Tag Archives: aid effectiveness

All I Wanna Do

16 Nov

Day three of this week’s Tales From the Hood rock ‘n’ roll marathon.

Here’s the third tune in the playlist:

This ain’t no disco
It ain’t no country club either
This is LA!

Articles like this one used to annoy me for reasons that I couldn’t quite pin down and articulate well. Now I’m in touch with my reasons, and articles like this just make me chuckle:

Getting involved in aid and development: Businesses can do much to aid development but approaches should be carefully considered before jumping in.

It’s not than anything harmful is being proposed. It’s not that the suggestions are wrong or bad (they’re actually pretty sensible, mostly). And in this rare instance, it’s not even aid elitism (which, as you know by now, I very cheerfully embrace . This is a profession, not a hobby.. don’t get me started…).

But all I wanna say is, guys, have some fun. It’s good.. great.. awesome, even, that you want to “tune into local realities”, or provide a “retail/charity option that allows consumers to do something positive while going about their daily lives…”

But let’s be very clear: this is not aid. It is not development. You are not alleviating poverty in the third world or mitigating the effects of conflict or natural disaster. You are simply being a responsible citizen. In today’s hyper-aware, cause-marketed, extreme-emotional-need-for-politically-correct-expression world, we’re too often too quick to conflate “not raping the helpless” with “making the world a better place.”

All I wanna do is have some fun
I got a feeling I’m not the only one
All I wanna do is have some fun
I got a feeling I’m not the only one
All I wanna do is have some fun
Until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard 

There are many, many good things that you can do. You can recycle. You can learn another language. You can invite your neighbor of another socio-cultural and/or ethno-linguistic demographic over for lunch. You can offer to babysit the child of the single mom next door so she can run errands. You can drink only free-trade coffee. You can give $5.00 to the homeless person you pass in the tube station every day on the way to work. You can own a hybrid car. You can slap a “COEXIST” bumper sticker on your hybrid car. You can ride a bicycle to work. You can eat less meat. You can wear less leather. You can burn your Justin Timberlake CDs and only ever listen to Indie bands.

All good things to do.

But some of you need to relax a little. Relief and development work are actual professions. Don’t try to do them in your spare time. And perhaps even more importantly, don’t feel as if you have to. It’s okay to just live your life in a simply responsible manner without trying to spin a contorted and over-the-top theory of how you’re “supporting aid work” or “making the world more equitable.” Do driving the speed limit, parking legally and not shoplifting make you “part of law enforcement”? Of course not. They simply make you a law-abiding citizen.

Or do you feel the need to spend your summer vacation volunteering at a gynecological clinic? Or at Legal Aid? No? Exactly.

It’s okay to spend your vacation abroad as responsible tourist. And I mean real tourist, not voluntourist. Have fun. Don’t try to play aid worker for two weeks or two months. Just go and have fun. The world is an interesting place, filled with interesting people. Enjoy it. Enjoy it without the burden of feeling like you have to do something that you’re not qualified to do (seriously – you’re not qualified).

All I wanna do is have some fun
I got a feeling I’m not the only one

If humanitarian aid or development work are what you really want to do with your life, fine – make the commitments and investments necessary to make this your career, your life. Otherwise, seriously, just go have fun. Responsibly.

I like a good beer buzz early in the morning…

Sheryl Crow is a total aid worker…

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Patience

15 Nov

This weeks it’s the Tales From the Hood rock ‘n’ roll marathon.

Here’s the second tune in the playlist:

This one’s easy: I think that we are all far too anxious to declare aid successes or failures far too soon.

Who knew that Axel Rose would have the answer?

Said woman take it slow
It’ll work itself out fine
All we need is just a little patience
Said sugar make it slow
And we’ll come together fine
All we need is just a little patience
Patience, patience, patience
Ooh, oh, yeah…

I really like Jacqualine Novogratz’s description of “patient capital.” (read her interview on Social Edge). As I analyze it, she’s basically talking about two age-old “good aid” ideas kind of rolled into one.

1)      Look at aid outcomes in the terms of those we’re intending to help (“the poor”).

2)      Take the time that’s needed.

