"Rethinking Foreign Aid (from the inside)"

From the May 30, 2024 "Uncomfortable Critiques" edition of The Ideas Letter

“A radical critique of our sector starts with truly accepting people and communities in places like Georgia as our equals. This means seeing – really seeing and acknowledging – their capacity for managing their own affairs in their own way. It goes much further than the twee “de-centering” we practice, in which a Western donor might forego sitting in the center of the stage, even though they’ve paid for the stage, the speakers on the stage, the travel and hotel rooms of all the guests – guests that were hand-picked by the donor. The best I could come up with are things we have been doing all along, if not in Georgia or anywhere in the former Soviet Union, but here at home, where democracy and accountability are real to us. We can’t rid money of its Midas touch, but we can change the dose, like that of any poison.” 

You can read the full text in the May 30, 2024 edition of The Ideas Letter, a new initiative of the Open Society Foundations.

A list of my writing about foreign funding for civil society in the post-Soviet space and its implications is here.