It is hot, the breezes are few, and I am staring at my assigned tasks on our team checklist, realizing again that I have nothing left to do. I am with my Integration Lab (i-Lab) team in Haiti, studying people’s relationship to chronic poverty. Of the four of us, only one is Haitian.
My Haitian teammate does the bulk of the work. During community visits, he registers participants, co-facilitates focus group discussions and participatory activities, conducts key informant interviews, and takes notes for all activities. Back at our hotel, he reads the notes for the rest of us to transcribe, explains their context, and highlights particular insights. Beyond activities directly related to research, he also handles local logistics, coordinating with the hotel, facilitators, recruiters, drivers, and the partner organization. He organizes our fun excursions. And, of course, he constantly translates for us blans (foreigners).
Haitian teammate conducts a key informant interview.
My non-Haitian teammates handle more of the support work for community visits: prepping the materials before we leave, recording the group discussions and participatory activities, handing out refreshments, and taking photos. During data processing, we take turns transcribing and coding notes and recording insights. One teammate confirms the schedules for our next community visits and another repacks our supplies.
My unique contributions are as follows: I track and distribute all the project money and I upload photos and documents into Google Drive.
Without our Haitian teammate, this project would be impossible. Conversely, my presence is optional. One teammate already helped track the money in the first two weeks; the rest is exceedingly simple.
So, why be here? What use am I? My anxiety is perpetual.
My teammates’ answers:
You are good at financial tracking.
Having a fourth person makes data processing easier.
Simply witnessing the participants’ testimonies, their living conditions, and life in Haiti will make you a better practitioner.
Everyone contributes what they can: your skills will be most useful during the spring and fall semesters, so it is okay to be doing less in the summer.
These answers are all true and kind. The first two show that my presence makes my team’s lives easier but that the project could still continue without me. My anxiety remains.
The third answer tries to shift the focus onto individual short-term benefits and long-term communal ones. Alone, this is unsatisfying. I am grateful to have experiences that will make me a better practitioner. However, I am uncomfortable with benefiting more from my time in Haiti than Haitians do. The argument that they may benefit later from the results of my team’s research circles back to the question of whether my presence is necessary. If the benefits could be realized without me, why be here? My anxiety remains.
So we come to the fourth answer and the true crux of the issue. What does it mean to be a valuable team member? For me, it means sharing skills that nobody else can (or at least to be particularly good at something), doing my fair share of work. Broadly, I fulfill these requirements. I have data analysis skills that my teammates do not. I am particularly good with finances. I contributed a lot to the project in the spring and will do so again in the fall. And yet it is difficult to shake the feeling that because my presence is not crucial in this very moment, it is unjustifiable. Learning to be okay with not being a top contributor, learning to believe others when they say I am doing enough (even if the workload is skewed!), has been the most difficult part of the summer.
I face a larger question—one that cannot be fully addressed in this post—about the distribution of benefit from field experiences. Field experience is valuable; the indirect benefits to communities hopefully do exist. Still, students gain more than the communities do, particularly in the short term: this experience leads to a master’s degree, which gives us power, access, and agency in the global development system. Meanwhile, the situation for our Haitian participants is unchanged. That balance is discomfiting, especially in a global affairs program, especially one dedicated to integral human development.
I will never be fully comfortable with gaining more from an experience than I contribute to it, and I do not want to be. That inner sense of fairness helps me be sensitive to potentially toxic dynamics on a personal, group, and communal level. But I do think finding value in my presence outside of how much I contribute at any given moment is just as important. My anxiety recedes.
Me, reading a book during a focus group discussion
Author’s note: My team and I were evacuated due to political instability shortly after this blog post was written. We are all safe and well. In whatever way suits you, please send Haiti your prayers, well wishes, and moral support as the country navigates their current crisis.
White Georgia marble rises tall over an ample green lawn. Chairs lie on this pristine patio, lush trees providing a refuge from the summer heat. Sitting on the grounds surrounding the Rhode Island State House in the city of Providence, I cannot help but marvel at the beauty and openness of this public space. In my hometown of Guayaquil, Ecuador, I am more used to parks and fences, to government buildings and guards; where there are beautiful green spaces, there are also signs restricting them to certain hours, activities, and kinds of people.
My Keough School colleague Farrae enjoying the sunset from the State House’s grounds in Providence, Rhode Island.
This thought process of mine portrays a logic long familiar to the field of international development and to policymakers in Latin America: there can be a tendency to praise the accomplishments of our neighbors to the north, including the United States and its ranks of prominent academics, while lamenting over what we supposedly have yet to achieve in the geographic south. However pervasive to this day, this perspective obscures the fact that there are other geographies that matter.
I stand up from my chair and enjoy the protection of the shade trees one last time, then I begin my commute to Smith Hill, a Providence neighborhood less than a block away from the state’s capitol. I venture across a narrow sidewalk overlooking a plethora of lanes and cars. This neighborhood is split in two by I-95, an interstate highway connecting the entire eastern coast of the US. Once on the other side, cracked and abundant pavement greets me, and the thick smell of smoke settles into my nostrils uninvited. Under the hot sun, with few trees and thus hardly any shade, I begin to sweat.
This artificial geography provides an example of vastly different living conditions among segregated areas, including lower climate resilience within low-income neighborhoods of color. It is now well documented that segregation efforts at both the federal and municipal levels have resulted in racially divided neighborhoods within US cities. The denial of federally backed mortgages to neighborhoods graded too “risky” to lend to was one of the main public policies used for such discrimination, as lending risk assessments were dependent on both the housing stock and racial composition of an area. As documented by Groundwork RI for the city of Providence, “neighborhoods of color and those with high numbers of immigrants saw property values drop or stagnate, and with that, resident- and city-led improvements to infrastructure also stalled.”
The view from the bridge crossing I-95, fenced to prevent pedestrians and/or objects from falling.
Smith Hill and other areas that received Cs and Ds, the worst neighborhood grades, suffer from higher concentrations of impervious pavement, lower levels of tree canopy, and higher temperatures as compared to their higher-rated counterparts. The end result is what one can term a “climate injustice,” with neighborhoods of color more exposed to flooding and heat, and citizens who must thus bear a disproportionate burden of the consequences brought upon by climate change.
