katie at the grassroots

As I approach the end of my work placement in India, I have thought a great deal about the kind of work I am doing, the effect my NGO has on the communities it works with, the city it is based in, and the its own employees. I feel confident that I have contributed a great deal to the organization, though often I think much of that contribution is intangible and more social and cultural than work-related. I feel okay about this… I believe strongly in cultural exchange, in learning, and in fostering within myself and within others a global understanding and an opportunity to share and exchange culture, food, values, dialogue, etc.

The tangible benefits that I have left mostly serve those in the top tier of the structure of the organization. I know that I have lifted the burden of reporting and writing in English off the shoulders of my boss and know that she is grateful for this. But I wonder if I could have and should have done more for others within my organization. I reflected on this earlier in the year, particularly on my inability to be move involved due to language barriers. And again, I feel it comes back to that language barrier. There were times when I felt so motivated that I thought I could easily overcome those barriers, and I wish I had jumped at those feelings, rather than thinking them through, or letting them fade out into a sort of apathetic surrender. (Though, to be fair, even that comes from a reasonable place).

Working for the “higher-levels” of my organization, and not with the team of direct “program implementers,” has allowed me to see the spectrum of the organization fully – in terms of where people stand, how individuals feel, how the work is understand and especially how it is portrayed. And because I work at this higher-level and am effectively in charge of translating the work of the organization, the work of those in the field, to international donors and the outside world, I often feel stretched and pulled in between how the organization is portrayed and viewed and the way it actually functions.

Most of my writing is done in the form of donor reports, and these days I have spent hours sitting with some of our field workers, going over with them all the activities which took place in the last 3 or 6 months. Then, it’s my responsibility to translate those conversations into what often sounds like a load of BS. I have no doubt that the work we are doing is actually happening, I have no doubt that it is good work, I have no doubt that most of our field workers and program participants are engaged and interested in learning and leading their communities. But I wonder, when I write that our organization “builds the capacity of local government officials by teaching them how to use facebook”…I wonder if I am actually portraying what is real, or what we all want to see.

This conundrum has really turned the idea of “development work” on its head for me, especially development work that is about empowerment, and community organizing, and advocacy. Other things like service delivery of health care or education are easy to measure, and perhaps therefore more reliable in terms of effects and growth. But I worry that at the end of the day, when the trainings are over and reports have been read and approved of by whomever reads them…that the people aren’t actually very much effected by all this money, all this work, all this time that has gone into “improving their lives.” Sometimes I think that they’ll return to their villages not as “active agents of change”, but as regular people, who want to sit on the stoop and smoke bidis and drink chai. And if that's the case...what's wrong with that? That's how they've lived for hundreds of years, who are we to say it's inefficient or inactive? Are we expecting them to become something we want them to be, and not something they want themselves to be?

an example of what a "capacity building training" might look like. you'd be bored, too. 

On the other hand, I’ve been lucky to have a few moments during which I’ve witnessed a real activism, that really comes from a collective drive to make change. But that looks a lot different from the kind of NGO work that we are involved in – it looks a lot more like revolution, actually.

a picture my friend took at an anti-corruption rally, or a romantic vision of change.

I know that success and accomplishment cannot be measured in the greatest moment of collective organizing, or in the romantic vision of a protest or a s it-in. And I wonder if all this report writing hasn’t gone to my head – maybe it’s made me eager to search and find the result immediately, without taking enough time or giving enough credit to the slow slow slow process of change and development.  I think this is the difference between where I am from, and who I am writing for and this NGO itself.  And the difference between international development as a great big industry and international development as it works on the ground.

This grassroots approach is very slow, it also harbors within itself cultural nuances that make these processes even slower and sometimes even ineffective. Perhaps I need to appreciate these nuances rather than critique them, perhaps I need to see that in them lies deep cultural meaning which sustains the work.

I wonder though, those this discrepancy between what we portray to the world and what actually happens exist in every organization that proclaims itself to alleviate poverty? If so, I can’t help but again question this whole thing called international development…