Pari Project Guest Post: Why can’t we trust each other?
Rather than create a new blog, the Pari team will post the lessons they have been learning over the last 3+ years of working with more than 30 organizations here on Lessons I Learned. Our hope is to create more discussions and engagement in these issues and encourage more of YOU to share your lessons with us as well.
Pari’s first post is about trust. As trust forms (or prevents) the basis of any relationship, it seems like a great place to start. Read to the bottom of the article to learn more about Pari and their work.
Whether or not we would like to admit it, Westerners are often leery of interacting directly with local teams at NGOs in developing countries. They prefer to receive their information from a Westerner; this claim has been corroborated by many donors. Is it discrimination, laziness, fear of the unknown, high expectations – or all of the above – that keeps us from trusting people who speak different languages and come from different cultures?
Since Pari began working with grassroots NGOs in 2008, a trend I have often seen emerge is that when it comes to high-level interaction (between individual donors, grant makers, managers, Board members), Westerns gravitate and/or outright prefer engaging with other Westerners.
There’s numerous reasons why this might be. One is that it is in our inherent human nature, to distrust those we deem ‘different’. The second is related to laziness – communication between two people with different native languages can require incredible patience and perseverance. Much gets lost, its true. The third reason relates to high expectations: when it comes to institutional donors, most want to see grant applications written in proper English, formatted correctly, and submitted with all the required appendices. If one has not been trained extensively in how to produce this kind of communication, they are cut off from donor funds, irrelevant of the efficacy of their work.
What’s ironic is that the very people we are trying to ‘help’, are those we sideline when it comes to making important decisions. What can be done? Attitudes need to shift. From our experience, we have learned that these tangible changes need to be implemented:
– NGOs should make sure their bylaws mandate local representation on the Board of Directors; the Board should value the contributions that local members, management and staff play in making large decisions
– Management teams at NGOs should be provided extensive communications training; this would include ‘How to conduct a successful donor visit’, ‘How to create a Gantt chart’, ‘How to properly format a document in Microsoft Word’, and the list goes on. Local managers should feel they have all the skills and resources they need, to comfortably represent their organization to foreigners
– Donors should base their decision to engage based on the quality of the NGO’s work, first and foremost; they should enter the situation willing to communicate respectfully and patiently with the people involved
In closing, its not easy to communicate with people who are ‘different’, but if we are going to create the kind of culture where we are investing in people, first and foremost – then that commitment transcends every level of engagement and across every person. Pari’s experiences are based on working with 30 NGOs in Cambodia, and we’re learning something new every day; we’d love to hear your ideas what can be done to improve situations like these.
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This piece was a guest post by:
The Pari Project is a movement to increase the capacity of humanitarian organizations in Asia and Africa.