Such injustices committed by this artificial geography within the supposed developed world make it clear that development is not so much about a transfer of knowledge or resources from the planetary north to “solve problems in the south,” but rather an issue of the “where” and the “who” within those spaces, as nation states and cities are far from being monoliths. The term “global south” should therefore be used to acknowledge the plight of marginalized peoples within the borders of wealthier countries. The Sustainable Development Goals recognize a need for global action on this topic, including within the US, by calling unto “all countries, rich, poor and middle-income, to promote prosperity while protecting the planet.”
Investigating climate justice policy in the US
The Keough School Integration Lab’s first-ever domestic project is a recognition of this pressing global need. In partnership with the National League of Cities’ Center for City Solutions, my master of global affairs colleagues Dara-Marie Raggay, Mohammad Farrae, and I are currently interviewing stakeholders across 6 US cities in the hopes of addressing the question: How might we accelerate the ability of cities to successfully implement effective policies for climate justice and equity? Our journey has so far taken us to Washington, DC, Takoma Park, MD, Providence, RI, and Cincinnati, OH, where we have observed the unequal effects posed by climate change and structural racism, but also the creative solutions seeking to undo these wrongs.
Our project, often spearheaded by directly affected communities in conjunction with city officials, seeks to compile successful climate justice initiatives, together with common challenges, so that cities beginning their climate justice and equity journey can do so on a stable foundation of expertise.
The i-Lab team interviews Amelia Rose, executive director of Groundwork RI, a non-profit dedicated to creating healthier, more resilient communities in Rhode Island.
The more we move forward, the more I have learnt by having my traditional conceptions of development work challenged, not only of where we should work, but even of who should be listened to. As we sometimes look at foreign nations, we must also look inward, giving nuance to the geographies of development that so often prevent us from seeing its global dimension. Sustainable development is needed in developing countries, in the US, and in the world.
If you had asked me a month ago what it means to practice integral human development in impact evaluation, I would not have said anything about timing. It has only been through my experience conducting field research in southern Malawi for my Integration Lab (i-Lab) project these past few weeks that I have realized why it matters so much when data is collected and how the timing of collection could interfere with researchers’ recognition and upholding of human dignity.
My team and I are here in Malawi to conduct a follow-up evaluation of the five-year Wellness and Agriculture for Life Advancement (WALA) project completed by Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in 2014. CRS implemented WALA in an effort to reduce food insecurity by promoting watershed management and installing watershed “treatments” (check dams, marker ridges, and in some cases, irrigation schemes) in beneficiary communities. Though an initial evaluation completed during project close-out suggested that the treatments were well-received, a rapid assessment completed in 2018 painted a different picture. The author of this 2018 evaluation reported that the benefits of the treatments had not motivated a majority of beneficiaries to maintain the various structures and, as a result, WALA failed to achieve its objectives. Hoping to understand these disheartening results and avoid repeating the same mistakes, CRS asked us to investigate these findings as well as the barriers and drivers to long-term sustainability for watershed interventions.
We have met countless farmers and leaders eager to tell us about all the ways their lives have improved.
With this report in mind, we began our field research thinking that if the 2018 researcher found the WALA treatments in disrepair and people unwilling to even talk about watershed management, then surely, three years later, we would find only the remnants of the structures and community members who had forgotten about WALA entirely. Surely. To say that the opposite is true feels like an understatement. We have now met countless farmers and leaders eager to tell us about all the ways their lives have improved since WALA and to take us on a tour of the treatments. The findings we have collected so far bear no resemblance to those presented in the 2018 report.
My classmate Arthur Ssembajja, standing next to an irrigation canal in Natama, Chiradzulu, southern Malawi during our tour of the community’s watershed treatment structures.
There is only one way that we can think to explain these discrepancies: timing. The author of the last report visited at peak harvest time. Not only is this when farmers’ labor-demand is the greatest, but it also happens to be during peak rainy season as well when the treatments are withstanding the greatest load. Thus, when the researcher arrived in December of that year, farmers were irritated to be sitting in focus groups when there was so much work to be done and treatments that were difficult to assess—if not entirely undetectable—due to the high water levels in the rivers at the time.
There are endless ways that development practitioners can fail, often unintentionally, to uphold the dignity of others.
This is not to say that the researcher’s findings were wrong, but his conclusions were. Moreover, I would argue that the conclusions he drew and the way he presented them in the report misconstrue not only the impact of WALA on the beneficiary communities, but also the beneficiaries themselves. In his report, he describes the irritated community members as greedy and suffering from “resource-dependency syndrome,” a portrayal that I believe violates their inherent human dignity.
There were times this past school year when I would find myself sitting in the back of Clemens Sedmak’s Integral Human Development class or Hal Culbertson’s Ethical Issues in Humanitarian Practice course overwhelmed by the endless ways that development practitioners can fail, often unintentionally, to uphold the dignity of others. I don’t wish to sound hypercritical or turn this blog post into a tirade; just as I wish to express empathy for the farmers who were irritated to be disturbed during harvest, I want to empathize with a fellow researcher who—I assume—did not choose to conduct his evaluation at such an inopportune time.
More than anything, though, I want to extract a lesson from this experience that I can carry with me as I pursue a career in development-related research myself. I want to remember that research design, like project design, must be human-centered and that at the end of the day, the recognition of human dignity must remain our greatest priority.
My classmates Arthur Ssembajja and Emily Kaplan observing a focus group led by facilitators Micter (left) and Moyenda (right) in Muluma, Chiradzulu.
This past summer, the four of us, representing all three concentrations within the Master of Global Affairs program, gathered to brainstorm answers to the question “what can we do?”; a question that plagued the United States following the murder of George Floyd. Oftentimes, we look back at significant historical moments such as the Civil Rights Era or other social movements and ask ourselves what we would have done. We believe we would have been at the frontlines of those movements, and we didn’t want to look back on this moment and wish we had done something meaningful. This impetus is what brought us together, with diverse perspectives and approaches, to address this moment and beyond.
In our own words
George Floyd’s murder was traumatic for us on individual and collective levels. This trauma was compounded by COVID-19 and the heightened isolation we all experienced. We came up with the idea of having a healing circle, an idea that came from our recognition of our own need to heal, and out of concern for peers who more recently started grappling with the realities of racial injustice since moving to the United States. We were also deeply concerned about our Black classmates. We did not want them to grieve and navigate the moment alone. Although we previously engaged in theoretical conversations in classes such as Integral Human Development, we felt that we had not only the responsibility, but also the opportunity, to go further.
