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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]why are humanitarian and international development organizations staffed almost exclusively by white people?

i've been working in the development community for the past five years and im surprised by how all the jobs are held by white rich trust fund girls. it kind of baffles me because these are the most privileged people and they're trying to tweet about female maternal mortality in Kenya or India. The whole thing seems to fake to me. [/quote]

I work in this field (human rights, not water sanitation or infrastructure) and our organization is actually pretty diverse.  The teams with a regional focus often have folks from that region, or whose parents were from that region.  [/quote]

This was very true in my major non-profit as well. A common thread, however, was that they came from wealth. At the NGO level, they did try to hire locals because they had the most impact on the community we were trying to reach.

On the issue of hypocrisy: I absolutely saw it too and it bothered me quite a bit.[/quote]

I'm the quoted PP - I was thinking about our DC office when I said that, but our local offices are all staffed by locals.  Some regions are better than others at using locals and third-country nationals as Chiefs of Party.  But I do not get the impression that the foreign-born folks who work in DC all come from wealth.  Wealthier than some of their countrymen, yes, but definitely not the political and economic elite (who go into banking, not human rights).  [/quote]

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