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[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 am not going to bother reading the whole thread OP, but you obviously work for a small US-based non-profit or contracting company.

If you worked for a large organization like the World Bank Group, you would see that it is very diverse, especially when taking into account the country offices, but also at HQ here in DC.

The issue is that only the World Bank and other large orgs pay well and carry prestige, and so those are the only places where the elite, well-educated (and non-white) people from developing countries want to work in development. It's not too difficult to have a $125,000-150,000+ salary at the World Bank, so a Bank job will allow you to live a good life and raise a family in DC, especially on two salaries.

In contrast, small US-based development NGOs pay very poorly, and so they tend to attract people who are happy earning very little money while living in an expensive city. In other words, young, white trust funders like you say.

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