Tips for Radicals
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- strategy - plans to achieve the theories
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- tips - advice that could help you in your life and action
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"if you don't have a strategy, you're part of someone else's strategy."
– a. toffler
"What can we do today, so that tomorrow we can do what we are unable to do today?"
– Paulo Freire
I also run a more scatter-shot blog full of incoherent rants and tumblr arguments. Sorry about that.
been thinking recently about how NGOs often don’t work for radical change, even though they have many staff working for them that would agree with radical changes
I think a lot of it comes down to an over-reliance on “SMART goals” – only working towards things that tick the box of Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely.
bigger and more complex changes (e.g. increased support for worker self-organisation) are either unmeasurable or too expensive to measure. It means NGOs can win one-off battles, but often lack the strategy to win the war. I’ve seen people self-censor in meetings, pushing less “measurable” ideas aside
what can be done? I think it has to come back to grassroots movements. if you’re not reliant on specific achievements for funding, then you don’t need to restrict yourself only to measurable goals. you can frame the debate, and set the vision, by the goals you choose. sometimes it may be strategic to have a SMART goal, sometimes not! right-wing groups often use a mix of goals really well, but the eco-system on the left is a bit lacking I think
I realise this is a half-baked opinion in a place where other people have probably written tomes, but any other thoughts? charity folk/people that avoid charities especially?
A pretty damning account of one journalist’s experience working with an international development NGO, their attitude to the people they were supposed to be supporting.
Not that we really need more examples of why we should treat NGOs with suspicion, but what the hell.
I know that there are countless people in the NGO world that have done a great deal of good. But I would like to propose that NGOs either refuse to hire, or simply fire, anyone who has a condescending attitude towards the poor. We need to certify a new class of NGO: “No pity shit” NGOs.
Shit yeah. NGOs bleating about racism whilst having thoroughly racist outlooks is a ridiculous situation.
The quote is from the article African aid: no more ‘pity shit’ (why Western ‘caring’ for Africans is just as objectifying as old-fashioned racism) by Magatte Wade (born in Senegal, educated in France, and is now based in New York).
people in the Global South don’t need an “apolitical” (i.e. conservative in the true sense of maintaining the status quo) aid agenda. they need systemic change, and Andrew Mitchell’s never gave it to them. as this article points out, neither would a Labour government.
fuck them all!
John Hilary’s (from War on Want) take on NGO’s approaches to development, in Is the faultline among NGOs over the future of development deepening?
the article is about the debate generated from a recent paper summarising the academic literature on the role of NGOs in development and poverty reduction. has anyone read the paper, care to give any feedback?
Pretty interesting set of case studies about international development fails by NGOs.
It’s a place to start!
Indian sex workers are a shining example of women’s empowerment
Vamp members don’t want to be “saved” by foreign organisations; they want to be respected as human beings. To see them as “prostituted women” is to treat them as not fully human, incapable of determining their own destinies or, indeed, of working together to claim justice. It’s precisely that kind of attitude that perpetuates the abuse sex workers experience.
from Poor people want to be poor, they say. Really? on the Guardian’s Poverty Matters blog.
ATD Fourth World are an non-aligned NGO which works at a proper grassroots level “in partnership with people in poverty” to “find solutions to eradicate extreme poverty”. Sad how unusual that is.
This looks like a really interesting project - an attempt to remove a lot of the problems with what they call ‘traditional philanthropy’ and focus funding on more radical, grassroots organisations.
The analysis seems well grounded, when they say that “without [philanthropy] society would be a much scarier place” but also that “there are a number of issues within the world of philanthropy which need to be resolved and a lot more we need to learn if we are to create a world where charity is no longer needed”.
A bit more fleshed out:
There’s a big problem with philanthropy very few people want to talk about: the system that creates the wealth of philanthropists also causes many of the problems philanthropy attempts to solve. Could it be that we don’t need philanthropists, and that what we need is a new world where everyone has equal rights and a fair share? It seems that if people have the means and are free of oppression, they’ll solve their own problems. But if charitable donations are used to thrust someone else’s solutions upon them, this is unlikely to happen (especially if they happen to belong to someone with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo).
The analysis of philanthropy goes wider, covering topics from donors rather than beneficiaries holding the power (touched on in my post about Haiti yesterday), imbalances in the focus of funding, and more.
It really reminds me of the article by Robert Newman at the start of the year, Philanthropy is the enemy of justice.
Well excited, will try and keep up on developments. Word on the street is they’ve got quite a big stack of cash, so if you’re involved in a hard-up organisation you should definitely keep an eye on it too.
I went to a really interesting talk at my work a few days ago about humanitarian organisations working in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.
Any NGO working after the quake will say land is a major issue - basically, working out who owns what, and finding land and space for people that need it. Given the legal situation (it’s a mess) NGOs saw land issues in Haiti as a “time-consuming void of complexity”. For more on Haiti’s ongoing issues with shelter, see this badass comic Tents Beyond Tents by Haitian writer Pharés Jerome and comic artist Chevelin Pierre.
It really brought home to me the structural limits of international NGOs. A few noteworthy issues:
- Camps were set up on private land, and the land owners were terrified they’d lose their only source of income if the camps became permanent. The NGOs never offered to pay rent for the camps.
- Yeah land is a minefield in a legal system like Haiti’s, but hundreds of thousands of people had been coping with it before the earthquake hit (though obviously shitloads were already living in shanty towns). NGOs were outsiders that just didn’t get it.
- People who already had a shit living situation went to the camps because though there are issues - e.g. sexual harassment - it was better than where they lived. NGOs, however, treated everyone in the camps as IDPs (internally displaced people) because that’s what they’re used to dealing with, meaning it was often treated as a short-term humanitarian situation when in fact it was far more permanent an issue.
- Though shelter, relocation, and land rights are all related, they are all dealt with by separate groups that didn’t really work together - NGOs work in uncommunicative clusters, flying in the face of common sense. The reasons for the lack of effective communication were often very practical - e.g. after an earthquake getting from a meeting at place B from place A can take hours because of the roads being fucked - but it’s not a problem that should block NGOs.
- NGOs didn’t work with their beneficiaries/stakeholders to come to helpful solutions. For example, the cost of a temporary shelter was around four times the cost of someone repairing their own home themselves. Charities were worried about paying people to fix their own houses - ‘what if they collapsed in the next earthquake? would that be our fault?’ - so instead they just gave people temporary shelter then did nothing for two years, only actually offering cash-for-work rebuilding schemes long after people got bored of waiting and just rebuilt themselves. NGOs were entirely ill-equipped to deal with the dilemma of assessing risk: What is the best solution for the people most in need of support? If people have a set of choices - wait for NGO to give lots of money in the future for a well-designed house, or build on your own without support but at least have it now - how acceptable are they and how can people be supporting in choosing?
The speaker’s analysis was that “the real difficulties for emergency agencies are les the particular tenure arrangements in any society, and more a difficulty in accepting risk”. My conclusion’s different.
The core problem is that the system NGO workers move in has been created by people with skewed worldviews, shaped by compartmentalised technical specialities and formal university training.
The humanitarian aid system is not built to be adaptable or centred around the needs of those receiving the aid. It’s the age-old critique, that stems from the paternalistic attitude of “me knowledgable, you vulnerable” that leads to “I have agency and you don’t”.
There were a few solutions bandied about too (more cash for work, reforming clustering, more local experts) but the crux is the whole system needs an overhaul.
Radical work needs to be done by many non-radical institutionalised people. I don’t have much hope…
