It's been two months since I last updated. I'm writing this belated post from the UK, and have since re-named this blog and its purpose. This indicates that some massive changes have gone afoot. On the 16th of November 2019 I gave Manna Project International in Ecuador my one-month notice. I have been one of five volunteers who have left the INGO in the last four months.
I will write another time, and in another format, about what was actually going on and how this influenced five women to disrupt their plans for a year and choose to go home / somewhere else rather than stay with the organisation. What I will say on this format is: it is very, very difficult to do development work when you and your colleagues agree on a definition of development but the organisation you work with doesn't. I actually wrote about this in my doctoral thesis. When a discourse of development (or community development) is not shared by a community / international development project or organisation, it will result in socially antagonistic relationships within the project or organisation. What occurs is that the dominant discourse creates particular subject positions for each individual within the project to adopt. So, if someone comes into a community / international development project with a different understanding of community or international development, they will struggle to fit into the subject positions available to them under the discourse. They really have two options: (i) re-frame and adopt the available subject position under the dominant discourse, or (ii) adopt the available subject position but work to gradually change the discourse from the inside to create your preferred subject position.
I did the latter with this particular INGO, and I was working with intelligent women who had also 'chosen' ii. But, if ii is not working (even if the organisation is saying it wants to change but the realities of changing discourses are extraordinarily complicated) then the third option is to leave. In my professional opinion, this is what happened with five of us. Only two volunteers have stayed and, for the record, they agree with our definition of community development, but they have adopted i or ii for their own reasons.
The real lesson for the organisation here is not to advertise themselves as promoting a particular discourse of development when the reality is they are operating a different one. We have tried to feed this back in a number of different ways, but some people really struggle to see how two discourses are different (or admit to themselves they are - one 'sounds' better so they advertise that but its too difficult, or costly, to implement in reality so they operationalise a different one). Since we have left, people have since informed me that the official line is that the five of us misunderstood what the organisation was trying to do and are working towards communicating themselves better, which should mean a different type of person will be attracted to them and accept the subject positions they offer. I wish them the very best of luck. In this climate, they will definitely need it.
So, what now? Some of the volunteers and I have started to plan an academic paper on our experiences; which we hopefully can publish in an international development journal to facilitate some rich discussions. And... I'm off to Ethiopia. Before I accepted the post with Manna Project International, I had passed all the rounds of interviews to volunteer with Voluntary Services Overseas. However, I decided to go with MPI as VSO were not currently doing programmes in Latin America. I got back in touch with VSO and asked if they had any opportunities shorter-term. So, I will be volunteering in Ethiopia for 3-4 months in a UNICEF funded project with a team of participatory action researchers in refugee camps throughout Ethiopia. The plan was for me to fly to Ethiopia on the 30th of December but getting back to the UK during the Christmas period has slowed everything down so I'm still trying to get various things and VSO has to clear them before I go. It is likely I will be in Ethiopia by the second week in January.
I'm very excited to go to Ethiopia; but I was very sad to leave Ecuador. I honestly adore Ecuador and would recommend everyone and anyone to go. The people. the food, the landscape... I made some real friendships there and I know that some of them will last a long, long time. I will definitely be back in Ecuador. It was an absolute pleasure.
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