely, people need to be safe, and there has to be a consideration for what specific challenges an African, a woman, a trans person, a person of a particular nationality, and others may face in various countries – and it may mean not sending a great candidate somewhere because the security situation is just too tenuous for the person, specifically. But while the Peace Corps’ primary mission is to empower communities in underserved parts of the work, the corps is also intended to promote mutual understanding between citizens of the USA and foreign peoples. Black Americans are a part of the rich fabric that makes up the USA. You cannot understand this country without experiencing its very specific forms of black culture.
I’m going to continue to do all I can, including abroad, to be an ally. I stumble, sometimes I flounder, often I misstep, but I’m going to keep trying. And I hope everyone else will too, not only for Black Americans but for any person who might be targeted for insults, harassment, abuse or violence.
I’m also going to continue to try to encourage people, especially women, to travel abroad, while also offering realistic safety recommendations (and I’ve been criticized for my recommendations by women travelers who say they have never experienced any problems and I’m being alarmist. Sigh.).
When your perceived race, sexual identity, religion or nationality can put you in danger in a region, you have every right to know of the specific dangers you might face, and you have every right to reconsider going to that region. And when you feel insulted anywhere, you have every right to choose how you are going to react, based on what you think is the appropriate thing to do.
I know if I made a list of everything that has been said to me by local people where I’m living or working, targeting me as a woman or as an American, I would scare a lot of folks from traveling abroad. Sometimes, I have pushed back: I’ve sometimes expressed anger, I’ve sometimes expressed hurt feelings, and I’ve sometimes just walked away – it depends on how safe I feel and what I think the consequences might be. It’s all my choice to make. I hope that my reactions have sometimes helped to change some local people’s minds – but I can only do so much.
What do you think of its advisory to applicants about racism they may face? Share your thoughts in the comments.
For those who think the Peace Corps, or any other volunteering abroad or humanitarian agency, should “do more” to “protect” black volunteers & humanitarian workers, what would that look like? Share your thoughts in the comments.
If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site or my YouTube videos and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.
Sinet Chan of Cambodia shared her lived experience in a Cambodian orphanage, where she was placed when she was 10 years old after her parents died of AIDS in a presentation, about 7 minutes, that was given as a part of the “Beyond Institutional Care: Rethinking How We Care for Vulnerable Children” conference addressing the issue of care reform.
While at the orphanage, she was “badly neglected.” The orphanage was set up to attract foreign volunteers and donations, but the children rarely benefitted from this – children were denied food, medical care and education. She and other children were forced to do manual labor, and she and other children were regularly raped.
Sinet Chan’s own words are so powerful:
During this time, we had many volunteers and donors coming and going. We would always entertain them, singing them a song, and playing games with them, to encourage them to donate money… the volunteers were nice people trying to help us, but now I realize it was a form of exploitation: using children to generate funding.”
All the other children in the orphanage – they all had parents who were alive and they missed their families… all the coming and going of the volunteers and visitors then compounded our feelings of loss and abandonment. The love and affection we feel from the visitor initially feels nice. Some visitors and volunteers would come for one day, some for a few weeks, and some for six months or more. It was always very traumatic when it was coming time for them to leave. We would be very (unintelligible) and cry a lot. I think it is a trigger memory of the loss and separation we have all suffered already. Having adults coming in and out of our lives feels like we were constantly being abandoned. They would always say they were coming back but, they never come back.
I think the uncomfortable truth behind the reason why white people feel like they need to participate in voluntourism is they have a white savior complex. The white savior complex is caused by the unconscious belief in the incompetence of the people they are trying to help. That belief justifies why they feel they must come and do it for us, like building our house, digging our wells, saving our children…
So, in order to combat voluntourism white people must examine their unconscious bias and learn how to be a white ally instead of a white savior.
The USA has evacuated thousands of Afghans in desperate need of safety, per the takeover by the Taliban, a terrorist group that does not believe women should be a part of public society and wants to require everyone in the country to live by their very strict views. Thousands of these Afghans are at military bases across the USA awaiting placement in welcoming communities.
