The Secret NGO War and Why it Must Stop

The non-profit world of humanitarian aid is surprisingly competitive. Sometimes it seems like humanitarian organizations are circling each other in a global bar fight as if to say: “my model is better than yours, now let’s fight it out.” It is a cold war of ideas and reporting systems with disastrous results to the communities that humanitarian organizations are accountable to. Ultimately it is a failing to humanity as a whole, to who they are equally accountable.

This is an extremely unhealthy situation. Not only does it result in a duplication of efforts, but it also creates huge blind spots where lessons have been learned. There are major principles that all impactful humanitarian organizations have learned to respect over the years, and they should at least acknowledge them before they spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to rediscover them. Also, non-profits that choose to isolate themselves and their “unique models” should be called out for their anti-social behavior. If an organization has made some revolutionary discovery about how to more efficiently help people, it is criminal for them to keep it a secret.

A food distribution site in rural South Sudan

Sometimes humanitarian organizations do the same activities, in the same places, with the same people. Because they lack the simple courtesy of talking about what they are doing, they end up confusing households and causing unintended harm. For example, during the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone it was observed that upwards of four organizations were promoting different hygiene and nutrition campaigns within the same community. One organization would deliver a food basket that touted the primacy of protein and another would bring bags of maize and say: “get those calories down.” One organization would tell people to wash their hands with a special kind of anti-bacterial gel, another would throw bars of soap and jerry cans with holes punched in them and say “no, this is enough.” In rural South Sudan, one agency might do free food distribution while another promotes sustainable agricultural development and self-reliance. The message that households get is not only mixed, but it is paralyzing. “We are told to grow all of our own food by these organizations, but then these other folks come in and give us bags of food for free. We are grateful for both, but we don’t know which way the thing is going to go next year,” a woman in rural South Sudan told me. All that would take to smooth over this confusion is for humanitarian organizations to coordinate, cooperate, and strategize. But all too often they are too protective of their theories of change and sacrifice the sustainability of an intervention at the altar of pride and brand name. This also creates the problem of turning lessons learned into hidden-away classified secrets. Humanitarian organizations don’t want to talk about their problems and challenges. No NGO wants to admit to their failures. So the result is a lot of lessons learned that sit in a closet full of skeletons. Nothing could be more unhelpful to households who are in need then for organizations to be telling miraculous stories while the poor navigate a confusing world of mixed messages and overcooked portrayals of success.

We often see lots of new charismatic churches sprouting up over the developing world, pronouncing that they have made some revolutionary discovery about the Bible. In Ghana, people call these churches “mushroom churches” because they seemingly sprout up by themselves without any real need or effort. Well, the same can be said for humanitarian organizations. Some white male in the developed world has an epiphany about how to solve global poverty and he moves forward boldly, disregarding all of the other people who tried to tackle global poverty in the past. When fundraising occurs or the model is scribbled down and posted on the internet, seasoned humanitarian workers might glance over and say: “now wait a minute, I’ve been in this movie before.” But with great confidence and conviction the leader will go forward and implement his idea anyway, regardless of the lessons learned by people who tried to do the same thing in the past. This kind of anti-social behavior is characterized by organizations that refuse to attend conferences, lambast the United Nations, or accuse every other organization of being a hand-out machine. On top of all this, we read in our contracts that we must carefully protect the “trade secrets” of these organizations. 

Trade secrets? 

If we really care about the communities we are serving and are accountable to, we must stop this kind of isolationism. Humanitarians have (or at least should have) a common goal: to fill in the gaps that governments can’t fill and to simply “love one another” (which is to say, people helping other people because it is the right thing to do).

Let us all admit once and for all that egoism and being the “one truly effective humanitarian organization” are not only unhelpful convictions - they are harmful convictions. Instead of solely writing glowing reports about our progress and impacts, let us write down our failures and lessons learned as well. Let us share these lessons, or at least make them public, so that idealistic young men in the developed world can easily discover that he might be a bit naïve before going out and “saving a village.” Perhaps he can use that passion to contribute to an organization that has already implemented his idea. After all, it is our common goal to serve humanity as effectively and efficiently as possible. We are accountable to the households we serve. This is not a battle over who has the best processor for a mobile phone, or who makes the best smart watch, or which life insurance policy has the highest payout. This is a mission to work in coordination with each other to help people in need. Everything else is just unethical posturing and preening.

