Dear white people who start non-profits in the Global South.
STOP.
How would you feel if a stranger came into your home and decided what your priorities should be for your friends and family?
This is what you do when you decide that, after spending 4 months or even 2 years volunteering in another country, you are going to start you own non-profit for health, education, girl’s rights, or another area you are so passionate about. When embarking on this journey to be the leader of another non-profit in a country you do not call home, you are diverting resources from locally driven efforts to your own organization. And I promise, even if you are a superb grant writer or excellent with logframes, you do not know better than the communities living in these areas.
Since living abroad and after returning home, I am perpetually exhausted by the influx of white -led organizations in LMICs. Your access to other white people, who have more wealth due to years of colonization and exploitation of these countries in the first place, does not transform the systems of oppression we need to dismantle. It simply shifts power from one group of white people to another group of white people. What is more, is that your organization’s leadership (senior staff and board members) is filled up by other white people who are from your own network. They might not have any qualification aside from being your friend, or an investment banker who went to college with your parents and think it is cute that you are working in Africa. Sure, you might have 1 or 2 token people who do not look like you, but they are most likely country representatives or make up the more junior employees, while you and your white friends sit in the US or some European Country making decisions that will affect other people and their families. You are reproducing the same inequalities that have led these problems in the first place.
While I am sure your “intent” is to save the world, your impact is far from that. Alexis Ohanian’s recent resignation of Reddit’s board is the first significant change I have seen from someone in power to transfer power. Kate Cooper recently reflected on this decision, contrasting imposter syndrome with “I Deserve This Syndrome.” “It is similar to imposter syndrome but born of overconfidence in oneself: “I have been appointed leader therefore I must be the best possible candidate for the role.” I find this rampant in the aid community- technical specialists with 30 years of experience say “I can do this better than others and therefore I deserve it”, without reflecting on their journey to that “status” — wealth from their families, access to the best education, networks with other white technocrats who are high up in the development sector. While many of us believe we are the only ones who can “save the world,” I have news for you: We are not special. We are not in this unique position where we are the only ones capable of holding leadership positions or making decisions about how to spend our multi-million-dollar budgets. And as much as we want to make the world a better place, the best way we can do that is by challenging the assumptions that got us into these roles in the first place, holding our organizational leadership accountable to do the same, and finding alternative ways to support.
For meaningful change to be achieved, we must move away from this binary of “good” and “bad” do-gooders. Ibrahim X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo both discuss this in their books — this binary doesn’t exist. Our anti-racist or anti-colonialist efforts are not immutable, they do not fall into a clear bucket of good or bad. Sure, we have Katie Meyler and Renee Back who caused irreparable harm in Liberia and Uganda through their white saviorism. However, just because you aren’t directly responsible for infanticide or young girls’ sexual violence, doesn’t mean you aren’t still perpetuating systems of oppression.
I’ve been inspired by growing conversations an efforts to dismantle racism and other systems of oppression in the aid and non-profit sectors- Edgar Villanueva’s Decolonizing Wealth movement, Heading Solidarity Collective, #ShifthePower, PopWorks , Aid Re-imagined (and the phenomenal How to be Anti-Racist in Aid webinar). Ironically, I have also seen other new initiatives for community-led development created by, yes, white PhD holders from top universities. I do not think there is anything wrong with supporting these efforts in solidarity- providing skills, time, and MONEY. However, there is absolutely no reason that you should find yourself in a position of leadership and decision-making power that supersedes the decision-making power of communities in LMICs who have had to deal with this neocolonialism in the first place.
Therefore, white people and individuals living in the Global North looking to exercise their savior complex by starting another depoliticized NGO, please stop.
