Here’s the band that made us all want to learn guitar back in about 1983: Van Halen. Not Van Hagar. And their infinitely memorable acapella rendition of the old Dale Evans classic, ‘Happy Trails.’
It’s not a great video. But do listen to the whole thing…
It’s been fun, ladies and gentlemen. But now it’s time to say ‘good-bye.’
This is the last time that I’ll post, here at Tales From the Hood.
I’ll keep the site up and the comments threads open, at least for now. I will also keep my Gmail account open (I promise to read, but not necessarily respond to every message) and my twitter account active.
It has truly been my pleasure to write for you all for the past several years. Some of you are close friends with whom I look forward to remaining in contact.
The rest of you may see me around the aid blogosphere as a guest blogger from time to time. Or maybe in a life-saving coordination meeting or expat party in a disaster zone near you…
Almost through the Tales From the Hood rock ‘n’ roll marathon…
Here’s the fifth tune in the playlist:
A modern day warrior
mean, mean stride
Today’s Tom Sawyer
mean, mean pride
I once asked rhetorically whether or not aid blogging matters. Now I’m telling you straight up:
It matters. It matters a lot.
The conversation about what international development and aid are, what makes them effective, how they should be done, and what they’re capable of accomplishing is dominated by simplistic, happy, and occasionally even plain dishonest messaging about how this NGO or that is eradicating hunger or making poverty history.
It’s not that I or anyone else wants to be known as “negative” or “cynical.” But right now independent blogs like the ones in my extended blog roll are the only place where you can consistently count on an unfiltered alternative to the meticulously crafted stories that you get from branded NGO websites, blogs, and published reports. Or, similarly, to those usually too-long, over-edited, jargon-intensive and generally LAMEified summaries coming out of those famous life-saving high-level workshops and forums where intelligentsia and aristocracy gather to discuss “the bottom of the pyramid.” No, it’s not that we want to be negative or angry or cynical as a matter of principle. It’s not that everything said within the hallowed halls of the HRI-affiliates is wrong or inaccurate or suspect, or that everything said on aid blogs is spot on. But vibrant, diverse discussion adds value by definition and is a good thing as a matter of principle.
The whole blogging thing may seem too messy, too emotive, too unfocused for you. The aid blogosphere may feel like and maybe even be so much opinion, conjecture, hearsay, assuming facts not in evidence. It may annoy you, all the cynicism and negativity. It may make you plain angry. You may hope and pray for the day when this reality will change, but until the aid industry gets past its own dogma and NGOs get past their fears of internal diversity of thought, these blogs do matter.
Oh, and before you condescendingly wonder how I can ever find the time, or go on about how you’re too busy working to waste time blogging, let me just say: everyone finds the time for what they think is important. Some of you follow sports or collect stamps. Some of us blog.
Though his mind is not for rent
don’t put him down as arrogant
His reserve, a quiet defense
Riding out the day’s events…
I get it. The real world is about give and take, about compromise, about finding middle ground. Fair enough.
In my day-to-day work I am committed to finding those workable compromises – without compromising the bottom lines of what makes good aid good aid; to engaging in the give-and-take in a collegial way. At any given time there are multiple, contingent and competing realities. I do get this. I am not naïve. I get that humanitarian work, at least as we know it now, requires the architecture of an organization behind it, and that both the work and the organization(s) require resources in order to continue existing, and that those resources have to come from somewhere.
But let’s just be very clear: This all as may be, the way things currently are in the aid industry is not the way that they should be. The natural tendency of the industry is not toward good aid. The political economy of this industry just wants to favor someone other than the poor. And left alone, that’s what it will do. All of which means, in my opinion, that no matter where any of us sits in the humanitarian industry, whether we’re on the front line handing out food parcels to disaster survivors, or buried deep in the bowels of HQ, managing spreadsheets and sending life-saving emails, it is our job – every single one of us – to be steering our spheres of influence in the direction of “the way things should be.”
Yes, I understand that at the level of individual inter-departmental or inter-agency transactions we have to cut deals and compromise. But in all areas and at all levels of our industry right now the status quo is simply not good enough.
