It pains me to admit that I am now part of the Development Set. I write this from a relatively expensive cafe in Kampala and quite often discuss the merits or failings of various interventions aimed at alleviating poverty whilst wolfing down dinner in some restaurant. One so expensive that the people my job intends to assist could barely afford to look in let alone eat in, but hey the exchange rate works in my favour.
This bothers me and it's bothered me ever since I moved to Uganda just over a year ago. It bothered me when I used to volunteer here during my degree on projects that were only a shade away from the voluntourism initiatives that I sneered at; whilst trying to balance that massive chip I had on my shoulder. "Don't you know I live in a village?! What could you possibly know about the poor from your gilded pedestal in the city?!" I now have to admit that I have become one of the people that I used to look down on with a false sense of superiority, not realising that my position of 'sacrifice' was fake. My passport and my skin colour provided a direct route out if anything went seriously wrong.
What I'm grappling with now is whether it is wrong for me and all of my friends to be in this position of authority and responsibility? Should we be prospering from above national average (and in some cases above international average) wages whilst the people we're supposed to be benefiting are still struggling to scrape a living? Even if its an improved living.
So this morning I intended to sit down to ask the world. Inspired by my friend Steve, over at Hynd's Blog, I thought I could enter the blogosphere and make my opinions heard - or perhaps just consolidate them in one place. Problem is, would anybody listen? The inspirational straw that broke the camels back of self doubt came later in the day when I read Ben Phillips' piece on Posh white blokes: holding back the struggle for a fairer world?. That's me I thought.
So where to begin? Well I'm an engineer working in Uganda via a classic send middle class whities to do good sort of gig - well we're not Peace Corps to be fair. EWB-UK is largely populated, and indeed was started by, Cambridge graduates. The most privileged of privileged students in the UK who live in 'colleges' and have 'formals'. Having grown up on a farm at the far end of Wales, the personal irony is that not only am I deeply engrained with EWB-UK, I was also accepted to Cambridge last year and genuinely believe that all of this can do some sort of good. But how?
Phillips says that key lies in shifting power, so that decisions are increasingly shaped by people with lived experience of marginalisation.........It goes to the roots of our purpose, it is central to the journey from "for" to "with" and "by". And I wholeheartedly agree, but how to do this?
The example he gives of rebalancing power and influence comes form employing more and more staff from the countries that his organisation works in. People that have living experience of the inequalities we're working to reduce. I agree and obviously doing this is a good step forwards. But do the people that NGOs employ have this experience?
Let's face it. A lot of the national staff that are employed by NGOs are 'posh coloured people', in the same way I'm a posh whitie, because they're the ones that had the opportunity to gain the education needed to operate in an NGO. In my opinion there's nothing wrong with this but there's the contradiction, the people that are employed by an NGO often have not gone through the same experiences as the poor people they're trying to help because, quite frankly, they're not poor people - although many people I know have worked their way up to their current position or have had opportunities due to tremendous sacrifice on the part of their parents. My question would be, are they getting the same opportunities to grow professionally as their posh white colleagues?
It's not that university level education is not available and it's not that it's not good. It's that the opportunities to expand ones knowledge outside of that are more limited in a country like Uganda than they are in posh white countries.
I think my posh white American friend struck the nail on the head when we were chatting about IT professionals he was employing to do some programming. Most people in the posh white countries have access to a computer and have done so from a very young age. So those that go on to become IT professionals have the opportunity to learn and practice these skill at their leisure; whereas IT professionals here may not because there isn't the same access to household technology; although this is increasing. These opportunities to develop skills are highly valuable and the people that possess them here aim for jobs which pay high wages. So is it so bad if we want to apply these skills (for less money initially) to improve the world and, lets be honest, have a good time while we're doing it?