“We didn’t want to look back on this moment and wish we had done something more meaningful.”
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder we saw our group chat, once a place for silly memes, assignment deadlines, and birthday celebrations, evolve into a space for support, healing, and solidarity. We noticed glimmers of healing, and decided we needed a more organized space to digest our experiences and place in this moment. Thus, the idea for a healing circle was born.
As women of color we experience different faces of marginalization and oppression, particularly through anti-Blackness, racism and colonialism. We were, and continue to be, vulnerable in this moment and sought to strengthen solidarity with our friends. Many of our friends who seek to be allies are also impacted by these structures of oppression. We believe that friendship is most authentic when informed by a knowing and recognition of shared experiences with racism and dehumanization. Through the healing circle, we sought to digest the moment and our experiences of and relationships with racism in a safe and accountable space. We wanted to understand these experiences together and reach a shared understanding. We sought to overcome feelings of powerlessness by reaching out to others, to show radical care for them and ourselves. We also hoped this circle would create momentum for further action.
Creating the circle
Hailing from different countries and backgrounds and each with our own unique experience with racism and colonization, the four of us embodied the intersectional and interdisciplinary approach that we took towards processing these issues in solidarity with each other.
Initially we envisioned this effort as a healing conversation among our peers that would give all participants the opportunity to share thoughts, feelings, and responses to the longstanding and current situation in the US regarding race and police brutality. We hoped that every member of our cohort would join us, as we believed (and still believe) that we would all benefit from this conversation as scholars and as practitioners. In order to ensure maximum participation, we sent a poll to our cohort to find out which day and time would work best for the majority of people.
“As women of color we experience marginalization and oppression. We were, and continue to be, vulnerable in this moment and sought to strengthen solidarity with our friends.”
In determining the strategy for the event, through countless meetings and discussions among the four of us, we decided to rename our healing circle as a “talking circle.” Our rationale was that this conversation was only the beginning of a longer journey through which aspects of healing would be explored individually and collectively.
However, we knew that we did not want this space merely to be a venting session. Rather, we envisioned it as the development of a healing practice, one whose participants understood that racial justice is their problem too. Thus, we sought the help of other scholars, practitioners, and experts, such as Professor Laurie Nathan,Professor Justin DeLeon, Professor Clemens Sedmak, and others. Using their guidance, we constructed the circle as a series of open-ended questions and opportunities for sharing. We considered requesting the Keough School to sanction this circle and mandate participation. We eventually decided against taking this route because we agreed that people are in different phases of engagement with racial justice. We wanted to meet people where they are.
Inside the talking circle
The virtual talking circle began like most Zoom calls. There was the brief silence followed by warm reunions as we virtually reunited with friends after months of isolation. As facilitators, we also felt the quiet relief of seeing more participants trickle onto the call. Our conversation began with a short explanation of the talking circle. We discussed our hopes for the conversation to serve as a collective space for processing the summer, which would ultimately move us towards pursuing racial justice as individuals and as a collective. We asked a series of introductory questions such as “what do you hope to receive from the conversation and what do you hope to bring into the space?”. Some came ready to participate; many came to listen and to learn.
“Our conversation turned towards taking action, and we wrestled with the paradox of valuing both safety and solidarity.”
When the moment was right we dove into our first question: “what was your first experience with race, and how did it make you feel?”. We knew this question was complicated given the diversity of our cohort and our assumption that race was a fairly new concept for many of our international colleagues. As our friends shared their experiences we saw the nuances and complexities of race unfold. Peers discussed experiences ranging from colorism and privilege in the Middle East to sanctioned racial discrimination in the US. These conversations showed us how our awareness of race, privilege, and oppression begins early. Irrespective of our national origin, we are all conditioned to remain silent and accept the status quo. Inequality is reproduced as we are socialized to dehumanize through blind acceptance of wrongs reinforced by our families, our peers, and even our educational institutions.
Our conversation turned towards taking action, and we wrestled with the paradox of valuing both safety and solidarity. One colleague mentioned that true solidarity may require the privileged to willingly sacrifice their safety to stand with the marginalized so that one day we all can experience safety equally. The energy of our conversation transcended the virtual barriers as the comment resonated in the virtual space. Our conversation on safety and solidary revealed the significance of the moment as feelings of community and solidarity materialized in our bodies. Our individual stories became bridges for deepening our connections and commitment to each other. Thus, talking became healing.
Moving forward
To help continue this collaborative endeavor of racial justice, we sought answers from our colleagues who attended the talking circle. A survey afterward indicated that our colleagues were interested in maintaining these conversations. Some suggested different themes of how education can be used to foster or fight against racism, disability rights awareness and promotion, and even learning how to be an effective ally and the essential facts to back up our arguments with naysayers.
Wrapping up the talking circle was difficult for us. We wanted this racial justice initiative to continue, and we wanted this to be more than just dialogue. We knew that we needed to do more than just continue to “talk” about these things. We need situations to change, improve, transform.
One of the limitations that we know we are up against is that graduate student life is short-lived. Graduate students only remain at Notre Dame for a couple of years. We began brainstorming how we are to embed and sustain this initiative of racial justice. Who is supposed to maintain racial justice movement within the Keough School and the broader Notre Dame system? Most importantly, should the responsibility solely remain with the students?
Diversity, inclusion, and representation are great. But how can we go even further in facilitating change to transform structures that maintain the status quo? We would welcome the implementation of permanent structures or programs on our campus that would ensure continued engagement with transforming racism and systemic dehumanization for students, faculty, and staff. We believe this can best be achieved through spaces where students, staff, and faculty can collectively build a vision for a shared future.
When we planned for the summer as master of global affairs students, we expected to have rich in-person field experiences in South Africa, Tunisia, and the Philippines. Some of us even contacted family and friends in these countries and made arrangements to see them. We devised our research plan using methods like focus group discussions and human-centered design workshops—methods that, we hoped, would help to improve development outcomes within the private sector.
But the surprise of a global pandemic disrupted all of these plans, prompting us to adapt and ultimately pivot to online fieldwork. This gave us a chance to test our assumptions and expectations about fieldwork, learn about ourselves as individuals and as a team, and experience an enriching partnership with Chemonics International that will still contribute to better involvement of the private sector in achieving development outcomes.