I don’t care who you are, if you work for or are in some other way affiliate yourself with an NGO of any size, if you claim for yourself the title of humanitarian, then it is your job to move the needle towards the way things should be.
What you say about his company
Is what you say about society
Catch the mist, catch the myth
Catch the mystery, catch the drift
Maybe you think that all of us aid bloggers are just a bunch of stuck-up elitists hiding behind our computers, out of touch with how the real world works? (Well, you’re wrong about me hiding behind my computer. I get out in it on a regular basis.) But I am an elitist, absolutely. I see no reason to compromise on the principles of good aid. Maybe my views create an inconvenience for you. Maybe you don’t like what I have to say or how I say it.
Maybe you think my tone is too harsh or (heaven forbid) snarky. Okay, fair enough – I sometimes shout into the void here. I don’t mind admitting that after a day or a week or a month of playing all nice, whether in in-house strategery or coordination meetings in the field, I need a space where I can crank the volume up to 11.
But this doesn’t make me wrong.
No his mind is not for rent
To any god or government
Always hopeful, yet discontent
He knows changes aren’t permanent
But change is…
We all have our own intellectual lives that extend beyond the logos on our namecards. Mission statements are words. Organizations, like their taglines, come and go. But the humanitarian imperative remains.
Discontent with the way things are in the industry is not the same as disloyalty to an organization, and different still from unwillingness to perform. Most real aid workers that I know would rather spend a few rounds of cynical, self-deprecating pub-based reflection than go to a company pep-rally. Seriously, the sports metaphors and high-fiving leave us cold. But that doesn’t mean we’re not on board with the program.
Discontent? Sure, we have some of that. But if we weren’t at least a little bit hopeful, we wouldn’t be here.
The topic for internet-wide discussion: Admitting Aid Failure?
I perceive a growing wave of sentiment in the general public that humanitarian relief and development agencies are, well, less than honest with their donors and constituents. Up to now that suspicion has been focused primarily on financial things: the disclosure of financial information such as the amount raised, the amount spent on a relief response over a certain period, aid worker salaries, etc. In the United States, at least, the primary requirements for qualification as a humanitarian or “charitable” organization have to do with financial things. As aid workers and as NGOs, we’ve grown accustomed to a certain level of scrutiny and compulsory disclosure of specifically financial information. And our in-house systems, policies and procedures reflect this reality.
Over the past two years particularly, however, I also sense that the general suspicion of aid workers and NGOs has grown to encompass a great deal more than just what we do with income from donors and how. There are increasing demands for us all to talk in meaningful, less simplistic and less universally rosy terms about what we accomplish. Increasingly we’re being asked to talk about our failures. There’s even an organization devoted to the concept of assertively admitting failure, named – as one might guess – Admitting Failure.
Admitting failure is a scary thing for NGOs and aid workers. It raises the possibility of loss of funding and livelihood. It raises the possibility of being misunderstood. And it raises the possibility of deeper suspicion and more intense, uncomfortable scrutiny coming from an increasingly unsympathetic public.
On the other hand, few people inside the aid industry right now would argue categorically against being open and honest about anything less than success as a non-negotiable part of organizational and individual learning. Simply put, you can’t learn from your mistakes if you don’t acknowledge – admit – your mistakes.
So, what do you think? What is or would be the value of aid agencies admitting failure? What about individual aid workers? What are the downsides? What would you decide if you were in charge and could make the decision what would be required, what would be strongly recommended, and what would be optional? Should there be some kind of regulation about how we talk about successes? What if results are just marginal, but not outright failure? Some kind of required balance between discussion of success versus failure in our publications? Should just any random taxpayer be able to walk in off the street and on demand see any document in (for US citizens) the HQ or field office of a 501(c)3 NGO? Where would you draw the lines between what international relief and development NGOs should be required to disclose, and what they can choose to keep in-house? Once it becomes common practice to admit failure, what then? Should there be a limit on how many times the same agency can fail at the same thing and/or in the same place before some kind of sanction happens? Once failure has been admitted, then what?
This Aid Blog Forum will work the same as the first one (read the Rules of Engagement). To participate, you simply:
Write a post with your thoughts on admitting failure on your own blog.
Come back here, click the dorky blue lizard, and follow the prompts.
