The Anima of Aid: How Women Tipped the Scales for an International Development Program in Colombia
A friend of mine was working on a USAID-funded development program in Colombia. She is in her twenties, and she’s a smart poli-sci major who reads a lot of books. This woman accepted an inadequate salary with devoted readiness to contribute her sweat to a rural development program that gives local communities a stronger voice in the re-building of their territories following Colombia’s protracted civil war. After less than a year, she resigned. Alas, her colleagues rejected her ideas and refused to combine or complement her output with theirs. In a word, she was ignored.
In the development aid sector, this story plays out over and over again in countries around the world, including in the U.S.A. Discounting women professionals is a problem that cannot be attributed to just cultural or deep-seated machismo in a certain country. It is a pervasive problem rooted in our society and our work culture where at best we undervalue women, or worse, we simply ignore them.
For every 10 down-and-out women who are on the verge of resignation, there is a strong woman leader who rejects the status quo and blazes the trail for young women in international development. To be sure, I have worked with some, but it is rare to work with several on the same project. That’s what happened in the Colombia Land and Rural Development Program, an innovative program funded by USAID in Colombia that coincided with the historic peace agreement.
I still remember the first executive team meeting in 2016. I was literally surrounded by women, something that had never happened to me in my eight years’ experience in East and West Africa. The COP and DCOP were women; all four technical components had a woman at the helm. M&E was in the hands of a woman. Cross-cutting issues were led by women. Admin? A woman. To make the surreal even more unexpected, the human resources department was led by a man. That, however, would soon change, and a more-ready-than-ever woman would take over.
“If you look around the world, everything related to land, from how it is used to how it is managed, is in the hands of men,” explained Ana Alzate Carolina, the program’s Land Formalization Component Lead. “Seeing women in positions of leadership allowed me to break down mental barriers. They also inspired me and gave me the confidence to accept and validate my own vision of management.”
There is a lot to say about a woman at the top. Every business magazine runs the article about women CEOs, their strengths and weaknesses, how they are proven to be better investors, better managers, and better entrepreneurs. However there is relatively little about women leading women, and even less information about this dynamic in the development sector. No matter how great an office’s work environment is, if there are no women in positions of power for young women employees to emulate, where can they adopt role models?
Building Women Up
The road to success was not simple for the program. After 2.5 years under male leadership, a change in leadership brought a woman Chief of Party, who was also an expert in land tenure issues. She shook up the staff and found a lot of talent in the project’s middle management. After that, women were in the majority of leadership positions, and the idea of a feminine spirit emerged.
“In terms of making promotions, I really just considered who seemed most qualified and committed to the job; turned out most of them were women. Fortunately, the project had already hired a lot of women, which gave me a large pool to choose from and made it easier.”
-Anna Knox, former Chief of Party.
The feminine spirit was born, and eventually, three of the program’s five regional offices were led by women. There was never a competition between men and women leaders, but what separates the Land and Rural Development Program from other aid outfits, is that the opportunity for promotion were made available to women. Colombian society has installed barriers limiting access to employment from early stages. Job interviews are notorious for only asking women if they have children and requiring medical exams specifying whether they use birth control.
“Colombian women are just as capable as men, we just need the opportunity to prove it, with opportunities like the ones created by that program,” says Camila Jaramillo, the Land Restitution Component Lead.
Colombian Leaders
Perhaps the most important moment for this team of women came when Adriana Velez became the Chief of Party in late 2017. Velez, a Colombian with 15 years of development programming experience, took over when the former COP, Anna Knox, unexpectedly had to leave Colombia. Velez then made history becoming the first Colombian woman Chief of Party of a USAID program. In addition, she was COP of USAID’s largest program, which was valued at more than US $70 million.
Velez has become an asset to USAID for her ability to project a strategic vision for Colombia’s rural areas, her understanding of the dimensions of her country’s rural poverty, as well as her ability to lobby successfully with Colombia’s highest officials. When the Program’s flagship activity, a massive formalization pilot, was at risk of being lost in Colombia’s byzantine bureaucracy, Velez pulled it through with the determination and drive to hold government officials to their word. Finally, in September 2019, Colombian President Iván Duque attended an historic event to help deliver over 1,000 land titles to rural landowners from the municipality of Ovejas (Sucre), the majority of whom were women.
“A women leader knows beforehand that she is not going to have an easy time, because as soon as difficulties arise, the reasons rarely have to do with the subject matter but everything to do with the fact she’s a woman. Due to this, a woman leader not only represents herself, but all the women who are watching her.”
-Ana Alzate Carolina, Land Tenure Expert in Colombia