Originally, our i-Lab team expected to work with four projects in three countries. Throughout the spring semester, we discussed preliminary ideas about our plans for working together in the summer. However, the outlook became gloomier in April, and this continued into May, when we were to begin our fieldwork.
We started our pivot towards virtual fieldwork in mid-May with only two projects out of the four ready to work with us. We were doubtful about the feasibility of using our initial toolkit, confused about our next steps, and questioning the value of any work we would produce in this remote work mode. We spent hours discussing our assumptions and fears internally as a team, with our advisor, Melissa Paulsen, and with our partner liaisons, Chemonics’ Universities Partnerships Team. These open conversations helped us reaffirm our commitment to the project and prepared us to change our outlook on uncertainty and equip ourselves for the many potential scenarios and directions the project might now take.
We started by revisiting our action plan and intended methods of data collection. We agreed to do so regularly and update our plan and methods vigorously as we moved forward. We started by prioritizing our Private Sector Engagement (PSE) in-depth survey for the PSE practices within Chemonics as an organization to formulate our understanding of the needs of our partner. The survey had a high response rate and received input from 28 different ongoing projects in 42 countries. The results of our survey informed our project plan and were helpful for Chemonics to realize where their field staff faces bottlenecks when it comes to PSE, as highlighted in this blogpost on Chemonics website. Based on the survey, we decided to focus more on Key Informant Interviews and desktop research as our primary tools for data collection and deliverable formulation. In this task we collaborated closely with the Chemonics PSE SMART Team.
PSE Survey Geographic reach covering 42 countries, shown on the above map.
At the same time, our partner, Chemonics, worked with us to ensure that this was a rich learning experience for us. As a result, we included two short-term PSE focused projects with different deliverables for the health supply chain team within Chemonics and another project in Namibia involving water delivery and maintenance systems. So instead of the initial four projects we had in our proposal, we ended up engaging closely with five projects and teams in eight different countries and had four final deliverables instead of one! It is important to note that we worked extremely hard to guarantee that the quality of our work was consistent and exceptional throughout the different components of our project. The task was challenging, especially with our four team members being in four different time zones, with up to a 12-hour difference. All of this was possible because of those conversations we had early in the summer, where we decided to reach beyond our expectations of how our summer should be and focus on adapting to what our summer actually was.
Below are four lessons we learned from our remote i-Lab field experience.
Accepting Uncertainty and Celebrating It
One of the biggest challenges that we experienced as a team was getting comfortable with the uncertainty of how our project would continue unfolding. It is worth mentioning that this did not mean we waited for things to happen to improve our outcome magically, but rather became completely okay with what might happen next. To do this, we focused on distinguishing between the things within our reach and those outside of our control. Once we made this distinction, it was easier to make a plan and take concrete steps to reach our objective. Recall that when we first started our i-Lab project, we prioritized our data collection on projects that were ready to work with us and co-designed an in-depth analysis survey that guided us on how we would shape our final deliverable. Once we analyzed the results of our data survey, we learned that our partner’s top need was to provide successful examples of PSE in case studies format. This finding guided our next steps.
Practicing Open Communication
Our next key takeaway from our fieldwork was the importance of open communication in all aspects of our project. This helped us align expectations within our internal team as well with our partner. Sharing our challenges and fears openly and immediately allowed us to find solutions to any arising issues instead of delaying conflicts that could jeopardize the quality of our project given our 9-week constraint. Being intentional about communication definitely challenged us outside of our comfort zone, as some of us were intimidated to vocalize concerns and disagreements. Still, it paved the way for us to meet deadlines and adapt our strategy to accomplish the objectives of our fieldwork. For example, our team was split between specializing entirely into different lead roles and keeping lead roles but sharing a smaller degree of responsibilities in other projects. After communicating this concern, we were able to come up with a compromise that allowed us to each focus on a lead project, but continue to support our teammates. What also made this much easier was that our liaisons were very understanding and receptive to our concerns. They validated many of these concerns and worked with us closely to address them throughout the summer.
Strategic Planning i-Lab meeting using creative, collaborative-online Miro platform.
Working Remotely And Creatively
Working remotely did not mean we could not collaborate creatively. Our team learned to use different collaborative tools to foster creativity and inclusivity internally and externally. Even working remotely, we were aware some of us were more comfortable voicing ideas than others, so reaching a consensus that truly reflected everyone’s opinion could be difficult. However, we were intentional about using online tools that allowed everyone to participate and make our sessions more engaging/interactive. One form of collaboration we used was GroupMaps during a stakeholder mapping session we held with our liaison from the South Africa team. This allowed us to brainstorm in real time and then as a group discuss the rankings of the key players and prioritize key stakeholders for interviews. Using these tools helped us make our decision-making process more effective and even fun.
Leaning into the Team
The last takeaway that resonated with our team was the value of leaning in. While we worked from four different time zones, we were able to support each other in times of need. We conducted interviews that took place at 4 a.m., and thankfully, we could count on each other to take turns and perform these in pairs. We were intentional about dedicating a space to check in during our weekly meetings and even followed up after long days of work to see how we were doing.
This value of leaning in pushed us to ask for a support system when we most need it. For instance, when we faced barriers or roadblocks securing Key Informant Interviews in Namibia, we leaned into our partner in South Africa to leverage networks that ultimately enhanced the quality of our research and led us to our targeted interviewees.
Looking back at our summer fieldwork, we cannot help but smile. We smile because of how optimistically we thought things would unfold for us. But we also smile because we are proud of how we made things work for ourselves despite the obstacles and made this past summer a richer learning experience than we could ever imagine!
One of Catholic Relief Services’ (CRS) mottos is to “embrace the uncertainty.” Unbeknownst to us, this mindset would assist us, the “CRS Homies’—Syeda (Fiana) Arbab, Kara Venzian, and Sofia Piecuch—in navigating the reality of the coronavirus pandemic. As part of its 2030 Vision, CRS plans to shift its disaster response from a focus on “shelters and settlements” to “homes and communities.” CRS tasked our i-Lab team with gathering data to understand how refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) perceive and create “home.”
CRS Homies selfie! (From left to right: Kara Venzian, Fiana Arbab, Sofia Piecuch.)