From my own experience the fabricators and entrepreneurs I work with (and aim to benefit by developing technologies that they can use to make money) clearly have not had the opportunity to learn specific engineering or business skills so would probably not be employed in place of a posh engineer of any background. It's not that they're not capable of doing it or learning it, it's just that they've not been able to yet. The fabricators, for instance, are incredibly skilled and produce good products considering the equipment they have to hand. So is it that bad that I, as a posh whitie, am working to develop these skills and, lets be honest, have a good time?
Before I worked here I worked for Elrha where I assisted with a survey of professional development opportunities in the humanitarian sector. This showed that national staff working for INGOs were not receiving the same opportunities as their international colleagues. This finding was rammed down my throat one evening when chatting to a Ugandan lady who'd been on leadership development course run by a large INGO. She said that although she'd undergone the same training as her European colleagues she did not have the opportunity to work outside of East Africa whereas the Europeans were being flown all over the world.
To do what Phillips is suggesting, to rebalance power in international development, I say we must ensure educational opportunities for the middle class people from the countries we're guests in and while we're at we could level the playing field for national to international staff wages. Yes creating pro-poor solutions and advocating to ensure basic human rights in policy is obviously important. But how sustainable is it if it's only ever conducted by posh whities or people that have had the benefit of going to study in posh whitie countries? We need to bring the same opportunities to expand on the education that is available here as we have done at home and provide the same opportunities to travel to learn within the sector.
The great thing is that there are some exceptional examples of this. In Uganda there is the Hive Colab giving tech entrepreneurs a space to work and create. Or how about Fundi Bots, run by the self taught robotics engineer Solomon King, which goes in to schools to teach children about science. Internationally there was the Mondialogo Engineering Awards which paired students from the 'Global North' and 'South' to develop projects and share knowledge. We need more of these and we need to expand their scope past high technology on on to things like management, engineering skills, communications, planning and strategy. If we as guests in another person's country cannot offer the same opportunities we benefited from (and continue to benefit from) to the people we work with then our position is wrong.
This bothers me and it's bothered me ever since I moved to Uganda just over a year ago. It bothered me when I used to volunteer here during my degree on projects that were only a shade away from the voluntourism initiatives that I sneered at; whilst trying to balance that massive chip I had on my shoulder. "Don't you know I live in a village?! What could you possibly know about the poor from your gilded pedestal in the city?!" I now have to admit that I have become one of the people that I used to look down on with a false sense of superiority, not realising that my position of 'sacrifice' was fake. My passport and my skin colour provided a direct route out if anything went seriously wrong.
What I'm grappling with now is whether it is wrong for me and all of my friends to be in this position of authority and responsibility? Should we be prospering from above national average (and in some cases above international average) wages whilst the people we're supposed to be benefiting are still struggling to scrape a living? Even if its an improved living.
So this morning I intended to sit down to ask the world. Inspired by my friend Steve, over at Hynd's Blog, I thought I could enter the blogosphere and make my opinions heard - or perhaps just consolidate them in one place. Problem is, would anybody listen? The inspirational straw that broke the camels back of self doubt came later in the day when I read Ben Phillips' piece on Posh white blokes: holding back the struggle for a fairer world?. That's me I thought.
So where to begin? Well I'm an engineer working in Uganda via a classic send middle class whities to do good sort of gig - well we're not Peace Corps to be fair. EWB-UK is largely populated, and indeed was started by, Cambridge graduates. The most privileged of privileged students in the UK who live in 'colleges' and have 'formals'. Having grown up on a farm at the far end of Wales, the personal irony is that not only am I deeply engrained with EWB-UK, I was also accepted to Cambridge last year and genuinely believe that all of this can do some sort of good. But how?
Phillips says that key lies in shifting power, so that decisions are increasingly shaped by people with lived experience of marginalisation.........It goes to the roots of our purpose, it is central to the journey from "for" to "with" and "by". And I wholeheartedly agree, but how to do this?
The example he gives of rebalancing power and influence comes form employing more and more staff from the countries that his organisation works in. People that have living experience of the inequalities we're working to reduce. I agree and obviously doing this is a good step forwards. But do the people that NGOs employ have this experience?