No matter where you are located in the USA, you can welcome an Afghan family and provide them with the practical support they need to get settled – by your serving as a certified sponsor circle. As a sponsor circle, you and your neighbors will volunteer to take on tasks like finding initial housing, stocking the pantry, connecting children to school, providing initial income support, and helping adults to find employment.
Communities Circle Up: Bring together at least five adults in your neighborhood to form a sponsor circle. Complete background checks, fundraise, and prepare to submit your group’s application for certification.
Members Make a Plan: Check your knowledge of what is needed to serve as a sponsor circle and prepare a Welcome Plan in advance of being matched with a newcomer. Support in completing your Welcome Plan is available!
Circles Welcome Newcomers: Once certified, sponsor circle volunteers will welcome the newcomer directly into the community and provide tailored support through the initial integration process.
Each sponsor circle must fundraise a minimum of $2,275 per individual you will support. That means, if your sponsor circle is going to support a family of three, you will need to raise $6,825.
Each sponsor group must commit to providing a minimum of 90-days of reception and welcome support to an Afghan newcomer family. At least one sponsor circle member has to complete the required knowledge check, an online training program.
RefugePoint, which has been rescuing and resettling refugees for decades, is the NGO stationed at U.S. military bases to assign Afghans to circles for absorption.
I save my political advocacy for other online avenues, for the most part. But as a humanitarian aid professional, I have an obligation to those I have worked with and for, to be ethical in my interactions with them and on their behalf and to be at least somewhat informed on their most pressing challenges. And my continued focus on Afghanistan, particularly regarding the people who are now in profound danger from the Taliban, comes from that belief in that obligation.
I have written my US federal representatives twice already, and even had a phone call with a staff member for one. Here’s what I wrote to Senator Merkley, Senator Wyden and Representative Bonamici today:
Afghans protected me when I worked in Afghanistan in 2007. Afghans, especially women and including my Afghan colleagues, pursued education, work and social endeavors specifically because the USA said it should. And all of those activities that were encouraged by me and so many others from the USA have now put them in grave danger. The actions of the USA have put Afghan women, Hazara Afghans, LGBTQ Afghans, religious minorities in Afghanistan, journalists and many others in grave danger.
Senator Merkeley (or Senator Wyden or Representative Bonamici), waiting for State Department approval has been a MAJOR stumbling block. You are needed to pressure the State Department to better explain to volunteer evacuee groups why manifests are being denied and flights canceled. Better yet, the State Department should adopt a default policy of non-objection: that is, people should be allowed to fly unless a national-security problem pops up during pre-flight vetting, in which case the individual or individuals should be removed and the flight allowed to proceed.
Also, high-risk evacuees cannot leave Afghanistan unless there is space at a “lily pad”—one of several locations outside of the United States where refugees can wait in safety for visa processing to the United States, such as the al-Udied base in Qatar. Expanding capacity may require the United States to offer carrots to regional partners to offset any costs and risk they accept. You can help pressure the powers that be to make this happen.
When high-risk people are waiting for visas, they are a drain on resources that could otherwise be put toward getting more people out. Congress should pass an Afghan Adjustment Act to allow evacuees to adjust their status to apply for long-term permanent residence.
The U.S. government needs to better support, not inhibit, evacuation efforts. Public statements must be matched with quieter efforts to expand multi-organization evacuation efforts such as the #AfghanEvac coalition, identify and work to mitigate common challenges and accelerate the overall evacuation process.
• Please pressure the powers that be to use humanitarian parole funds to hire staff and fund flights. Humanitarian parole applications that allow refugees to enter the United States in an emergency requires a $575 fee. Project ANAR, an advocacy and resource network for Afghan refugees, claims to have filed 20,000-plus applications alone, resulting in more than $11.5 million in fees. These funds should be redirected to hire temporary staff, federal or contract as appropriate, to accelerate visa processing. The fees should also be used to fund additional flights to evacuate high-risk people.