We’re talking about peoples lives and, importantly, their ways of life, here. How quickly does change happen in your organization? At your institution? In your family? Yeah? It doesn’t happen quickly in “the field”, either.

This stuff takes time. Yes, I get that donor funding cycles and life-of-project realities mean that we have to try to talk about results before they’re all the way ripe or describe progress that can’t really be measured yet. But as humanitarian aid practitioners, it’s our job to see past funding cycles. The rhythms of change in the communities where we work are not based on annual congressional statements, the European Commission’s budgeting process, or when the tax year ends for that wealthy area businessman who’s been a “strong supporter” for a long time.

Sure, aid is not perfect. And sure there’s room for improvement. But it works better than you think. But you have to give it time.

Just have a little patience.

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Ménage à trois

8 Nov

Here’s how aid works:

1) Someone pays for it. We call this person or entity a “donor.”

2) Someone else implements it. We call this person or entity an “aid provider” – usually, but not necessarily and NGO.

3) And someone else receives what the first one pays for and the second one implements. We call this person the “beneficiary”, usually for lack of a better term.

Some of us go on about the different kinds of donors, the extent to which their level of understanding and their motivations matter, what their rights are or should be in the grand scheme of things, or the extent to which they should be allowed to meddle in the workings of aid providers.

Some of us go on stridently about the different kinds of aid providers: Who should or shouldn’t be allowed to be one, what it takes to be a good one, the extent to which aid providers are or aren’t unduly influenced by the motivations of their donors, or the extent to which they should be required to share certain kinds of information.

Some of us go on passionately about the beneficiaries. What their rights are, what they can reasonably expect from donors and aid providers, what their capacities are, and the extent to which they have a role to play in the overall picture of aid.

These are vigorous, often vehement debates. And rightly so, as they all touch on important issues.

But just so that we’re all clear, none – not one – of these debates challenges the basic aid formula. None of these debates address in any substantial way the global reality of aid: that it is a giant ménage à trois between donors, aid providers and beneficiaries, each of whom approaches relationship with diverse needs and expectations, and where the aid providers’ role is primarily brokering the relationship between donors and beneficiaries.

And so you’ll forgive me, gentle reader, when I come off as more than just a tiny bit jaded with the rhetoric coming out of, say, the Cannes G20 summit. Or statements from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation about their “innovative financing.” Or when I juxtapose what comes up when I click “draft agenda” for this year’s HLF-4 in Busan against the stated purpose of the forum “…review global progress in improving the impact and value for money of development aid and make new commitments to further ensure that aid helps reduce poverty…”

I get jaded because none of these forums or discussions addresses the basic nature of the aid formula. The ménage à trois. What the Gates Foundation calls “innovative financing”, isn’t. It’s simply the latest attempt to modify the parameters of how traditional donors work and maybe change up the kinds of strings attached to donor funding. It’s also the basis for a lot of HRI-style workshops and meetings and junkets. If you want truly innovative financing for foreign aid, find a way to pay for it that doesn’t involve donors. Simple as that.

Or bringing together 2,000 representatives from around the world to review the Paris and Accra declarations for the purpose of making development aid more effective.  Am I the only one who reads “High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness” as an oxymoron on multiple levels? For one, 2,000… coming together… to make progress on aid effectiveness… wait.. what? For another, the key to aid effectiveness is not something about the legal frameworks of a bunch of developed countries. This is focus on but one of the members of the torrid little aid ménage à trois. You want aid effectiveness on some kind of global scale, you have to deal with all three.

If you want to truly change the way aid works, you need to find a way to change the ménage à trois formula. PPP and CSR are just new kinds of donors. Mixing bilateral aid with traditional development aid, government to government capacity-building, and all of that simply adds complexity around who is a donor, who is a provider, and who is a beneficiary at the ground level. Technological and programmatic innovations (awesome as they might be) simply re-tool the ways in which aid providers continue business as usual. Humanitarian accountability and basic good process are “musts” (and I sincerely believe that they make aid better). But let’s not delude ourselves into believing that they confer any real change in status to the benefiaries of aid.

You want to be “game changing”? Find a way to change up the ménage à trois. Otherwise, you’re simply using new words to describe the same ol’.

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