When the quarantine began, our team was required to pivot from our original project implementation plan to our plan B. Plan B was designed for us to delegate leading the research to local CRS staff while relying completely on local data enumerators, transcribers, and translators. As project managers from afar, we needed to be creative in assessing the capacity of our three different field teams, catering our communication to their needs, and being intentional about building relationships with them– all while navigating the uncertainty of the pandemic.
While our initial start date for research was mid- to late May, lockdowns and restrictions were extended repeatedly, ultimately delaying our research in Uganda by two weeks and in Myanmar by a whole month. Our pre-pandemic proposal sought to conduct six focus groups, six mixed method activities, 40 interviews, 20 photography sessions and 200 surveys per country. However, in light of the increasing COVID-19 cases around the world, we simultaneously elaborated a plan B and C.
Plan B involved remote data gathering with local field staff by completing six focus groups, 40 interviews, 20 photography activities, and 90 surveys per country. Plan C required us to go completely virtual in data gathering, utilizing platforms like WhatsApp, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and remote survey platforms like Mechanical Turk, targeted to our countries of interest, as backup plans. We were prepared to implement either plan on any given notice, and ultimately were able to implement Plan B. Nonetheless, when embracing uncertainty, local conditions with layered complications had to be considered.
Due to lockdowns, refugees in Uganda and IDPs in Myanmar faced rising tensions at the intersection of poverty, food insecurity, access to information, and complications from large informal economic sectors (such as migrant workers crossing borders for temporary jobs). Furthermore, refugee and IDP camps and settlements face higher rates of health issues, sometimes having up to 60 times higher mortality rates when compared to host countries. In addition to pandemic-related complications, each refugee and IDP context faced its own challenges due to climate change, civil conflicts and war, food insecurity, poverty, corruption, and coordination failures. These difficulties were also coupled with uncertainties that arose from natural disasters.
Our team sought to navigate these conditions in a way that our research could be implemented effectively without being extractive or ignorant of these realities. We intentionally built our research instruments in a trauma-informed way, actively avoiding any questions that could bring forth bad memories, and reviewed each question extensively with in-country staff to maintain our ethical commitment to the dignity and well-being of people we engaged in this research. In general, we had expected refugee and IDP camps and settlements to be ever-changing and uncertain landscapes to navigate, but we could have never anticipated to what extent.
This photo was taken during the i-Lab Global Partner Forum in February 2020, where our journey with CRS began. Pictured, from left to right, is Syeda (Fiana) Arbab, Joe Weber (CRS liaison), Sofia Piecuch, and Kara Venzian.
This disaster-stricken reality required flexibility of deadlines for staff members who were constantly pulled in multiple directions to manage many emergencies at once. Additionally, when coordinating with remote staff under pandemic conditions, an immense challenge was navigating the time zone difference. Our working day in Uganda began at 2am and ended at 9am, while in Myanmar work began at 10:30pm and ended at 6:30am. At many points we were working in both countries, juggling late night meetings with Myanmar and middle-of-night meetings with Uganda, all while balancing our own personal commitments based in the States.
We recognize how unsustainable it is for our physical and mental health to be actively engaged in this work around the clock like this. Fortunately (for this reason), we spent a maximum of five weeks working in each country, with the finish line never feeling too far off, giving us something to count down to: a regular sleep schedule.
In addition to difficulties with time zones, managing a remote staff also had its complications. Each time training was conducted, we veered from the plan in unexpected ways. Internet connectivity issues caused disruptions during training sessions as well as late starts. Local conditions (for example, the weather) determined whether to collect data on any specific day. Lack of clear communication coupled with the time difference occasionally delayed research, where we had to adjust our expectations and add extra days of hired staff time in order to meet our desired number of observations. Awareness of cultural differences was vital for delegating tasks to staff and achieving results. Furthermore, knowledge of local contexts was necessary to communicate, not only with staff members, but also with key informants (“who could have guessed the UNHCR representative preferred to be contacted over WhatsApp?”).
To be accessible in real time and to bond with our local teams, we decided to coordinate with staff in a more casual way. In Uganda, we created a WhatsApp group where we could discuss daily assignments and give immediate feedback (when we were awake).
Here we have pictured the Kyangwali (Uganda) team testing our instruments using CRS tablets during our hybrid (virtual with the support of local staff) training sessions.
For Myanmar, we created a Facebook Messenger group. Among all teams, we insisted on finding ways to be personable despite the distance (and screens) between us—we regularly sent selfies of ourselves working, and would often receive them from the team having breakfast or in training sessions together. This interaction was one of the highlights when managing our teams; we loved to put names to faces and to personalize our engagement beyond familiarity with their titles of “enumerator,” “translator,” or “transcriber.”
Pictured is our in-country staff in Myanmar, composed entirely of KMSS (Karuna Mission Social Solidarity) staff in Bhamo, Yangon.
These informal chat groups also bridged an equity gap, as not everyone on our staff had email accounts; many were refugees themselves and did not have access to laptops. Thus, the less-formal interaction pathways were the most accessible way to communicate, especially instantaneously.
Our distance required us to rely heavily on our excellent staff, without whom we could not have effectively conducted the research. We had to be prepared to adapt to their varying levels of expertise—with some being familiar with CommCare (our data collection app) and some having no familiarity at all—and worked to capitalize on their strengths. Additionally, we recognized that our project was one of several for some people, who, especially during the pandemic, were juggling many responsibilities. Therefore, we learned to adjust to differing levels of responsiveness from field staff. There were some points where our team had to relinquish control and let whatever was going to happen, happen. We became familiar, although never comfortable, with the chaos this distant management required, and learned to live with it.
We were able to join our team in the Bidibidi Settlement (Uganda), virtually, for their final debrief and celebration dinner! The wonderful staff from CRS Yumbe and local enumerators, translators and transcribers seemed to have a great time.
Our State-side daily realities also provided challenges. For example, internet limitations confined us to the same space during workdays, demanding creativity when we had multiple meetings at the same time. Though our desire was originally to find an official office space, we have instead been able to use one of our members’ studio apartments (which has proved ideal, especially during overnighters). Countless key informant interviews were conducted in our workspace’s closet, as the studio apartment did not provide different spaces to operate in while conducting separate meetings. Without the support of each other, solutions like this could not have come about. We are grateful to have been a part of such a flexible team that has had a strong dedication to this project.
