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From Aid to Maturity

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If You Can Build Trust in El Salvador, You Can Build Trust Anywhere.

29/01/2018 by sissel Leave a Comment

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Credit: De Balie

Trust is essential in order to reduce poverty and violence.
That is Celina de Sola’s message in the video below.
I believe that the absence of trust and cooperation is the main reason behind the deficiencies in international aid.

No one can achieve great results on their own.

Celina de Sola is the Co-Founder of an NGO called Glasswing, which works in El Salvador in Central-America. Last year she became one of the Tällberg Foundation Global Leaders. 

El Salvador is a country with one of the highest homicide rates in the world.  Poverty and inequality is rife. Different gangs hold power in many communities. You often have a choice between joining a gang, being killed or making an arduous escape to the U.S.A.   [Read more…]

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Uncategorized Tagged: Cooperation, Trust

Integrity Can Be Tricky But Too Important To Be Left To Others

03/10/2017 by sissel Leave a Comment

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Harriet Tubman on the Money. Credit: Mike Licht

 

Harriet Tubman is the face of the 20 US dollar banknote.

Harriet was born a slave, adamant in her claims for better conditions for her fellow slaves. She was continuously beaten by her owners. The beating included a head injury that gave her headache for the rest of her life. Her back looked like a battlefield.

She escaped to the north and started helping other slaves to escape to Canada. During the American civil war, she headed an army expedition and after the war she was involved in the female suffrage movement. One can hardly find a better example of a person possessing high integrity.

There is a dearth of integrity in the world. Corruption, poverty, conflicts and environmental degradation are mostly results of decisions made by people with little integrity. The same regards bad work environments causing stress and ill-health. People with authority, too often, do not act as the leaders and role models they are supposed to be. We cannot wait for “they” to change. We have to do it ourselves.  [Read more…]

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Uncategorized Tagged: Integrity, Maturity, Trust

Feel Safe and Flourish : A video with Simon Sinek

15/09/2017 by sissel Leave a Comment

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Credit: Aaron Davis

You have good friends at work, and though some tasks are tedious, you usually look forward to coming there.
Your colleagues support you; and you do your best to support them.
Most often you solve problems together, and your team leader clearly shows that she appreciate you and your efforts.
She sees you as a person, encourages you to develop and she focuses on common results.

Unfortunately, you belong to  the lucky ones.  According to a survey some years ago, merely 13% of workers world-wide are engaged in their jobs. In East Asia the figure was down to 6 %.

For aid workers, the main problem is not lack of engagement, but lack of support. According to a survey done by the Guardian, 79% of the respondent aid workers had experienced mental health issues. 66 % stated a lack of support from their employers as the main factor behind their ill-health.  [Read more…]

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Uncategorized Tagged: Cooperation, Trust

There is Nothing New Under the Sun: The Irrelevant UN Mission in Myanmar

20/07/2017 by sissel Leave a Comment

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Vikings always fighting. Credit: Hans Splinter

I read an article on IRIN the other day about the dysfunctional UN mission in Myanmar, and felt an urge to write some spontaneous, but heartfelt comments.

Myanmar – A Case In Point

What is described in the article is unfortunately not unique. Quite the contrary:

  • The absence of leadership. In Myanmar, through a UN representative who is apparently not suited for the job.
  • Internal, detrimental strife between different agencies.

This is, unfortunately, the case with many UN missions around the world. As a result, the UN is not able to take a stand and focus on essential matters.

Such as the horrendous situation of the Rohingyas in Myanmar.

Furthermore, this cowardice mixed with internal battles makes the UN look ridiculous, and more and more insignificant day by day.  [Read more…]

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Uncategorized Tagged: Cooperation, Trust

A Tale of Two Teams – The Good versus The Bad and The Ugly

10/05/2017 by sissel Leave a Comment

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 This is a story about two very different work teams I have been part of.

One of the teams was a UN team; the other was an emergency preparedness project team in Sweden. I leave it to you to guess which team was which one.

 

Credit : Rebecca Murphey

The Bad and The Ugly Team

This team was not actually a team. Its members worked side by side. The flow of information and number of interactions were kept to a minimum.

Some of the team members did not miss an opportunity to belittle other team members. It could be about rank, experience or anything else they could come up with. Many spent a lot of time and energy on dreading the next toxic email, or spiteful comment; and subsequently, strategies for how to handle them. [Read more…]

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Uncategorized Tagged: Trust, Work environment

Sunk Cost Bias. What Is That?

24/04/2017 by sissel Leave a Comment

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Burn money. Credit: http://taxrebate.org.uk/

Sunk cost bias is one the concepts presented in the World Development Report 2015: Mind, Society and Behaviour. Since I assume many of you do not have the time or the energy to read that report, I will try to give you an apprehensible explanation; and some reasons for why you should know.

 

In an aid context, sunk cost is when you persist with a project, despite its obvious flaws or absence of results. You, your office or your organization have invested so much money and effort into it that is hard to admit your failures. And the more you have invested, and the more you have lost, the more likely you are to head on; despite knowing that the project is beyond rescue.

Waste Aversion

Why do we humans do such a thing? Looking at it from the outside it seems rather stupid, to say the least. Especially if we claim ourselves to be well educated and “rational”? [Read more…]

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Uncategorized Tagged: Development, Trust, Work environment

“If I had a Little Money”: Why Money is Not the Biggest Challenge to International Aid.

29/03/2017 by sissel Leave a Comment

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ABBA – Money, money, money (pcutler, Flickr)

Ahead of last Year´s World Humanitarian Summit, Kristalina Georgieva wrote an article on IRIN about the biggest challenge to humanitarian aid not being money, but the lack of cooperation.

 

 

 

 

She was a member of the High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing. As a result of research made by the panel she described the aid community as : “An overcrowded market place… [where] turf wars duplicate effort and saps precious energy.”

I cannot agree with her more. Furthermore, this does not only hold truth for humanitarian aid but also development aid. The problems with non-cooperation within these two artificially separated communities are much the same.  [Read more…]

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Uncategorized Tagged: Cooperation, Trust

5 Essential Features of Maturity

10/03/2017 by sissel Leave a Comment

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Anne Frank (1929 -1945) – a role model of maturity

This blog is called ‘From Aid to Maturity.’ Hence, in this post I will talk to you about the importance of maturity. And why the human race, and the aid community in particular, needs to evolve from its present teenager stage into a more grown-up one. Teenagers are often self-centred and unable to see the wider effects of their behaviour.

 A mature person understands that they are responsible for their own lives; and are aware of how their behaviour and actions affect other people.

 

Sadly, I have experienced a large number of international aid people acting highly immature. This is a business where mature behaviour should be the norm, considering the severity of the causes we work on.

Agencies and individuals acting out of self-interest, refusing to cooperate or share information, are all signs of a profound lack of maturity. Even worse are the deliberate attempts to sabotage and hurt others for some short-sighted gains. We need to grow up. [Read more…]

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Uncategorized Tagged: Behaviour, Maturity, Trust

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