Blood and Milk

Two senior employees of a private consulting firm have been accused of stealing money intended for global HIV work and using it for their personal expenses. The Washington Post report is low on details, but as far as I can tell, they had some kind of small USAID contract and falsified all their invoices. If the allegations are true, these people have stolen from the world’s most vulnerable people and dishonored our profession. If they are guilty, I hope the judge nails them to the wall.

I know that small firms can have trouble with USAID compliance. Tracking the fine details of allowable costs and source and origin codes is not for the faint of heart. But thinking you are coded for regional purchases when really you’re only coded for the host country is not exactly the same as spending HIV money on home renovations and new cars. Proper purchasing and sourcing is a legally binding obligation. It is not in any way okay to ignore the law on that. But you can make a mistake on that kind of thing.

You don’t roll on up to a car dealership to buy a caddy and a Mercedes by mistake.

It’s not a game, and it’s not a victimless crime. You can do a lot of good with a million dollars. You can put about 200 people on HIV drugs for the rest of their lives. You can buy 37 GeneXpert machines to rapidly diagnose Tuberculosis in people living with AIDS.

Or, you know, you can put an addition on your house. Jerks.

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Photo credit: Marylin Shaikh

This abandoned clinic my mom visited wouldn’t mind a few thousand dollars for, say, walls and windows

If there is one question I get asked most often by people who don’t work in international development, it’s what can I do beyond just giving money?

First of all, there is no “just” about giving money. Money is the lifeblood of international development. We can’t run programs without money. And improving international trade and supporting economies in the developing world – also all about money. So we could stop right here. Giving money is fantastic.

I suspect that people want to do something other than donate for three reasons. First, they may just not have money — which is unarguable. Second, they may have money and don’t trust NGOs. Third, they may want to feel a personal connection to what they are doing.

If you don’t want to give your money because you can’t afford it, or you don’t trust people to use your money well, I would suggest connecting to local groups. Volunteer in your own community where your expertise is valued and you can choose an organizational partner that you trust. Your time is most valuable closest to where you or your area of expertise. Therefore, you are most useful volunteering in your neighborhood with a community group, or doing your professional work pro bono for an organization you believe in.

The third case is the one that really intrigues me. People want meaning in their lives, and in their philanthropy. They want a sense of belonging and meaning that doesn’t come from their Visa card. Change.org and Jumo were efforts to capture this desire for connectedness and meaning, but I don’t think either one quite hit the mark. Eventually someone is going to find the magic sweet spot of doing, giving, and belonging, and they will have an incredibly powerful source of support and funding. (Maybe the Obama 2008 campaign is an example?)

If you want to feel like an actor as well as a donor, you can fundraise. Reaching out to people, advocating and bringing in money is more active than handing over your credit card number. Many organizations have networks of fundraisers, and if you develop a long term relationship with one group you become an insider, not an outsider.

If fundraising is not your thing, I can suggest you do is become an ethical purchaser. A middle class consumer in a wealthy country has a lot of buying choices to make. You can choose sustainable, ethical products and you can refuse to do business with companies that harm the world.

It’s nearly impossible to pressure governments. See our current Syria mess as an example. Governments have taxes and armies and therefore the power to coerce. But you can pressure a corporation. In the end, corporations need customers, one way or the other. The fear of losing those customers is a motivator for corporations. No matter how big a corporation is, a big enough media mess and the threat of customer boycott can scare them. Any one of us can make that mess. Think of Molly Katchpole, the Bank of America card fee woman.

Yes, big business is, well,  big. And there is a global capitalist system pushing us all in single-profit maximizing direction. But there are levers, and if you’re reading this blog you have the internet skills to find and push them.

So, if you want to make a difference, the first thing you need to do is give money to professional aid agencies that run programs that actually work. Doing that is enough. But if it doesn’t feel meaningful, then become a fundraiser, volunteer in your own community where your time is most valuable, and become an active, ethical consumer.

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(photo credit: nickyfern)

Last week I took my son to the circus. Specifically, a traveling troupe of Chinese acrobats. It was quite clearly the troupe that plays Dushanbe, not the troupe that plays Moscow. They attempted the big stunts, but they didn’t always make it. Spinning plates got dropped, a human pyramid crashed, and one tumbler tumbled right off.