Let's face it. A lot of the national staff that are employed by NGOs are 'posh coloured people', in the same way I'm a posh whitie, because they're the ones that had the opportunity to gain the education needed to operate in an NGO. In my opinion there's nothing wrong with this but there's the contradiction, the people that are employed by an NGO often have not gone through the same experiences as the poor people they're trying to help because, quite frankly, they're not poor people - although many people I know have worked their way up to their current position or have had opportunities due to tremendous sacrifice on the part of their parents. My question would be, are they getting the same opportunities to grow professionally as their posh white colleagues?
It's not that university level education is not available and it's not that it's not good. It's that the opportunities to expand ones knowledge outside of that are more limited in a country like Uganda than they are in posh white countries.
I think my posh white American friend struck the nail on the head when we were chatting about IT professionals he was employing to do some programming. Most people in the posh white countries have access to a computer and have done so from a very young age. So those that go on to become IT professionals have the opportunity to learn and practice these skill at their leisure; whereas IT professionals here may not because there isn't the same access to household technology; although this is increasing. These opportunities to develop skills are highly valuable and the people that possess them here aim for jobs which pay high wages. So is it so bad if we want to apply these skills (for less money initially) to improve the world and, lets be honest, have a good time while we're doing it?
From my own experience the fabricators and entrepreneurs I work with (and aim to benefit by developing technologies that they can use to make money) clearly have not had the opportunity to learn specific engineering or business skills so would probably not be employed in place of a posh engineer of any background. It's not that they're not capable of doing it or learning it, it's just that they've not been able to yet. The fabricators, for instance, are incredibly skilled and produce good products considering the equipment they have to hand. So is it that bad that I, as a posh whitie, am working to develop these skills and, lets be honest, have a good time?
Before I worked here I worked for Elrha where I assisted with a survey of professional development opportunities in the humanitarian sector. This showed that national staff working for INGOs were not receiving the same opportunities as their international colleagues. This finding was rammed down my throat one evening when chatting to a Ugandan lady who'd been on leadership development course run by a large INGO. She said that although she'd undergone the same training as her European colleagues she did not have the opportunity to work outside of East Africa whereas the Europeans were being flown all over the world.
To do what Phillips is suggesting, to rebalance power in international development, I say we must ensure educational opportunities for the middle class people from the countries we're guests in and while we're at we could level the playing field for national to international staff wages. Yes creating pro-poor solutions and advocating to ensure basic human rights in policy is obviously important. But how sustainable is it if it's only ever conducted by posh whities or people that have had the benefit of going to study in posh whitie countries? We need to bring the same opportunities to expand on the education that is available here as we have done at home and provide the same opportunities to travel to learn within the sector.
The great thing is that there are some exceptional examples of this. In Uganda there is the Hive Colab giving tech entrepreneurs a space to work and create. Or how about Fundi Bots, run by the self taught robotics engineer Solomon King, which goes in to schools to teach children about science. Internationally there was the Mondialogo Engineering Awards which paired students from the 'Global North' and 'South' to develop projects and share knowledge. We need more of these and we need to expand their scope past high technology on on to things like management, engineering skills, communications, planning and strategy. If we as guests in another person's country cannot offer the same opportunities we benefited from (and continue to benefit from) to the people we work with then our position is wrong.
From a friend with more experience of this than me,
ReplyDelete"On the 'posh' Ugandans - well, I know a lot of them that grew up in remote villages in poor families just like most of their compatriots. They are what you call "posh" now, simply because somewhere along the way, someone provided them with an opportunity to do something more, to get more education, to travel, etc. and because they worked incredibly hard. The government here used to have a relatively meritocratic system for university that provided kids with full tuition and a living allowance. Others were provided an opportunity through education sponsorship, or international scholarships through the Commonwealth or other exchange programs. All I'm saying is that in many cases, the people you see as "posh" now are just normal people who had a chance. And yes, there are some that grew up in wealthier families. But all the more power to them for sticking around and starting businesses or working for NGOs or doing whatever else they do."