• Volunteer efforts largely drive the effort to evacuate refugees from Afghanistan. We volunteers also have other commitments to friends, job, and simple life. The effort cannot be sustained indefinitely. The United States should develop plans for what happens if those efforts diminish, or even disappear.
The USA has a responsibility to support those put in death’s path to defend it. Let’s get moving.
For my Master’s Degree in Development Management at Open University, (the degree is, as of 2021, called Global Development) my last course was TU874 The Development Management Project, completed in October 2005. This final course involved my researching a development-related topic of my choice, and producing a 10,000 word paper as a result of this research. My research project was an investigation of what elements need to be in place before an organization produces a live, in-person performance, or series of performances, as a development tool, excluding performer training and theater techniques. The goal was to identify the systems and atmosphere that need to be cultivated in order to ensure the success of a TfD initiative and to tie these to the concepts taught in OU Development Management courses.
There are numerous organizations using theater techniques as part of their development activities, and there are also numerous initiatives, publications, web sites and individuals that promote and chronicle successes regarding live, in-person performance as an effective tool for development. Even in our current age saturated with multi-media and podcasts, live, in-person performance/TfD is a popular and effective tool for education, outreach and capacity-building regarding a variety of development issues, such as HIV/AIDS prevention, domestic violence, evolving gender roles, or good sanitation practices.
However, at least as of 2005, there was little information on what has to be in place before these techniques are used, excluding performer training, to better ensure that these techniques will be well-received by an audience/participants, and to better ensure that the desired outcomes will be generated. I saw a need for more information on how to cultivate support for and trust in such an initiative among staff at the lead agency, among partner organizations, and among those for whom the theater-for-development techniques will be used.
This project included a review of key literature on TfD, and semi-structured interviews with 12 TfD practitioners.
Live, in-person theater has always been a love of mine: I was always involved in theater in some way during junior high, high school and then my undergrad at university, and for five years, I worked in public relations and marketing at various professional theaters, including the Tony-Award winning Hartford Stage and the internationally-acclaimed Williamstown Theater Festival. The power of theater to reach people fascinates me. There is nothing like it, no experience that matches it. Writing my Master’s Degree final project on a theater-related topic was my opportunity to get back in touch with something that started me off professionally, and something I believe in personally.
If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site or my YouTube videos and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.
Discussions about unequal power dynamics in international humanitarian aid and development systems have entered the mainstream and become much more prevalent. Local people in communities that are the target of such international aid have become increasingly vocal about the ways in which power and resources in the system remain dominated by, and between, certain organizations and relationships largely based in the “Global North” or “the West” – meaning North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
Aid flows between former colonial powers and former colonised regions often mirror their past colonial relationships, with decision-making power concentrated in the Global North.
Structural racism is so deeply embedded in the everyday culture and working practice of those in the sector that it has affected the way local staff regard their own communities and how they engage with INGOs.
In November 2020, Peace Direct, Adeso, the Alliance for Peacebuilding, and Women of Color Advancing Peace and Security held a three-day online consultation with 158 activists, decision-makers, academics, journalists and practitioners across the globe. Participants and guest contributors exchanged insights and local experiences on the current power dynamics and imbalances that exist within the humanitarian, development and peacebuilding sectors. They discussed how structural racism manifests itself in their work, and how they envision a decolonised system that is truly inclusive and responds to their needs. The consultation received more than 350 detailed comments across nine discussion threads. This report presents the findings and recommendations from that consultation:
There are many volunteering abroad programs focused on humanitarian, development and peacebuilding and, just like with paid staff, many of these programs also promote unequal power dynamics. If you want to better understand the backlash against international volunteering (not just voluntourism) and the “White Savoir” complex, this report is worth reading.
It was 20 years ago today that I began my first job with the United Nations. Specifically, I was a program specialist (P3), directing the UN’s Online Volunteering service and co-managing the United Nations Technology Service, both hosted at the UN Volunteers headquarters in Bonn Germany (UNV is a division of the UN Development Programme – UNDP).
It was a position I held for four years and which was the start of a new international career for me.
