My book 'How to teach English' is still on sale, but difficult to find in an ordinary bookshop it seems.

For Teacher’s friend, there is a totally new version coming out. Please contact me for it.

RE: What I wrote once ...

In south Sudan, as elsewhere in Africa, the Church is often seen as
'civil society, indeed at times to represent it. In Afghanistan, as in
Sri Lanka it seems, there is much rhetoric about the 're'(?) emergence
of civil society as a way of securing peace. Yet here in most areas of
the country this means older men whose views are seen to represent
others. Some support the Taliban and very few have any kind of
commitment to the principles of democracy that empowering them is
argued to do.

NGOs in Afghanistan are calling for more support, more funding to civil
society. Yet there is almost no real understanding of what impact this
has. The National solidarity programme, international funding through
the Govt to NGOs, claims to empower civil society and women (two
different things) yet there is no baseline by which to judge any
advance.

Empowerment (whatever that means) seems to neglect the issue of who is
being empowered and what impact that has on other dynamics, especially
at a local level. It also seems to assume that civil society is
homogonous where in reality it is usually polarised ethnically, in
class terms, occasionally (but increasingly rarely) in terms of
ideology which is not necessarily self interest.

I once wrote (but can't find) a piece on meaningless words used by
humanitarian agencies. Did I include Civil society? Probably.

Graham Wood

Humanitarian Consultant
Now in Afghanistan

==

In pre-Tsunami Sri Lanka civil society strengthening became a key
criteria for selection of projects by donors, this based on the
theories that a
peace dividend and increased social cohesion (another famous word here)
would
stabilize the peace process. This was despite the fact that the largest
and
most mobilized civil society groups, including Buddhist movements, were
continuously
demonstrating for a return to conflict.

One could still argue however that they were civil.

Vance Culbert

Seen on Reliefweb, immediately following an advertisement for a job in people trafficking:

Procurement Specialist, South Africa

International Centre for Migration Policy Development

I wonder which meaning of procurement they actually mean …

What I wrote once ...

I am civil society

‘Civil society’ as a phrase has an honourable ancestry in politics. One phase of the evolution of countries post-independence and of the evolution-in-parallel of NGOS and UN bodies has been the gradual emergence of the idea of ‘Civil Society’ as opposed to uncivil society? To military society? To ecclesiastical society? …. Well, that is another question.

This is just to celebrate the enterprising man who not only declared in a coordination meeting that he represented ALL of civil society, but that his NGO was called Civil Society.  Like the Church of God which appears in its name to have monopolised all religious possibilities at least for monotheists, Mr Civil Society presented himself as the unique interlocutor. His only reward though, was to be ignored by everyone.

Barry Sesnan

barrysbook.blogspot.com  ..     ebrealitycheck.blogspot.com

FW:

Voluntarism

Spurred by a UNHCR remark some years ago that: Payment can destroy the sense of responsibility that refugees feel for their welfare. I wrote the following

I actually have a fairly jaded attitude to voluntarism in Africa just now, not about work-camps, joint seminars etc. but trying to get labour for free as we often do in refugee camps. It is complex and coloured by various experiences, including in some work I am doing in Congo just now, where the international NGO pays almost nothing for teachers getting training in the afternoons on the grounds that ‘that is the government’s job’. Since the government doesn’t even get round to paying them a salary, displacing themselves to be trained (with no guarantee of promotion at the end of it – also the government’s job) involves the teachers in significant costs (not able to farm, fish etc on those days).

Why, firstly, asking mostly poor Africans to volunteer when they have no job, no ‘cushion’, no alternative is dubious I feel. In refugee camps teachers and young people are asked to volunteer to get the schools going, and that is fine …. For a year. Then they also have the right to earn some money for their work. Secondly, there is a world of difference between the first world volunteer and the third world volunteer. This is particularly relevant when you think of Red Cross’s fundamental belief in the value of volunteering.

In another aspect of the same thing, when I was doing HIV/AIDS prevention work in Congo in UNICEF one of our partner NGOs (In this case the partnership was like that I have with my small dog who hangs around the table wagging his tale waiting for me to throw him something) rightly identified the bicycle taxi boys as good carriers of the prevention message to youth (like hairdressers and rap singers, for example) and told them to come for five afternoons’ training.

They refused on the grounds that

a) they were being given nothing to compensate for the income they would lose and

b) the NGO was full of fat people who were obviously getting ‘something’ from UNICEF which they were not passing on.

They were right of course.

(I told them to make themselves into a suitable partner we could deal with directly! Thus indirectly encouraging that proliferation of NGOs that is so difficult to handle).