Ultimately, this project demanded flexibility from us in ways we never expected, and forced us to generate innovative strategies to address any uncertainties that arose. Here are some of our key takeaways:
1) We are glad that we made the decision to work together in South Bend. Without in-person cooperation, our work would have been less cohesive, less enjoyable, and less efficient.
2) Through messaging apps, email, video calls, and final debrief dinners (and selfies), we are glad to have gotten to know the 34 staff members that we worked with. This allowed us not only to receive quality work from field staff, but also gave us the opportunity to contribute to their professional development through the creation of professional certificates, resume pointers, and passing along potential employment/education opportunities.
3) Along the same lines, we observe that working remotely and relying on local staff contributes toward sustainable, localized efforts and responses.
Despite the challenges, we have still been able to receive high quality data. We cannot be more grateful for a huge challenge well met and a successful project, one that has broadened our knowledge of project implementation. We recognized all of these uncertainties and have loved the process of being uncomfortable while growing our own capabilities as project managers and consultant-researchers.
“…More like an inquiry. Probing the theory and investigating your interests—for the moment and in time. Seeking the connection and the tension between practice and theory. A search for the location of the individual who is likely impacted and affected by violence and conflict. A rhythmic step toward the hope that the music strums on. An investigation into the connection between psychosocial wellbeing, support, and sustainable peacebuilding.”
This is how I would describe my internship. A curiosity of sorts and a learning process linking me to the work of protection and the relationships therein in a moment to moment movement towards peacebuilding.
I have interned with the Catholic Relief Services EQUIP (Equity, Inclusion, and Peacebuilding) department since July 2019. My focus was on protection and youth in peacebuilding. CRS is a relief and development organization that often works with local partners to promote transformative and sustainable change. Using the holistic approach of integral human development, CRS has programs in agriculture, emergency response and recovery, health, education, microfinance, water security, youth, justice and peacebuilding, and partnership and capacity strengthening.
Participants group photo outside the US Capitol building during the US Peacebuilding Advocacy to inform lawmakers about the proposed draft Youth, Peace, and Security legislation. Photo courtesy of Alliance for Peacebuilding.
During my time here, I have engaged in both policy formulation around protection issues and advocacy on upcoming Youth, Peace and Security legislation while leaning a lot on my policy analysis lessons at the Keough School. I was based in the Baltimore CRS Headquarters and had proximity to Congress in Washington, DC.
An invitation into planning and design transformed to participation in formulating guiding principles for organizational and humanitarian response in protection and prevention from sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA). We explored the role of language and culture in PSEA when working in communities. In a field that works with communities towards change, language and culture often determine the expression of violence and, consequently, the social transformation. What does this mean for organizations that choose to use the official languages in multilingual and multicultural countries? Or even the big four languages—English, French, Spanish, and Arabic—in global contexts? By creating a language criteria to promote inclusion, who gets excluded in the communication?
A written image helping to distill conversations on local peacebuilding during the AfP Conference in Washington, DC.
I believe an anthropological reflection would give insight here. The outcomes of this process established the need for incorporating more languages into our roles in community engagement and a survivor-centered approach to acknowledge the asymmetry in agency and power for the vulnerable and affected communities. We must recognize the gender and resource interplay in the conflicts that can get hushed in the search for survival. Everyday. The discussions expressed the importance of focusing on prevention and indicated that when the focus is protection, the root cause is yet to be addressed. Ultimately, the policy called for the need to listen to the local, not just for “box checking,” but with the intention of yielding power and co-creating change to support the human security of survivors.
As CRS adjusted its strategic plan, I had a didactic experience reflecting on the visioning and implementation of peacebuilding into different programming initiatives. What would strategic peacebuilding look like, for instance, in health and gender focused initiatives? Given that implementers at the community level were involved in this process, the relationship and, in some cases, the tension between practice and theory was evident.
As the different actors held this tension with both curiosity and openness to experiment with an idea, I was encouraged. You see, as a learning peacebuilder, I am aware that we certainly do not have the answers or solutions to the violence and conflict in our world today. By all means, we try, we show up, we ask questions and seek to hear how communities and people envision peace. Then, we accompany the process and the people, we implement the ideas, and sometimes we build and inform the idea through feedback and functional relationships in that space. It sounds simple, but so does a surgical process on paper. Until you begin the dissection and realize that this is an intricate process needing attention, skill, listening, and presence with human beings—all at the same time and in an appropriate environment. And conflict and violence are not predictable.
When I began the examination of the implementation of the Singing to the Lions workshop, I found myself often interrogating the political, social, economic, and cultural contexts of the participants. Singing to the Lions is a psycho-education workshop to build resilience and foster social cohesion among children in contexts of violence and conflict. When noticing resilience in a community, we also need to look at the local and shared underlying structures making them resilient and reinforcing them toward sustainable peacebuilding. This provides the appreciative inquiry into how well the environment fosters the individual’s psychosocial wellbeing and possibilities of sustainable peace.
In this process, I found that although the target audience is children, depending on their context and needs, different implementers have “cherry-picked” what works for their contexts and other identities (age and role). Certainly, this modification impacts how the evaluation of such an approach works, even with a preexisting monitoring and evaluation process. What would contextual indicators look like from the perspective of the individual in this case? Please ponder with me here.
Finally, I wonder, “what, who and how” have I become as a nascent peacebuilder? I don’t wish to get lost in the process and emerge without a soul in the end. I am grateful for the community of colleagues that held me in the learning and the inquiry. I am present to the local communities where my feet journeyed for this transient time. As I reflect with hope for those who continually work and seek change, I join you all in the reflective practice, in the study, and in being.
Me, at the CRS headquarters office in Baltimore, Maryland.
When MP Maisara Dandamun Latiph informed me that my internship would entail frequent travel to Cotabato City, Maguindanao, and Marawi City, Lanao del Sur, I said yes excitedly. I also could not shake my latent worry about traveling to Marawi City.
Marawi was once a thriving, picturesque city on a lake, and capital city to the Province of Lanao del Sur in the Philippines. Unlike the rest of the Filipino population, the majority of the people within Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), including Marawi, are Muslim. Hence, Marawi is also formally known as the Islamic City of Marawi, distinguishing itself within the Christian majority state of the Philippines.
Having now visited the city several times as a part of my six-month field immersion project, here is a glimpse of the story of Marawi from my observation.
