I definitely respect your opinion; it’s an opinion a lot of people in the development world hold.
The problem is: If we’re judging the quality of an action by the “ends”, that means we have to have a value system by which to judge them. As I mentioned in the essay, my friend Rishi disagreed with me, saying that because he personally is not Christian, he looks at the work being done by the “church group” in our pueblo as net harm. However, that obviously is relative, and others with more Christian-leaning beliefs may see the Gospel-spreading as a wonderful act of love. I guess when you say “we have to be very, very careful that the communities we work with are not left much worse off than before our intervention”, my question becomes: how exactly do we define “worse off”? By GDP? By resources people have? By happiness? By “freedom”? So many of those metrics also fall into the box of “measuring by our own values”, which is exactly what the church groups are doing.
I definitely agree that international development work should be defined by the desires of the people in question and effort should be focused on empowering them and connecting them with opportunities. But that area sometimes becomes very, very gray. To give another example: in Nicaragua, one of the main initiatives many volunteers worked on was Gender Development, promoting equality of men and women and economic opportunities for women. As a strong feminist, I personally agree that these initiatives are very important. But it’s certainly possible that many other people, both Nicas and foreigners, would disagree. How do we decide whose values by which to define our work? If we used the values of the society we’re working in, we would never have been able to do gender initiatives at all, as Nicaraguan society is largely defined by machismo, a cultural sexism that has been around for centuries. Does that mean that gender development initiatives are akin to a colonial spreading of our own values and ideas? I think some could see it that way, but I personally still see it as hugely important work, because it jives with my own values and belief that empowered women are a net positive in so many ways.
Finally, I just wanted to address your last point, that international development work is “not about personal challenge or growth.” While I think this is a selfless idea, I think that international development work and other similarly mission-driven work is actually less effective if the people doing it are not reaching within and growing through it. We all have biases, we all have judgments and limitations and comfort zones that, to me, are the primary hindrance to the creation of a better world. I firmly believe in the Buddhist idea that going within and changing one’s own inner landscape is the best way to make the world a better place. If everyone overcame their own biases to treat all others around them with love and compassion, many of the world’s problems would instantly be solved. My most fundamental role in that, as I see it, is to cultivate that love and compassion in myself, and working abroad and confronting head-on some of the toughest challenges, both personal and global, has been a remarkably effective way of doing that.
Above all, I personally just want to see more people asking these questions. More people saying “I want to be a net positive in the world. How can I do that?”. The more careful thought that goes into the “how”, the more effective and responsible the action will be, but above all, I just want to see people putting their hand up and saying “I want to contribute to something greater than my own mere survival and pleasure on this planet.” If their way of doing that is according to values different from my own, I personally still respect them immensely for their intention.
Just two more cents :) Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts. Best of luck to you in Tanzania!
