I recently moved into a new job and for the first time in my entire career this has taken me away from the not for profit space. I’ve been working for non government organisations (NGOs) and charities since my 1st internship when I was 19. Since then I moved across several organisations which have taken me to different parts of the world and through which I have encountered many different peoples, cultures and communities. However towards the beginning of the year I started to feel a level of disenfranchisement with traditional aid and giving which has compelled me to make a shift across into the private sector of international development. This change however has not been easy especially when it comes to reasoning with the ethical standards behind the why of what I now do.
In the last few weeks when people have inevitably asked me ‘what do you do for a living?’, I’ve tended to stumble heavily on my words. In the past I used to make it easy for people and simply say ‘I work for a charity’. This just made it straight forward for me to explain and the unsuspecting bystander to comprehend instead of going down the path of a ‘development is for all’ lecture. However, lately I have struggled to figure out what to say when posed with this question. If I now work for a for profit company does that make me less committed to sustainable development and effective, lasting change?
I’ve noticed that when I reply to the career question with ‘I work for an international development consulting firm’ people tend to offer less of the ‘wow, it must be so rewarding’ response. I seem to be met these days with less of the saviour connotations that had previously existed when I spouted my stock standard charity response. At first when I trialled the new explanation, I felt somewhat guilty; guilty that I no longer was an altruistic do gooder, and guilty that this was what was expected from me from everyone else and that I was somehow letting them down by offering something other than this.
I was feeling a slightly varied parallel version of imposter syndrome. This being defined as a collection of feelings and thoughts of inadequacy that persist despite some form of evident success. In truth, I have had no private sector experience up to this point and it was a major accomplishment to be hired for this role to at all, which is a major achievement within my career progression. But in spite of that, I was being inundated with feelings of being inadequate even though I was still working in the same sector that I have been committed to my entire adult life.
What I have come to realise in the time since however is that there is no point in having a good and bad list when it comes to community development and poverty eradication. The organisation that I work for is actually more appropriately termed as being for purpose. We are committed to local ownership, ethical standards of development and inclusive practices towards a society in which everyone is equal and has equality of opportunity and outcome. I myself am still just as committed to empowerment of women and people with disabilities and the delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals as I was previously.
In order to overcome complex development and societal challenges we have to innovate and the aid space is no different to any other in that regard. We need to let go of the tired trope of saintly do gooders swooping in to ‘third world’ countries and saving helpless people with rewardingly selfless work. We need to treat people of the Global South as our equals, and not just those who are in need of our assistance. We need to have an approach which focuses on skilling people up to empower themselves instead of the traditional giving methods of the past.
I feel much less conflicted now with what I do for a living than I did a few weeks ago. Because of this, the next time someone asks me what I do with myself I will confidently respond ‘I work for an ethical business that focuses on international development consulting in the Asia Pacific region’. And I do this with pride and belief in the beginning of a new period in which government, civil society, NGOs and private companies work together with our counterparts in the region to ensure inclusive development for all. I also look forward to a time when for or not for ‘profit’ is not the sole determinant of whether a person or an organisation is in it for the betterment of the others.
Sx
I blog for Change. 