Amateurs vs. Professionals: A Complex Issue – Aid Debates
Posted on November 1, 2010 at 11:08 am
There is an ongoing debate in the aid world about role and impact of volunteers and/or amateurs in aid and development work. The debate was rekindled with Nicholas Kristof’s recent article in the New York Times Magazine titled The D.I.Y. Foreign-Aid Revolution.
Foreign Policy responded with an article titled Don’t Try This Abroad. Kristof in turn wrote a response on his blog to the Foreign Policy post titled Answering Readers on DIY Aid.
Dave Algoso, author of the “Don’t Try This Abroad” article, has also responded to readers’ comments in a series of posts on his own blog Find What Works:
- DIY follow-up, part 1 of 5: How complicated can things really be?
- DIY follow-up, part 2 of 5: Questions of elitism. (Or: Just what is a “professional”?)
- DIY follow-up, part 3 of 5: Improving the development industry. (Or: Don’t the professionals screw things up too?)
- DIY follow-up, part 4 of 5: So what is the role for people who don’t fit your definition of “professional”?
The complexity of this issue is apparent in the fact that several bloggers have written multi-part posts on the topic. Here are other blog posts and articles on this same topic.
I’m with Ivan Illich on this one, sort of - humanitarian.info
Enough of the charity mentality – Wait… What?
Foreign Aid: Should it be a “DIY” project? – Changemakers.com
D.I.Y. Foreign-Aid for Dummies – Zanaa
The plural of anecdote isn’t data - Brian Swartz
For Aid Effectiveness, People Matter – Hauser Center
Is D.I.Y. Foreign Aid Really Enough? – The World Insight
What’s missing from the DIY aid debate? – How Matters
Do It Yourself - From Congo
My thoughts on DIY aid - Justice for All
What Makes Someone and Aid Professional? - Good Intentions are Not Enough
The Revolution Will Not Be Donor-Harmonized – World Bank Blog
In defense of Nicholas Kristof - stagonastithalassa
The Development Elite – on my way
Good Grassroots Development- Don’t Make Me Call it DIY - Stratosphere International
J. over at Tales from the Hood also wrote a two post response:
Texas in Africa jumped into the debate looking at the science behind Kristof’s argument with – how social scientists think: edition Kristof
The Future of Aid and Development? - The Huffington Post written by Tom Murphy
Women and D.I.Y. Foreign Aid – Foreign Policy Blogs
D.I.Y. aid might inspire but doesn’t address the underbelly of feel-good projects – Global Health Hub
Here are posts written on the topic long before Kristof’s article:
US Aid Professionals to American Volunteers: Stay Home – MIT Global Challenge Notebook
and my response post: If this were you, what skills and abilities would you want from a voluntourist?
Why Does it Keep Happening? – A View from the Cave
- Amateurs, professionals, innovations and smart aid
- Deconstructing volunteering and overseas exchanges
on entrepreneurship and NGOs - penelope m.c.
The professional volunteer: impossible in aid? (And how about the salaried amateur?) - A Humourless Lot
Do you need to be a “professional” to change the world? – Lessons I Learned
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I’m sure I’ve missed some posts – please feel free to tweet the to me @good_intents or leave them in the comment section of this blog.
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Related Posts:
I’ve previously written a series of posts on volunteering overseas and will be writing a post specifically on this topic soon.
- Guideline #1: Good Volunteer Projects Require a Significant Commitment of Time
- Guideline #2: Don’t Volunteer to do What a Local Person Could be Paid to do
- Guideline #3: Examine Your Motivations
- Guideline #4: Manage Your Expectations
« A response to Kristof’s DIY aid article • Autistics Speaking Day: a counter-campaign to an “awareness raising” activity »
Reposted comment I made elsewhere:
I agree with the idea that professionalism is important. But I’m a development professional, so I’m biased. However, I started my career as a development amateur, and I think that there’s space for the amateur, as long as they do no harm.
And you never know, sometimes amateurs come up with something new and good. Mhd Yunus started his development career without a master’s in development, and I’m worried sometimes how many people who meet who have master’s in development, who are rich in theory and poor in experience, and lacking in practical wisdom.
So I propose that amateurism can be just fine, but we should draft a simple code of ethics as to what amateurs should aim to get involved in, and what they might avoid. On the negative menu, for example, would be disaster response, or post-conflict reconstruction, where the scope for serious error is large.
