By Yan Xu
A week ago, I sat in on a meeting where one of the topics of discussion was an organization (student-driven, new organization, grassroots, etc) that works with communities in Kenya, promoting HIV/AIDS awareness that wanted to collaborate with a club that I am part of.
What went through in my mind was the following: Come on, can they or do they plan to teach their communities anything other than using safe contraceptives? Do these people need to fund-raise, fly all the way over to Kenya and tell people there to abstain from high-risk behaviours for HIV transmission?
Of course, I, intending to tell the members of the executive committee to consider the capacity of science undergrad students to inform Kenyans half a world away, said something to the effect of “what can a bunch of Microbiology students do in a community like that?” All heads in the room turned to me with shock and dismay, and I immediately stopped, not because I was in complete disagreement from the rest of the group, but because I realized I had crossed a personal boundary. There I was, effectively denigrating a well-intentioned student group.
For the rest of the day, 3 questions circled my mind:
- Have I taken “ethicizing” too far?
- Did I belittle the capacity of the student group (almost an unequivocal yes)?
- Would a more fruitful approach have been consulting with this group regarding what type of community outreach they were going to do (then if they told me that they were only going to teach the locals how to use contraceptives, would that then justify my reaction, because I went through the process of consultation?)
A good friend astutely mentioned that being involved in ethical dialogue runs the risk of assuming the position of embarrassing superiority, where we consider our moral stance to be somehow higher because we are examining issues that hadn’t been considered by say, the group that sought to collaborate with my club. Good intentions and careful scrutiny of unintended effects need not oppose each other, but to achieve partnership between the two, we need to first commit to recognizing and validating the good intentions, before we take our theoretical lenses and place one’s well-intended project under the microscope, and recommend how potential barriers to the meaningful change they seek can be overcome.
Hello All,
Annabel contacted me and asked me if I had any thoughts or insights to share on this particular issue. I’m not an ethicist so I can’t comment on whether it was appropriate or not to speak up at the meeting. However, after much trial and error on my own part I can tell you how to get people to understand your point of view without taking a position superiority or seeming callus to the plight of others.
Because you’re essentially challenging a world view that is constantly reinforced by popular media, you’ve got to help them see aid from a different view point. I talk about this in my post on how to evaluate an aid project http://informationincontext.typepad.com/good_intentions_are_not_e/2009/06/a-quick-way-to-check-if-an-aid-project-is-good.html.
You have to approach this from the point of I know you’re trying to help and that’s great. Now let’s think through the best way to help by essentially walking a mile in the other people’s shoes. The key is to move the conversation from what’s right for “them” to what’s right for “us” because it’s often very different. Ask them to imagine a student organization from Kenya coming to a similar place in Canada (I don’t know Canada well enough to suggest a location, in the states I’d suggest DC simply because the HIV/AIDS rate there is on par with developing nations)
Once people can clearly visualize what it would be like to bring in foreigners that don’t speak the language, have the same type of skills as these students, and are only there for a short time then you can start to ask other questions. Given these limitations, what would you want these people working on in your own community? What types of activities can they do that are most likely to be successful and which ones are likely to fail? What obstacles would they face? What type of support and commitment would it require from people in your community to help ensure that the project is successful (translator, host families, time and effort on the part of community leaders/principals/nonprofits/government offices)? Is the benefit of the project worth the cost/effort? Would people feel that this was the best use of donations or would there be other HIV/AIDS programs that they would rather have the same amount of money spent on.
If there’s time see if you can help them examine their motivations perhaps by prioritizing their goals. If a desire to travel to Kenya is one of their motivating factors then get it out there so they’re being honest with themselves.
Hopefully from all of this they will help them think through how they can really make the most difference. I will say that this has to be approached from a modest and humble position. This works best in a questioning format so they themselves are thinking the issue through and coming to their own conclusions rather than you telling them what’s right or wrong, possible or impossible.
It takes a little practice, but I’ve seen this really turn around the way people think about aid. Because in the end people really do have good intentions.
Best of luck
Saundra
Author of the blog Good Intentions are Not Enough
Hi Saundra,
Thank you very much for your informative and detailed approach to how to engage in authentic dialogue to foster these types of ethical thinking, and avoid coming across as didactic.
Such amazing thoughts, all! Quite a revealing discussion. This makes me ponder communication strategies thus far. I wonder if even the word ethics is useful in broaching the subject for the first time. I’m not sure ethics has been defined well enough among the intended audience so as not to provoke some ‘are you questioning my morals’ sentiment. But maybe I’m way off base…
Since it relates to this post I thought I’d include a link to the great 1millionshirts debate. Over 60 blog posts have been written on the subject. People are in agreement that sending donated goods overseas is generally a bad idea, but aid bloggers were taken to task for being too harsh and snarky. There’s been somewhat of a backlash against aid bloggers because the ordinary person feels attacked. I will admit to being snarkier than I should have been as well. Goes to show that we all make mistakes.
http://informationincontext.typepad.com/good_intentions_are_not_e/2010/04/what-aid-workers-think-of-the-1-million-shirts-campaign.html