It is our responsibility
“We are part of a changing sector. And we have the responsibility to guide where it will go based on all we have learned, and the knowledge out there not heard yet.”
Six years ago, I was sitting in a lecture of my Masters programme, and our professor introduced the concept of organisational learning in public organisations and all of a sudden it all came together for me. So many pieces that I previously was not able to connect started to form one puzzle. Since then, I have spent all of my working time dedicated to figuring out how development cooperation can look—and it’s always circled back to putting learning at the centre.
What is out there
Actually, it started even earlier, when I first came across an article that documented the competitiveness that exists among international NGOs for funding. Back then, still slightly naïve about the world, I was outraged by what I read. While some of that outrage may have been subdued, and made space for realism, I am still as frustrated and motivated to contribute to a different development sector.
We’ve taken amazing strides, as a global community and in development cooperation.The amount of knowledge, expertise and achievements for global development are astonishing and the people committed to development across the globe are fascinating. At the same time, we have learned a lot about how to go about development. We are slowly revising old modes of delivery of development and humanitarian assistance and talking about genuine cooperation, decolonisation and shifting the power – from charity to cooperation.
This sector has the reputation that it’s too slow and too bureaucratic. But look at what we’ve achieved: In the last decades major steps have been taken towards multilateralism. There's been a move away from post-war aid provision to thinking about sustainable development as a global community, such as through the Paris agreement and major organisations rethinking their role and approach. Thinking about it, maybe it’s gone way faster than you could expect considering the complex challenges and diverse stakeholders within the sector.
The knowledge not heard yet
Nevertheless, the global community and sustainable development are facing major threats. Not only are there natural disasters raging, such as the devastating wildfires we’re seeing in LA and other parts of the world, but also by human-made wars, such as in Gaza and Ukraine (in a way the wildfires are, of course, also human-made since they’re getting worse due to climate change).Generally, we are witnessing a major push-back on civic and democratic spaces. Exemplified by last week’s news about Meta’s move to remove fact-checking for its platforms and scale back diversity initiatives or tech billionaires getting involved in global politics.
In addition to the huge global challenges, we are and will face, we’ve excluded so many voices and knowledge that is already out there. Development narratives have been dominated by one-sided stories and interests. However, movements across the development and humanitarian space are questioning these structures and we are slowly but surely seeing light flow through the cracks.
Every time I sit down with someone who’s been in the field for a long time, I hear incredible stories about, for example, local climate resilience, community organisation, the use of indigenous knowledge to tackle de-forestation and so on. Global development is about the stories out there and the ones we provide a space for. I overheard the quote I started this blog with at a conference I attended last year and scribbled it down in my notebook because I want to be reminded of this whenever I need motivation to keep going.
Time to take responsibility
This blog post is a rather personal account and reflection of creating meaning in my work, maybe sort of a reminder for the start of this new year.
As this new year is starting, I want to refocus on what’s important. Over the last years, I’ve had the honour to have amazing conversations. I’ve spoken with practitioners from all over the world, worked with and collaborated on amazing projects, and got to participate in events all over the place. I’d never take this position for granted. One thing I’ve learned through these experiences is that true impact often starts small, in the unscalable moments that create meaning and build trust. These are the moments that plant the seeds for innovation—the kind of innovation that doesn’t just solve problems but transforms the way we approach them entirely.
In the start-up world, when building a new solution a famous article talks about “doing things that don’t scale” by Paul Graham. It might seem counterintuitive, especially as in this sector we’re often confronted with pilot-itis and trying to scale things that proved to work. But the article talks about doing things like writing handwritten letters of gratitude to your first 10 clients. These first 10 users saw your vision, they believed in you, and you created pockets of meaning with them. Based on this initial trust and connection, more people are willing to be bold enough to go for it and will allow an idea to take flight.
Connecting my experience of building a start-up with that of working in the development sector, this is my personal plea to keep going. Now is the time to defend what we’ve fought so hard for, continue the conversations, fight for the decreasing spaces and invest. Invest the time, money and power in the people, ideas and knowledge out there. For my part, I will focus on amplifying voices and knowledge not heard yet by advocating for genuine and equitable cooperation and bridging gaps through technology. By founding Strhive and subsequently Propel, I aim to continue to dedicate the next decades of my life to ensuring knowledge and mutual learning are the cornerstones of global cooperation.
Bringing innovation to this sector is not an easy task but looking at the projects and people I got to work with, at least one conversation a week shows me that it’s worth it to keep going. I know the rollercoaster of working on something that sometimes seems like there’s no way to make it work and no way it will create the impact you envision. But then one quote, one story or one piece of feedback reignites that spark of confirmation and shows you that you’re onto something— and that it’s worth it to keep going.
Don’t get disheartened now. Now is the time to show the world what they can learn from this sector. Let’s make sure we don’t disappoint ourselves.
Sarah Abdelatif is a social entrepreneur in organisational learning and international development and the founder of Propel – a team who built a solution to democratise knowledge and transform learning for NGOs and INGOs to accelerate the needed systems change.