My parents have always been activists – though I didn’t know what that meant. My first protest in Haiti was when I was fifteen, and it ended with a shooting, but the experience of standing with twenty thousand Haitians peacefully demanding better from our government was unforgettable. 

Later on, when I started learning about contemporary social change movements like the anti-war and women’s movements in my own country, I thought about how I wished I could see such changes – not just as a bystander watching on the news, but as an active participant.

In the last two weeks, in the wake of the USAID freeze and aid cuts in the Netherlands, Germany and the UK, I have been part of so many conversations about the opportunity in this moment of crisis. Development folks are frantic – but they are also talking and thinking laterally and creatively about what’s next.

Last week, I spoke to a friend from Syria about how to mobilize local resources for a victim-led truth commission. This week, I spoke to several people in Haiti about how we can exchange non-cash resources to compensate for the lack of liquidity, and a colleague in South Africa about civil society-led peace processes.

These conversations are exciting and feel like they can lead to real outcomes. Across the world, the tone in development is shifting to consider what is truly possible for the way out of crises. For the first time, I feel like I might finally have a chance to be a part of meaningful change. 

Thanks for following along with me in this newsletter as I try to make sense of it all. And welcome to those who are new; you can read last week’s edition here and sign up to follow along.

– Isabelle

What I’m thinking about this week

We need more anthropologists in development

Last week I was invited to speak at my alma mater, the University of North Texas, for an “Alumni Making a Difference” award series. I strategically used the opportunity to try to recruit a few more anthropologists to the development sector.

As I’ve written before, anthropology has shaped my work. Whether I was working with the UN on transitional justice, helping community organizations develop asset-based approaches, or working for Meta on supplier diversity, anthropology gave me the skills to see and navigate the patterns of human organization.

In my speech, I was speaking to anthropology students who are trying to make sense of the world and their place in it. I shared that the development sector needs more people who can navigate multi-stakeholder and multicultural contexts – who can understand and respect local knowledge systems and translate knowledge for different groups. Compared to people who valorize quantitative models and statistics.

As we talk about localization and community-led anything, I believe there is a very real urgency to build anthropological skill sets such as participant observation and thick description. Things like human-centered design are re-branded ethnographic research methods; please learn the original versions!

Saying the “thing” out loud

I am genuinely excited to see all of the conversations that people are now having about the history of aid and the narratives surrounding it. A lot of my research has looked at the way we talk about things and the lesser discussed ways that power shows up in development. Everything from saying “beneficiaries” or “third world” to the way we are contractually bound to brand our projects with donor logos and messaging or the way we venerate institutions like the UN and the World Bank. 

Shifting power and narratives is about “telling it like it is”. And Degan Ali certainly did that in the pilot episode of the New Humanitarian’s podcast Power Shift.

Degan, who is the executive director of Adeso, shared her experience navigating racism and power hoarding in the aid sector. Everything she said made me nod my head and even raise my arms in a gesture of solidarity that finally, I’m hearing people say “the thing.” For instance, when she said that she genuinely doesn’t believe that change is possible within institutions like the UN. Finally! Someone is saying out loud that systemic change at this level is sisyphean. 

I myself had a chance to tell it like it is on last week’s episode of What’s Unsaid. I had some real talk about how aid ultimately sustains underdevelopment. I used a series of examples from Haiti, and called out the World Bank for trapping us into cycles of debt, though not nearly as eloquently as Keston Perry did in a recent op-ed in Al Jazeera.

I tried to use anecdotes to demonstrate some of the lesser understood ways that development goes south. Yes, top-down decision making is bad, but not a lot of people understand what that means practically and the naysayers always think of the numbers and the complexity of bureaucracy. I gave an example from the cholera outbreak in Haiti where a simple phone call and recording of a message to be shared on community radios could have saved more lives. 

In the end, I called for difficult conversations to dismantle divisive and demeaning narratives.

What are we working towards?

As we all talk about what comes next, one thing that I hope is part of the conversation is interrogating what we all see as success.

I recently read an op-ed entitled “Philanthropy is More than Money,” in which a grassroots leader explained how local communities who are fighting for self-determination, regardless of what form that fight takes, are doing work that is fundamental to sustain their dignity and their lives. Because of this, the author explains, “I can say that with no money, we have been able to do more work, and more challenging work.”

This is such a profound thing to say and I guarantee that any grassroots leader who sees this statement will be vigorously nodding their heads. I’ve seen people who do underpaid work that they believe in go through literal hell and still show up to do the work. 

I was once asked to imagine a world without poverty and I immediately argued that human nature will not allow for such a thing. There will always be people with less. However, I can imagine a world where poverty is reshaped so that everyone has access to the opportunities needed to thrive. The difference will be in how everyone defines thriving. One person can require the giant house and all the fixings, and another person can require the tiny house with only what is necessary.

There will be new systems that emerge out of the chaos of this moment. New institutions, new decision-makers, new centers of power. Hopefully, in the long run, they will be more diverse, more inclusive, more rooted in proximate communities. But let’s not succumb to the models of old where we compete for funding and quibble about who it should go to. Let’s prioritize our existing capacities and do what we can with what we have.

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