About my peacebuilding internship
I am currently the legal researcher for Attorney Maisara Dandamun Latiph, one of the 80 members of Bangsamoro parliament. She is a lawyer and one of the drafters of the Bangsamoro Organic Law, a Philippine law that provided for the establishment of the political entity currently known as the BARMM. She is appointed by the President.
In my role, I attend parliamentary sessions and listen to their debates on various issues, ranging from the dengue and polio outbreaks to Department of Public Works projects and annual budget planning. I then research issues for MP Maisara based on what the office needs and assist with the drafting of various documents from letters to resolutions to draft bills.
During our onboarding process, MP Maisara briefed me on several of her priority legislative issues, which ranged from education and Islamic banking to lake conservation and protection of vulnerable populations.
Parliamentary Plenary Session, Shariff Kabunsuan Cultural Complex Hall, Cotabato City, Maguindanao.
Focus on Lake Lanao
As a member of parliament, one of the legislative priorities of MP Maisara is the rehabilitation and conservation of Lake Lanao. As a native Meranao, she has a cultural attachment to the lake, in part because the Meranao people derive their name from it. “Ranao” or “Ranaw” within the Meranao local vernacular means “lake,” so “Meranao” means “people of the lake.”
Numerous articles and pieces of research have highlighted the plight of Lake Lanao due to unsustainable water use by various stakeholders and industries, including the power industry, local agriculture, household wastewater from the surrounding settlement area, and, more recently, effects of the Marawi siege. Even hydropower plants, despite championing their cause as “green” and low carbon, pose a danger to the lake’s water balance and biodiversity. Compounded by the threat of climate change, there is a looming threat that the lake and its water tributaries will go dry.
If that happens, what happens to the Meranao people? What will the people of the lake become without their namesake?
My first visit to Marawi City was to assist MP Maisara in hosting her first-ever public consultation on the issue of Lake Lanao rehabilitation and conservation. Participants agreed that the best next step would be to establish a Lake Development Authority overseeing the conservation and sustainable use of the lake’s various resources. Since then, we have had several meetings with a technical working group to formulate a better bill, which establishes a Development Authority.
A visit to Marawi’s most affected area with the other staff and Laguna Lake Development Authority guests from Manila—What expression should you make?
Even those who did not live in the most affected area have left the city to settle in Iligan City or Cagayan de Oro. The memory of that day still haunts them.
Marawi Rehabilitation: Opportunity?
The process of Marawi rehabilitation and protection of Lake Lanao showcases an obvious opportunity for a better and more sustainable development plan.
When it comes to post-conflict environmental peacebuilding, water has long been vital for building sustainable peace and for providing immediate societal benefits. I think Marawi and its proximity to Lake Lanao represent what long-term post-conflict peacebuilding should look like.
The location of Marawi City and Lake Lanao within Lanao del Sur.
The emerging notion in environmental peacebuilding is that by taking environmental issues into post-conflict peacebuilding policies it will contribute to sustainable peace. Instead of making the environment an afterthought in constructing post-conflict and development plans, the environment needs to be at the foundation of the framework. The logic goes as follows: sound environmental governance, legislated and implemented during the transition period, will contribute to sustainable and lasting peace to minimize conflict over resources.
I hope that the people, the Government of Philippines, and the Bangsamoro Government do not fall into the common trap of sacrificing the environment in exchange for short-term economic development. Long-term planning is more crucial, as the threat of climate change is no longer near but here already. An integrated approach to the environment, conflict, and peace are imperative for the Government’s program and policy as well as incoming development projects to the area.
Multidisciplinary Approach in the Future
Environmental peacebuilding draws its body of knowledge from various disciplines. In this particular case, from environmental conservation, structural-institutional change, and post-conflict peacebuilding (trauma healing, etc.). As students of the Keough School, we will encounter more complex challenges upon graduation nowadays, especially problems exacerbated by climate change. With its interdisciplinary approach and mix of several concentrations, hopefully the Keough School can prepare students for challenging circumstances like these.
For me, Marawi rehabilitation represents the complexity and scale of challenges that environmental, peacebuilding, and development actors will increasingly face.
How does one move from living “with” the people to living “among” the people without having one’s“otherness” or “foreignness” amplified in everyday life? This and many other questions continued to occupy my mind the moment I began my field experience in Kenya.
I had learned in my Ethnographic Methods for Peace Research class various ways of navigating the field, taking conscious note of one’s positionality and reflexivity in research contexts. My experience in Kenya has been full of opportunities for reflections and making observations that help to understand how my identity in a particular context shapes events around me. I’m interning with the Life and Peace Institute’s Kenya Program in Nairobi. LPI is an international center for conflict transformation that worksin the Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes region.
How Sustained Dialogue Prepares Youth For Change
As a non-Kiswahili speaker, I have struggled to interactwith young people, the constituents of my field engagement, given their preference for sheng or Kiswahili slang. This is one point where my identity becomes an opportunity for building relationships and friendships, as many of the youth participants at the Sustained Dialogue (SD) sessions (LPI’s pilot program for the youth as drivers of peace) are fascinated by the uniqueness of my name, opening spacefor interaction and mutual exchanges. Most of my time at LPI isspent listeningto young people’sstories, issues, and challenges, and their hopes for a better future. The youth participants at the SD sessions get to spend seven months experiencing the five stages of Sustained Dialogue: The Who, The What, The Why, The How, and The Now! The SD session is designed to enable youth participants to become more aware of their issues, understand each other, and utilize the process of dialogue to transform tense relationships while acquiring skills that will help them shape their future.
Meeting and discussing with youth moderators during a Sustained Dialogue session.
In spending quality time with these youth, I have been exposed to the realities of being a struggling young person in Kenya. Many young people in Kenya are facing strained relationships with security forces, especially the police. Some of them emphasized the lack of trust between security actors and young people, which results in profiling, indifference, and extra-judicial killings. There is a high rate of crime involving or suspecting youths. As a result, it has become a norm to categorize the youth population as “unsafe” and “harmful” thereby creating prejudices and biases on the capacity of youth to be agents of change. However, it has become unpopular to look beyond these stereotypes and focus and assess whether every youth is unsafe or harmful as described.
