• 

Tomorrow will mark 6 months since I last posted on definitelymaybe. Like others, I have found the groundhog day experience of this pandemic somewhat distracting. Being “stuck” – in the proverbial and the literal sense – does often feel like you have to reinvent the way you not only go about your daily work/life routines, but also how you source and manage your energy flows.

For some people, I know this new norm hasn’t been as challenging as it has for others. During this last year, I think, whatever our persuasion, we’ve all had the chance to imagine new norms and new realities. Some days this newness has an appeal, and some days it provokes a more panicked sense about the future. The very visceral, physical dawning reality that many of your closest friends and family will remain available only via zoom calls, doesn’t sit well in the conscience or the stomach.

Until, perhaps, you place that reality into the mix of things more generally, more globally, and are reminded about the realities of others – those fleeing countries, or caught up in genocidal regimes, those trafficked for money, those unable to go to school. Etc.

Albeit a predictable way to find perspective in a muddled world, it always remains powerful to imagine your anxieties within a wider context. I understand why this can feel like an artificial exercise. It is also unrealistic to strut about pontificating evangelically about the plight of others, whilst simultaneously expecting to retain any friendly acquaintances who won’t, after a period of time, feel the compulsion to knock you over the head with a blunt instrument.

As vaccines roll out, and 2022 comes into a sharper focus with the passing of another day, and soon, the second month of another year, it is through the mediums of art, music, and sport, through the familiar past-times of newly curated interaction and camaraderie, that many of us, fortunate to be healthy and active and employed, seek refuge.

As I buy street-food here in Saigon, I wonder to what extent the foundations of day-to-day existence have really altered for the vendor who sells to me? In Vietnam, the virus has been kept out, and in such an effective way that it has had minimal impact on the local population. The government decisions on response, from the outset, were transformative in spite of appearing quite the opposite to any onlooker, including myself.

I hope attention to these efforts, to how a country such such as Vietnam has curated its own reinvention, doesn’t go unnoticed.

Jeffrey Epstein is dead, and various people will now take, to their graves, information about what this man did whilst he was alive for 66 years.

To the grave also will go the horrific memories and experiences of those sexually abused, either by or because of Epstein.

I’m already sick of reading his name, and now regurgitating it onto these pages.

As with other similarly disgraced public figures, to write their names in print risks sensationalizing and glamourizing these people (99% of whom are men) and adding to the layer of protection and privilege they’ve somehow been allowed to exist within.

At 44 years old it’s shocking to admit that it was only last month, when talking to a friend of mine from work, Amelia, that I had the wind knocked out of me by an anecdote she recounted, relating to the vulnerability of women. I remember wincing at the incidental parable her recollection offered up.

In spite of #MeToo, in spite of working for the past thirteen years for CARE, and learning about how our programmes combat patriarchy – even to the extent of our more recent surge in support for the International Labour Organisation’s historic moves to mandate against sexual harassment in the workplace, and CARE’s unfettered access to women living daily with violent husbands or partners – in spite of these powerful dynamics all around me, I’ve leant into some type of denial about what this collective, compelling story-boarding was attempting to highlight.

It takes a nano second to know how you feel about rape, sexual violence, sexual harassment or sexual assault. On a training course last year in Tbilisi it took several hours to analyse the differences between each of these descriptions, but no less time to know how I would feel towards someone carrying them out.

And, yet, Amelia’s story cut through all of this, and I felt it acutely.

Her “story” was, in fact, more of an off-the-cuff reference to outdoor swimming.

We were on the way to our office having met for coffee, walking past Vauxhall Arches, home to many things, including what used to be a set of salubrious night-clubs (I know from living nearby over 20 years ago). I mentioned having read about a new club under these arches earlier in the morning – LICK – which is only open to women. In a short space of time this new venture has drawn in the crowds, partly as many straight women frequenting are doing so simply to enjoy a safe space away from men.

Amelia, it transpired, had had a similar experience at Hampstead Ponds just the weekend before, when she went along to one of the “women only” areas with a friend.

“Women only” as a concept is not a new one, and one can only hope that it will continue to grow and catch up with the predominantly “men only” staples that have existed since the dawn of time.

It was, instead, how Amelia described the feeling of walking past the particular sign at the ponds that flawed me.

“As we approached the place, there was a signpost” she explained, “which said ‘No Men Allowed Beyond this point’ and, just at reading those words, I felt this immense wave of relief pass through my body – it felt so reassuring and safe.”

That was all it took.

Either via distraction, via denial, or via some pathetic moral high-grounded sense of being so aware of gender inequality – so pervasive and festering in every crevice of society that it forms gargantuan valleys of injustice everywhere – that I was immune from feeling any sense of responsibility about it myself; whichever of these types of leanings I’d been clinging on to, for however long, were smote in that instant.

A bristling and uncomfortable realization, perhaps, that whilst I’ve been writing about gender equality in various countries around the world over the past 7 years, often drawn to describing CARE’s work in what are termed as “crisis” countries (such as Palestine and the Philippines) I’d remained blind to the reality that most patriarchal behavior, which makes women and girls experience vulnerability, exists below the surface.

As such, this behaviour is immune to “crisis” labelling, and routinely allowed to manifest simply as “status quo”.

For all the many positive gender campaigns and female role models that continue to combat these subterranean and destructive norms, I give maximum kudos a

 

 

 

 

Today is February 4th, Independence Day in Sri Lanka, and I have the privilege of being in Colombo this week, spending time with CARE colleagues I’ve known for a good long while. The team I’ll be with over the coming days have been running a new organisation, named Chrysalis, since 2016, which has replaced CARE Sri Lanka, after they officially closed up shop.

Chrysalis is a Sri Lankan organization with the mission of transforming the lives of women and youth in the country. As such they are continuing to find solutions to some of the country’s social development issues, as CARE once did, however with a transformed operating model and role, inside of the global network of CARE.

CARE International in Sri Lanka was one of the oldest CARE organisations, established shortly after the country’s first significant move towards independence in 1948, when Sri Lanka became a dominion of the British Empire. Over a century beforehand the British had pushed out previous colonizing powers – Portugal and Holland – and, by 1810, had taken control of the entire island, naming it Ceylon.

This post is not about reviewing the history of Sri Lanka, in spite of the rich learning there is to be had from doing so (particularly writing as a British white male) nor is about examining how independence here has affected Sri Lanka citizens, instead, I wanted to dwell on systems change, and why I’m crossing my fingers right now at the thought of how organisations, including my own, might have this one last chance to redeem ourselves in the world of social development.     Continue reading “Transformation of the Third Sector” →