In the last few years, I’ve been working to preserve the many resources I developed or helped develop as a part of this incredible opportunity, all of which were disappearing from the World Wide Web. Here are those resources:
Lessons from the UN’s Online Volunteering service. In directing the UN’s platform for agencies working in and for the development world to recruit online volunteers, I carefully documented what worked and what didn’t, challenges, successes and more. I turned much of that into web pages on the onlinevolunteering.org website itself; when the site was changed a few years after I left, those resources and data were deleted. I’ve reproduced them here on my own web site.
United Nations Technology Service (UNITeS) This was a global volunteer initiative created by Kofi Annan in 2000 and hosted at UNV. UNITeS both supported volunteers applying information and communications technologies for development (ICT4D) and promoted volunteerism as a fundamental element of successful ICT4D initiatives. During the tenure of UNITeS, the UNV program helped place and/or support more than 300 volunteers applying ICT4D in more than 50 developing countries, including 28 Least Developed Countries (LDC), making it one of the largest volunteering in ICT4D initiatives. The activities of UN Volunteers, as well as those by tech volunteers working through NetCorps, CompuMentor, the Association for Progressive Communications, Australian Volunteers International, NetCorps, Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) and Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA), were tracked and promoted by UNITeS as part of its overall mission. Part of the UNITeS mandate was to try to track all of the various tech volunteering initiatives and encourage them to share their best practices and challenges with each other. I was one of the managers of this initiative, developing the web materials and writing about what ICT4D volunteers were doing, as well as managing the UNITeS online community.
Handheld computer technologies in community service/volunteering/advocacy This was a pioneering article, published in October 2001. It provides early examples of volunteers/citizens/grassroots advocates using handheld computer/personal digital assistants (PDAs) or phone devices as part of community service/volunteering/advocacy, or examples that could be applied to volunteer settings. It was originally part of the UNITeS online knowledge base. It anticipated the popularity of smartphones and #apps4good, talking about these concepts long before they had these names.
UNITeS Contributions to the UNESCO Multimedia Training Kit The UNV staff managing the UNITeS initiative was invited to prepare a module on volunteers in telecentres and community media organizations for the UNESCO Multimedia Training Kit (MMTK). The module includes a slide show presentation, exercises, case studies and trainer notes. I was the primary author of the UNITeS contribution.
What Was NetAid? NetAid was an anti-poverty initiative, started as a joint venture between UNDP and Cisco Systems. The initiative no longer exists, though a legacy of the initiative, www.onlinevolunteering.org, continues to this day. I oversaw the transition of NetAid to UNV, and also worked to preserve the legacy of the original initiative.
Humanitarian Advisory Group (HAG) and GLOW collaborated on Remote Monitoring in the Age of COVID-19 as part of HAG’s Humanitarian Horizons research program. HAG and GLOW have partnered on third-party monitoring and evaluation (M&E) assignments for a variety of aid and humanitarian donors, including the Department for International Development (DFID, UK) and DFAT, international NGOs (including Concern World and International Rescue Committee) and research institutes (including the Overseas Development Institute).
This guidance note can be used to:
plan remote monitoring approaches
raise awareness of remote monitoring best practices
advocate with donors for supporting remote monitoring requirements
Strong monitoring systems are important for effective program delivery in humanitarian contexts. During a global pandemic, there is a vital need for real-time data and evidence to inform responses to rapidly changing environments. However, collecting and using monitoring data to inform programming is often challenging. During COVID-19, this challenge is compounded by access, safety and travel restrictions.
In addition to implementing remote management and programming, humanitarian actors are initiating or scaling up remote monitoring. Agencies are re-evaluating their existing monitoring design and data collection processes, and recognising that new methods will require changes in staffing, working with partners and resourcing…
This note is intended to guide international and national operational actors on how to adapt and think about remote monitoring in the context of COVID-19. It provides a snapshot of key takeaways from previous research, and draws together emerging learning and guidance.
A helpful guidance note by USAID on remote monitoring approaches outlines a series of factors to consider before implementing remote monitoring. It also highlights which technological solutions to remote monitoring to use in different contexts.
