Jargon: NFIs
Translation: NFIs stands for Non-Food Items. This is a package of household items such as blankets, utensils, and cooking pots given to refugees or internally displaced persons to help them survive in their new location. You can find the term in jargony, jargony action here. You can find a definition and discussion here.
Jargon: Incentivize
Translation: Give someone a reason to do something, or to make people believe that effort will lead to some form of success. I really hate this word. I find it exceptionally meaningless and redundant.
Jargon: Leverage
Translation: Officially, it means to use one kind of funding as a way to inspire other donors. So you could leverage a $500 donation by getting a foundation to match it, and have $1000. In practice, though, it just means to use multiple funding streams to fund one project, whether or not the later funds were donated because of the first ones. NGOs claim all the time that they are leveraging your donation when what they really mean is “combining with other kinds of money.”
Jargon: Transshipment
Meaning: To ship to an intermediate point, and then on to a final destination. Always used when talking about smuggling.
Jargon: Ground-truth
Meaning: What’s really happening in-country. Often used as a verb: “We need to ground-truth this before we move forward on it.”
Jargon: Optic
Meaning: What it looks like. (I kid you not)
Jargon: Desecularization
Translation: When a formerly non-religious society grows more religious.