This is what interested me: it didn’t affect the show. They were ready for failure. They had spare plates standing by for quick replacement after droppage. The ribbon twirlers had fresh ribbon at hand in case of tangling. The air acrobatics had truly fantastic spotters. Everyone who fell had at least one person gracefully rush up to soften their fall. They responded to errors so quickly and smoothly that it was like a dance.

Ever since I saw the show, I’ve been wondering how we can build that kind of resilience into development interventions. How can we make sure our errors don’t wreck our work? One thought: maybe ongoing monitoring is the equivalent of those dedicated spotters who saved the falling acrobats. Collecting implementation data will let you know if your human pyramid is going askew, or keep the guy on the springboard from bouncing onto hard ground. Another: you have to be profoundly humble and honest to prepare for failure that way. You have to admit, up front, that mistakes are possible. If your spotters are hiding in the back room, they won’t catch the tumbler in time. You can’t seamlessly replace a knotted ribbon if the new one isn’t right next to you.

It’s a beautiful analogy. Would it be allowed in real life? True, some people do call this industry a circus. But do our donors actually want us to be honest and humble? Would people think we were just incompetent if we visibly prepared for failure? And what, exactly, would preparing for failure look like?

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Photo credit: Don Fulano

Now picture that top girl falling, and landing in the arms of a costumed spotter

It’s okay to quit the Peace Corps.

I’ve gotten a couple of email lately that made me really nervous. I responded to them personally, but it made me want to say something here, on this blog. I know a lot of Peace Corps volunteers read this, so:

It’s okay to quit Peace Corps. It’s okay to ET – leave your stint early. It’s okay to leave after two weeks if you can tell the situation is wrong. It’s okay to leave after 18 months if something is making you nervous. It’s your life, and it matters, and it’s okay to get out early.

Leaving Peace Corps won’t ruin your life. 33% of all PCVs do it. It won’t ruin your career, either. I promise. Not even if you want to work in development. It will not ruin your dream of having meaningful work and an international life.

If you want to leave Peace Corps and you think you can’t because it’ll ruin your career, email me. Alanna.shaikhATgmail.com. I’ll help you figure out what to do. Not some paid careers list thing, just me, pro bono, helping another person because I like to help.

Don’t do anything drastic. It’s okay. Your life isn’t ruined and it isn’t over and you are not a failure. Sometimes things are just a bad fit and that’s all right. No one will hold it against you.

We all make mistakes. I left a job I loved because it was the wrong job for me at that point in my life. I got fired from my very first job out of college. I flaked out on an internship with a woman I respected and I think she still dislikes me as a result. I cancelled an internship with CARE Egypt because I needed to go home already and not be in Cairo any more. And I still got to go have a whole career full of stuff I love to do with brilliant colleagues surrounding me.

You thought Peace Corps was the right fit for you and it’s not. Just fix your error, get out, and find the next step in your life. I really will help you if you like. My email’s right up there.

Don’t do anything drastic. Your life is not over. Neither is your career. Don’t make any dangerous decisions because you feel bad right now. Just get home, wherever that is to you, and find your next step once you get there.

Don’t stay if you fear for your safety, and don’t stay if you’re afraid you’ll harm yourself. Nothing is worth that.

(photo credit: marysuephotoeth)

Those of you who follow me on Twitter know that I was deeply upset by the injury and death of Xiao Yueyue, a two-year-old in Guangzhou, China. She was hit by a truck, which drove away, and lay in the street bleeding for seven minutes. Nineteen people walked by her without stopping for help until a street sweeper moved her out of the road and alerted her panicked mother.

I was stunned and horrified that anyone could walk right by a bleeding toddler lying in the road. A tiny child, in pain, alone and still in danger, and no one helps her. How does this happen? I understood the callousness that develops toward adults, but to a dying child? It leaves me speechless and teary.

My attempt to understand how this happens included reading about Chinese law, Chinese culture, and the bystander effect. There’s not much I can do about other people, but I can try to prevent myself from becoming the kind of person who walks past a bleeding toddler.

I finally made a Twitter plea for help on how to avoid becoming a bystander, and it led to a wise response from a friend of mine. She pointed out that we walk past other people’s pain every day as expats and as people living in a brutal world. There is more human suffering out there than acute bodily trauma and we make a daily decision to ignore it.

