A few weeks ago, with a stroke of the pen, the world of U.S. foreign assistance came to a screeching halt. One of the first Executive Orders to come out of the new Administration put an immediate pause on development assistance. What was clear to many of us then and even more people now is that the era of U.S.-sponsored development projects will be forever transformed, if any of it survives at all. The very real consequence was that many of us have lost our livelihoods, and the people who we have served have lost their support. And at a higher level, this change is part of the grander, sweeping change about what it means to be a U.S. citizen and what our role should be in the world.
For people who have chosen careers in international development, this is a hard pill to swallow. We entered this field because we believed (and many of us still do) that development assistance is a modest investment to improve the lives of people who might not otherwise have the opportunity to do so themselves. We have also evolved as a community, from earlier days of “doing for others” to helping people “do for themselves.”
I am not pollyannish about the system. My 2018 book, Scaling Global Change, is pretty harsh about the USAID five-year project modality. It is not the best way to do development. Despite its challenges, though, U.S.-supported development assistance has helped hundreds of millions of people over the past two centuries, and 60 years of USAID projects have on balance made the world a much better place.
Like so many others, I am mourning this change. Again, very practically, is the material impact on development workers, our partners, and the people who we have served. These are short- and medium-term challenges for those of us working in development. In the longer-term, though, we will pivot and find other opportunities for work. The bigger material consequences are for the people benefiting from projects around the world. Many of these people have no alternatives and have been receiving life-sustaining support. The sudden loss of support for many of these people is tragic.
I also mourn for the psychological consequences of these changes. This comes from a belief that happiness and psychological well-being come from our feelings of connectedness. We are happiest when we feel connected to other people, to the world, and to ourselves. This abrupt change is creating deep fissures in all three of these connections.
First, the change is creating extensive anxiety in how we think about ourselves. Who are we as individuals, who have dedicated our careers to these causes that have disappeared overnight? Who are we as professionals, and what do we do next that we find as meaningful as the previous work?
Some development workers will be able to find other jobs in this space. There are other donor agencies and organizations funded by foundations and private philanthropy, but I doubt that the sector is large and robust enough to absorb most current development professionals or future professionals in the pipeline.
These changes also affect our relationships with each other. As projects stop and organizations close shop, we will lose our daily connections to peers in the U.S. and around the world, as well as communities that we have served. People will scatter to do other things, leaving the deep personal connections that many of us have made over decades of work.
Third is our connections to the broader world. Who are we as citizens of a country that is taking such a callous approach to dismantling generations of work? Even if the new Administration wanted to dismantle foreign assistance, there could have been more humane ways to do so. How do we perceive ourselves, our relationships to other countries, and our relationships to the fragile world ecosystem?
We are still in the middle of this upheaval. There is a lot of uncertainty about the future and what the evolution will be of the current development infrastructure, if any. But it is also important during this transitional time to take care of ourselves and protect our senses of connectedness. There are many ways to do that. Here are a few examples:
- Connectedness to ourselves. Sleep enough; eat well; take walks and exercise in ways that make us feel happy, maintain body strength, and clear our minds; and remind ourselves of the things that make us happy personally and professionally and seek these out.
- Connectedness to each other. Make sure to collect personal contact information for peers and colleagues around the world so this is not lost even as organizational contact information may stop working; find opportunities to check in on others to see how they, too, are doing; go beyond social media to communicate with others (e.g., phone calls, in-person meetings, to the extent possible); and reach out to friends, family, and other loved ones.
- Connectedness to our world. As you have pockets of free time during your job searches, spend time volunteering or documenting the work you have done that you want to preserve and guide future project implementation; and dream of new ways to help the world and take steps to implement those plans!