Also, I understand (though I don’t sympathise with) the outrage that people express on the “elitism” of the professional view. It seems to me that in a democratic society, there are certain domains of knowledge that are accepted as professionalised, like engineering, public health, law and physics. In other domains, though, everyone is deemed to have a valid view: justice, humanitarianism, politics and music. If you suggested that only experts could decide what was just or injust (as opposed to legal or illegal) I think you’d be met with similar outrage.
So, maybe there’s a way of refining—in development—the line between what has to remain public turf, and what can be cordoned off for professionalism: just as it is in the legal system, where both public views and professional views have well-defined and agreed roles.
David,
I think the Do No Harm issue is what most of this boils down to. I agree that there are other ways to gain skills and knowledge that don’t include a masters degree in development, after all I don’t have one. I’ve put a lot of thought into guides and standards and I think they could be useful for some. But I’m afraid the majority of people will be completely unaware that they exist.
[...] For those interested in the ongoing debate, see this link at Good Intentions Are Not Enough. [...]
[...] Amateurs vs. Professionals: A Complex Issue – Aid Debates [...]
Thank you for posting this very helpful collection of links. Lots to think about in the debate.
[...] a recent debate on development work sparked New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has produced a gold mine of [...]
Plugging my stuff (on the same topic):
http://www.springerlink.com/content/4671q867115w0030/
Save the poor, shoot some bankers in Public Choice 145(3-4): 331-337
Abstract: Bilateral or multilateral organizations control about 90% of official overseas development assistance (ODA), much of which is wasted. This note traces aid failure to the daisy chain of principal-agent-beneficiary relationships linking rich donors to aid bureaucrats to poor recipients. Waste results when aid middlemen (un)intentionally misdirect ODA. Waste can be reduced by clarifying domestic goals for ODA, using fewer middlemen with greater intrinsic motivation, empowering recipients, and/or replacing bureaucracy with markets.
[...] or amateur? Skills and experience or passion and new ideas? These are riveting questions indeed, but I’m concerned that in the development discourse, we continue to miss a key [...]
[...] or development work. Others are debating the merits of volunteers versus “professionals” (see here for a compilation of [...]
[...] or amateur? Skills and experience or passion and new ideas? These are riveting questions indeed, but I’m concerned that in the development discourse, we continue to miss a key [...]
[...] or amateur? Skills and experience or passion and new ideas? These are riveting questions indeed, but I’m concerned that in the development discourse, we continue to miss a key [...]
Thank you so much for bringing together what is being said on all sides of this debate.
I recently posted a few thoughts on the Ashoka Changemakers blog about the debate, and look forward to seeing how the debate continues to unfold. My overarching perspective is that it’s not really about WHO is doing the work, but HOW it’s being done. Both “amateurs” and “professionals” fall into similar traps, and make similar mistakes — this is not unique to either group. The development initiatives that are successful are those which consider the local context and are embedded in a way that doesn’t create a local dependancy on FOREIGN aid, but creates ownership among the community receiving the aid.
Link to my post: http://smblog.changemakers.com/33257083
[...] blunt, simply saying “Nicholas Kristof is Wrong” while some critics were more nuanced. Others weighed in on all sides, either defending Kristof or saying he [...]
[...] and needy, please spend some time looking at the blog “Good Intentions are Not Enough” (start here, here and [...]
[...] development to the professionals. One of my favorite blogs, Good Intentions Are Not Enough, gave a rundown of articles relating to the debate between aid professionals and amateurs late last [...]
[...] development to the professionals. One of my favorite blogs, Good Intentions Are Not Enough, gave a rundown of articles relating to the debate between aid professionals and amateurs late last [...]
[...] provide nice rebuttals to Algoso’s piece. Also, the blog Good Intentions Are Not Enough has a round up of different articles, blog posts, and responses in the DIY vs. Professional [...]
[...] amateur foreign aid. The notion that anyone can change the world caused a backlash among a great many bloggers within the development [...]
[...] Amateurs vs. professionals: http://goodintents.org/staffing-or-employment/volunteers-vs-professionals-aid-debates [...]
[...] Amateurs v. Professionals — Good intentions aren’t enough [...]
[...] is, it turns out, a pretty huge discussion going on about this in the usual places. I find myself not so much in disagreement with the mainstream [...]