Climate Change, Power, and Indigenous Knowledge

I recently submitted an article, "Climate Change, Power, and the Marginalization of Indigenous Knowledge: A Case Study from Ghana," to the online journal "Anthropologies." The article is written in a journalistic, non-academic format, and is intended to reveal the mismatch between international organizations and the people they are attempting to represent and help. This article focuses on agricultural adaptations to climate change in Ghana. The theme of this issue of "Anthropologies" is Political Ecology - a subfield of the social sciences that analyses the relationships between people, the environment, and political economy.

Click here to read my contribution to the online journal "Anthropologies."

Dancing, Climate Change, and the Human Spirit

Today I had one of the most powerful experiences of my life. I went to a small village in the Upper West Region of Ghana named Bakbamba to help conduct research on climate change and social-cultural adaptations to a changing environment. I have been doing this work for a few weeks now, beginning in coastal eastern Ghana and moving north. But what I experienced today was a life-changing experience. I will do my best to convey my feelings here, but no words would ever be ample to describe the emotion, compassion, and appreciation I felt in this community.

The Upper West Region of Ghana is the poorest region in the country. Outside of the regional capital, Wa, there is really nothing else but vast savanna covered with Shea and baobab trees. The people are primarily subsistence farmers and fishers. The farmers plant guinea corn, maize, yams, beans, bambara beans, millet, groundnuts, and some other crops. Fishers set traps and mobilize nets in the black Volta river. Women also gather Shea nuts and sell them to foreign buyers who process them into cosmetics and edibles. Over the past ten years, rainfall has become sporadic, inconsistent, unpredictable, and unreliable. In these Wala communities that have been surviving for centuries, people are beginning to give up and move out. They are suffering from climate change and often becoming climate change refugees.

In the course of doing interviews with rural farmers, fishers, and gatherers I heard many stories about failed crops, declining catches in fish, and even lack of fruit from Shea trees. Their story is a bleak one. Most crops fail and the only food Wala and Lobi people can depend on is maize, which takes three months to grow and can be opportunistically planted, and fish. Though they plant other crops, many of them are failing because rains are becoming increasingly unpredictable and deluges and floods more common. There is no source of potable water, so people in the village drink from stagnant, muddy ponds. There is no other option. Most of the people we were able to interview were only in their 30s and 40s – because that is about as old as they live. In this village of 300 people, 20 have already died this year. One particular woman I interviewed was 30 years old, but she looked like she was 60. Poor nutrition, hard work, and no access to clean water are taking their toll. 

At the end of the day, the women in the town gathered in a circle and began a traditional dance. The women around the circle were clapping poly-rhythmically and singing with beautifully sculpted, angelic voices. I watched as, one by one, the women would enter the circle and do an energetic, stomping dance. At the end of the dance they would throw themselves into the surrounding circle and be caught by the other women. This went on for almost 45 minutes. I asked one of our local research assistants what they were singing and he explained that the dance was about a fighting couple, and they were saying that if the husband no longer loved the wife he should leave her. The women who were catching each other represented the community. “We should support each other,” a woman told me via translation. I sat down and watched the dance, how the women were moving around in passionate whirls, heaving themselves into the boundaries of the circle to be caught by other community members. In this poor village of hunger, desperation, and confusion about a changing environment they were finding the energy to remember and celebrate the perseverance of the human spirit. I began crying. 

The lessons I learned I cannot put into words, but I will never be the same. Whatever life is about, it has something to do with a feeling beyond the person, beyond the individual. Though many people will never get to see such things, I feel it is important to tell this story. I don’t know, I just can’t put it into words and I never will be able to. Let’s just try to remember that we need each other.