I am already the kind of person who can ignore a toddler in pain, as long as she’s not in my line of sight.

We’re all bystanders. The bystander effect is the story of our age, from climate change to famine in the Horn of Africa. We let terrible things happen because everyone else lets them happen too, and because we feel helpless to stop them. I don’t like it. I don’t know how to stop it. I don’t know what to do.

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(photo credit: tracyyxx)

I’ve spent the last two weeks as part of a multinational health sector assessment effort, and we’ve worked through interpreters the whole time. I’ve obviously worked with translators before, but never every day all day for two weeks.  It’s really crystallized my own ground rules for how to work effectively with interpreters. This is what I’ve got:

1. Jokes almost never succeed when translated. They’re just too cultural and based on language and tone nuance. It’s easiest to avoid them.
2. If you want to connect with people personally across language, and you can’t use humor, talk about common human experiences. Kids are great if you all have them. I’ve got pictures of kids on my phone and they’re a great icebreaker. I’ve seen other people successfully transcend language and culture barriers by talking about a dislike of mushrooms, fear of snakes and bugs, mocking people who are drunk, alluding to sex, and comparing government officials to babies. I wouldn’t myself be brave enough for an off-color reference, but it worked from the woman who made it.
3. Take the colloquialism out of your language and use short phrases. It feels awkward at first, but if you can code-switch between talking to your mom, talking to your friends, and talking to your boss’s boss, you can develop an easy way of speaking through a translator. So, break up your thoughts into Twitter-size pieces and be a little more formal.

Some colloquialisms to avoid (that I have heard lately from people who should know better):

• Big ticket
• Hard vs Soft (in terms of estimates or rules)
• Peanuts (to mean small amounts)
• Small time
• Take a swing at
• Out of left field
• Take a shot at
• Take a whack at
• Shot in the dark
• Rolling in money
• Drop, fall (to mean decrease)
• Go off the reservation (also don’t say that because it’s racist)
• On track

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(photo credit: dweekly)

J from Tales from the Hood posted his “why I do this” story recently, and reading it started me thinking why I do this work myself. There’s a lot of twisted up stuff in my explanation – about wanting adventure, and doing what you’re good at, and the things my parents expected of me. But it really comes down to this:

It’s an awful fucking world out there. We are wrecking our planet, from Lake Erie to the Niger Delta. We’re killing each other with bullets and machetes and pollution and indifference to the needs of others. Humans are devastating machines that decimate each other and everything around us.

I can’t stand still while that happens. I don’t honestly think I am going to do much good. What can one person actually do? But the only way to avoid despair is to take action. If I didn’t try to do something I would never get out of bed. I took the action that struck me as most needed and – truly – most fun. International development. I like living overseas. I like learning other cultures. I like facing the weird problems of this life and knowing how to open a metal can with a paring knife. And I believe that poverty in most of the world is far worse than what we have in the US. (Even taking into account Mississippi and Appalachia.)

And I turned out to be good at it. Going to grad school for global health was like being a fish who finally found water. After flailing my way through Georgetown, fighting and bleeding for a GPA that rounded up to 3, I sailed right through my graduate degree and finished with a GPA of 3.97. And it wasn’t even hard. It was a lot of work, but it was joy.

Once I do something, I don’t do it badly. If I am going to work in international development I am going to do the best possible job of it that I can. That’s why I have this blog – to help me figure out how to do it better. That’s why I read so much (I link to most of it on my Twitter feed).

If you’re looking for the career-type info on how I ended up doing this, it’s very calculated. Here’s the short version, which leaves out all the embarrassing detours:

I have wanted to be an aid worker for literally as long as I can remember. When I was 16 I decided to go to Georgetown because it had a good reputation for international relations. I choose my work-study job to be internationally focused. I interned with a small international NGO. My first job out of school was a disaster, but the second was an internship with the American University in Cairo that let me live in Egypt for a year. While at AUC, I figured out I needed grad school, and an MPH, for all the jobs I really wanted. So I went to grad school, and interned and networked and studied foreign language while I was there. Then I finished school and networked my way into an unpaid internship in Uzbekistan. I got a paying job in Tashkent after that and the rest has been pretty standard.

(Photo credit: me. I took it out my windshield while driving the other day. It’s the tallest flagpole in the world, shown next to the president of Tajikistan’s palace.)