Upside Down Dependency

Humanitarians often talk about the issue of dependency and how to avoid creating it. The whole: teach a person to fish scenario.

What if the conversation is backward?

What if the person at risk of developing the dependency is the humanitarian?

Humanitarians need the local person to be needy. We need a job, we need to feel useful, we need to feel value, we need to produce. We need gripping photos for fundraising attempts. On a more heart level, we need to feel powerful, in charge, and heroic.

The needier the local person and the longer they remain in that state, the more secure we are in our position.

The effective aid worker must be willing and able to clearly evaluate their impact and step away when they are no longer necessary. Isn’t that the whole point? If not, it should be.

Becoming no longer necessary needs to be one of our primary goals. If it isn’t, the program or project being implemented needs to be reevaluated and adjusted accordingly.

A true effort to avoid creating dependency is to make sure that effort goes both ways.

A successful aid program will mean those who implement it will one day become superfluous. This requires great humility and imagination, especially for the Westerner.

Me, no longer needed?! Me, step aside for a local to take over?!

Yes.

If that isn’t the goal, something is wrong. The aid worker has become dependent.

Teach the community to fish and what does the teacher do once the students have learned? Many either keep on staying or simply never, truly, teach the community to fish without the foreigner providing worms, instructions, the market in which to sell the fish, or motivation.

It is still the outsider, bringing in outside information that is not indigenous. It is not the outsider looking at what the local community is already doing and coming alongside to improve and expand it.

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In an incredible On Being podcast interview with Anand Giridharadas, he says, “It’s language like the “win-win,” which sounds great, but in some deep way is actually about rich people saying, the only acceptable forms of social change are the forms of social change that also kick something back upstairs — language like “doing well by doing good,” which, again, is like, “The only conditions under which I’m willing to do good is under which I would also do well.”

Maybe that doing well is economic, maybe it is emotional. Still, the ego of the humanitarian is dependent on the need of the local.

Ouch.

Sometimes I wonder if the people inside the projects established by Western aid agencies and faith-based organizations talk about how dependent that machinery is on them? I wonder if they say something like, “Take a fish from a Westerner and he’ll stick around for a day. Let him teach you to fish and he’ll stick around for a lifetime. (while eating a lot more fish than you will ever catch).”

The aid machine needs humanitarian crises. It needs war and refugees and massive camps and epidemics. The more dire the situation, the more money pours in and the longer people have job security. The more dangerous the situation, the higher the hazard pay.

That is on a large scale. But what about in your own work?

Is your job security dependent on perpetuating a certain level of need?

Is your identity dependent on feeling useful?

Is your sense of value dependent on maintaining a status quo of you being provider, instructor, leader, instigator?

Is your purpose dependent on another’s weakness?

Is your funding structure dependent on persistent need in the local community?

Or have you worked to develop a true, authentic sense of community and partnership? Have you come in as a humble servant, willingly placing yourself beneath local authority structures and adjusting to local systems?

Who is at risk of dependency in your work?

Resources to help guide your evaluation:

When Helping Hurts

Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a Better Way for Africa

Toxic Charity

Subversive Jesus and all things things Craig Greenfield writes

13 Things I Want American Christians to Know about Stuff You Give Poor Kids (by yours truly)

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White Savior Barbie Nails It

Barbie has an Instagram account. In case you’ve missed it, White Savior Barbie goes to Africa where she poses in a variety of absurd scenarios with over-the-top hash tags that perfectly capture the White Savior mentality.

Of course, as this article points out, Savior Barbie is largely preaching to the choir; people who are already savvy and aware and debating the issues. Most people outside the aid and development world or not engaged in the global South probably don’t care and their attitudes won’t be challenged or changed by a parody Instagram account. Fine, point taken.

Also, the photos reek of sarcasm and cynicism and stereotypes. Got it.

But can we poke a little fun? At ourselves even, as how many of us (myself and Savior Barbie’s creators included as they admit to the Huffington Post) have been guilty of some of these things? Maybe, hopefully, not to the extremes of Savior Barbie, but most of us start our experiences abroad pretty naïve and at least in my own case, rather arrogant. Sometimes then we turn cynical, then bitter, then mockingly cruel toward the new, naïve, generations. I hope instead that these hilarious and in-your-face hashtags and photos will help keep us from going that route. If we can laugh about it, then maybe we can talk about it.

The hashtags are the real genius of Savior Barbie. Photos do communicate, but as a white person who lives in a country of brown people, I take photos with friends who aren’t the same color as me. I’ve held black babies and smiled for the camera. Because the baby is the son of my best friend here, not because I intend to ‘save’ this baby or mother. So judging me as a ‘white savior’ based on a photo I post would be misguided. The beauty of a diverse world is being able to engage across cultures and colors and if we take pictures, so be it. I don’t think that people should only post photos of people in matching skin tones.

It is when the hash tag, or the attitude, conveys something like, “Poor cute orphan baby! Good thing I brought bananas and clothes and vaccinations,” that there is a problem. When the hash tag or attitude is, “My (actual) friend just had a baby!” no problem.

One thing about the Instagram account that makes me really sad is the profile. The first word is “Jesus.” The obvious conclusion is that the majority of the good-intentioned and utterly ignorant White Saviors who inspired the account and who have propagated this attitude are Christians.

Perhaps this is because we have somehow twisted Jesus being the savior of the world to ourselves, as his ambassadors, being the saviors of the world. Perhaps this is because Christians are so eager to serve and Christian organizations are so desperate for staff that people will do things for which they are totally unqualified. People in the developing world are not stupid.

I once translated at a UN meeting and a government leader from a Muslim country stood up and said, “We are tired of these NGOs coming and pretending they know how to teach or how to do construction. They don’t know what they are doing. Why don’t they ask us what we need and send people qualified for that? Most of these people are Christians.”

That also made me really sad.

Perhaps the lesson of White Savior Barbie is that there is nothing wrong with service or with enjoying another culture but it needs to be done with integrity. Let’s be qualified and well trained for the work we do. Develop authentic relationships based on more than great photo ops. Educate ourselves. Be wary of quick clichés like, “I fell in love with Africa the moment I got off the plane.” Be learners.

**As of June 1, a blog is now associated with the Instagram account and it is here that the creators actually wrestle through the issues. I’m glad they aren’t just poking fun but are providing a space for thoughtful discussions.

What do you think of Savior Barbie?

Beyond criticism or poking fun, any tips on appropriate cross-cultural engagement?