When I look at the long process of SD, the seven months of activities, and how committed these youth have been so far, I wonderwhy we can’t see the hope in them for a better future. These youth have learned the physical, social, and psychological dimensions of supporting one another. They’ve learned to cope with their peers’ stories of trauma and tackle challenges together. They have learned the process of dialogue and how to be accommodating, tolerant, and supportive of one another. I have realized that when you confront reality, abstract concepts become difficult to talk about but easy to understand.
Participating in exchange, learning and reflection sessions in Nakuru with SD youth moderators.
Transforming Themselves To Transform Others
During this transformative process, I have come to know these youth as “hopeful”. The resilience they have shown through peace actions and community service is one that is born out of a conscious desire for constructive social change. Many of these youth have used the SD sessions to transform themselves from passive observers to active peacebuilders in their communities. They’ve transformed themselves to transform others. Given the diversity of participants, the process has led to changes in attitudes—between Muslims and Christians, different tribes, and the majority-minority divides—thus, building trust and relationships that transcend prejudice and generational biases.
I have participated in many of the activities organized by these youth. They have used graffiti messages to demonstratehope and encourage their peers to avoid crime; they have provided bins in public places that are targets for waste accumulation; they have planted trees to support climate action and to remind themselves that they are on a journey of growth; they have raised awareness and campaigned against electoral violence in various counties; they have coordinated dialogues for youth in the streets;they have used theatre and other arts to make peace less remote to the local people; and they have equally been involved in resolving conflicts among youth from different communities.
Taking the “change is in your hands” placard from a fellow youth during an awareness campaign in Eastleigh alongside International Day of Peace.
These are various ways the hope-filledyouth are driving the wheel of change, bringing their peers together and addressing the local dynamics of youth issues using a local response that propels others into action. Many reformed youth attribute their change of action to the very inspiration they got from the SD participants during their peace actions in communities. Many are expressing how they’ve been lured into the good life by their peers who are hopeful for a better future for them.
An overlook of the Westlands neighborhood from my apartment in Nairobi.
Given my current interest in the links between structural violence, inequality, and transitional justice, the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR) in Cape Town, South Africa, has been the ideal place to carry out research for my MGA capstone project. Initially, my inclination was to choose a Latin American country, given that all of my professional and academic experience up to that point had focused on Latin America, particularly on human rights and U.S. foreign policy in the region. However, I decided that, given the opportunity to conduct research as part of my Master of Global Affairs program, I should do so in a new context to compare, learn, and analyze solutions carried out by other countries for problems similar to those in my own region.
Understanding South Africa’s history
As I read about South Africa in a post-apartheid era, one thing was clear to me: the peace negotiations and the transitional justice process—mainly focused on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)—were successful in stopping direct violence, leading to democracy and the creation of a new constitution. The constitution appears comprehensive and inclusive of all South Africans; however, the promises of change mostly remain on paper and the structural foundations of apartheid are still in place.
South Africa is the most unequal country in the world. This inequality results in huge socioeconomic issues such as poverty and unemployment as well as limited access to basic services such as health, sanitation, and education for the majority of the Black population.
Visiting the District Six museum. District Six is a former residential area in Cape Town. More than 60,000 people were forcibly removed by the apartheid government during the 1970s and it was declared a whites-only area.
South Africa and Guatemala: Cases of Historical Inequalities unaddressed during Transitional Justice Processes
As I now study the South African case, I find connections with the Guatemalan case, a country where a comprehensive peace agreement was finalized in 1996 after years of civil conflict.
Prior to joining the Keough School, I worked in Guatemala and saw firsthand how, despite an inclusive peace agreement signed almost 25 years ago, the indigenous people (who were the main victims of the conflict) are still living in poverty, marginalization, as well as enduring criminal violence and militarization. Both countries have a deep history of embedded racism and inequality, which to this day remain unsolved behind promises of peace and reconciliation.
My research is a case-study-based approach regarding South Africa and Guatemala. I focus on moments of missed opportunities, turning points, and failed policies that resulted in the inequality and structural violence still present in both cases—even after inclusive transitional documents. I would like to explore these questions for both cases, keeping in mind the economic and political contexts, as well as the international and external pressures both countries faced at the time of transition. As I collect my data in South Africa, I have five topics of emphasis that transitional justice processes fail to address: socioeconomic inequality, gender justice, security reform, mental health, and issues of land and other natural resources.
In front of the South African Parliament where youth came together to demand climate change action.
Comparative findings thus far
In the case of South Africa,the TRC’s narrow and legalistic definitions of justice and violence resulted in the recognition of only 22,000 official victims of human rights violations. The millions of people that suffered systemic structural violence during the apartheid years were not counted as victims. For instance, during apartheid, more than two million people were forcibly displaced from their homes and land. However, these displacements were not taken into account as violations and therefore not subject to policies of reparation. In Guatemala, promises from the State to recognize the rights of indigenous peoples and to address historic inequalities remain on the papers of the peace agreements.
Both countries face ongoing issues such as violence against women rising at alarming levels. High levels of criminal violence and gangs leading to the militarization of poor and already vulnerable communities are present in both. Gender justice, as well as important reforms to the security sector, did not occur during transition periods. In both contexts, issues of healing, addressing trauma, and psychosocial as well as mental health problems stemming from violent conflict and structural violence have been superficially addressed by the State and seen mainly as the responsibility of civil society.
As we have learned in the International Peace Studies concentration coursework, achieving peace is not only about stopping direct violence. We refer to this as negative peace (as per the work of Johan Galtung). Positive peace is inclusive of transforming oppressive systems that will address systemic injustices and inequalities.
The exclusion of socioeconomic issues, gender, land, trauma, and security sector reform from transitional justice is not accidental. Transitional justice processes have been historically important to document and disclose the truth behind massive human rights violations. However, these processes often aim for liberal constitutional democracy and market economy as their end goal.
Transitional justice should be a long-term process—rather than a truth commission with a deadline—and should focus on transforming oppressive and unequal power relationships and structures that are at the root of the conflict itself.
A comprehensive and holistic agenda for transitional justice processes is hard to deliver in practice, and we must take into consideration the economic and political contexts in place. However, we cannot dismiss the important connections between peacebuilding in post-conflict societies and socioeconomic and development issues. Otherwise, we run the risk that victims of direct violence will perpetually suffer from structural injustices, and that promises of a new post-conflict nation will remain only on paper.
Picture taken while I visited Nelson Mandela’s house in Soweto, a township outside Johannesburg.
