 So welcome everyone it's really good to be here I can't quite see you but it's nice knowing there are some people out there. I'm Mike Jennings and I'm a member of the Department of Development Studies at SOAS University of London. So what I'm going to do today is to give you a taste of how we engage with issues around global development and the various topics that we discuss. So I'm not going to be talking about our programs or going into detail about the structure and so on. I'm going to assume you know about that but of course you can always ask questions about that in the Q&A that will follow the presentation. And all the information about our programs including the structure including descriptions of every module that you can take are on the website so you can find out as much information as you want there. So what I'm going to talk about today is charity and development. Because one of the biggest ways that we as individuals living in the global north can and do help the poor and the vulnerable is through engagement with charities. And I'm sure all of you have given to raised money for or otherwise participated in charitable events like comic relief, like children in need and so on. And many of you will have raised money for international development or to respond to humanitarian emergencies or to help people fleeing wars and so on. And I'm sure many of you do other things as well like buying fair trade products and seeking to buy other products ethically where you can. And this raises a question that is it actually a good thing to support charities certainly that is the way that many of us think there is an assumption that charities are good and it is therefore good to support charities. But I think we can ask questions about our charities actually good at helping the poor, and are they good at making sure that your donations are used in the best and the most direct way to provide that help. Because many people in the UK and beyond do think charities important so something like around 64% of the population give fairly regularly to charities, not all of them international development of course, and the UK public donates something around $10 billion a year to charities again that's all charities including kind of animal welfare UK focus things. You know a significant proportion of that does go to international development and emergency relief. Now we use the term non governmental organization NGO to describe charities that work in international development and so throughout this presentation, I will be using the term NGO or non governmental organization. What I mean by that is those charities that are focused on alleviating poverty international development and responding to disasters like refugee disasters conflicts natural disasters, and so on. And you all know the names I'm sure of the major international NGOs the ones that have been so prominent in discussing issues around poverty across the UK and across the decades. Organisations like comic relief of course, which many schools across the country engage within each year or in its sort of sister sport relief, and also children in need, or organizations like Oxfam, which you know both of which are very big and are spending an awful lot of money, both from the public but also from governments in seeking to alleviate charity. Charities are seen as one of the better ways of doing development, seen as less problematic than some of the really big organizations like the World Bank, like the IMF, like government donors like Britain's DFID or, as I'm sure you know, it's no longer called DFID it's part of the foreign office now but until they come up with a new acronym for the development part of that I'll keep referring to it as as DFID. And the reason that charities that NGOs are seen as better forms of actor by many are partly because it's believed they can reach the poorest of the poor much better than any other organization. We're aware that big organizations probably don't get down to the villages, the individuals in the village, but NGOs can, they're often there present and helping. They're better able to find out the needs of the poor, they're better, better able to respond to the express needs of the poor, perhaps, than governments and large organizations. Being small, they don't have huge bureaucracies huge numbers of civil servants, so perhaps they're much quicker to respond perhaps they waste less money, and that's of course really important when they're reliant on the donations from individuals like us. They promote alternative development models and they so therefore they challenge dominant neoliberal market based ideas around what development should be and what it should look like they're more likely to engage with the poor themselves in discussing projects and setting up the projects rather than just imposing them upon them. And perhaps most importantly they're independent, they're non governmental so they're independent of the state, but they're also independent of the market, they're not for profit organizations that need to make a profit in order to survive. So perhaps they have no other vested interests beyond that of trying to eradicate poverty. Now look, I don't want to suggest any of this is untrue. And I'm certainly not and I will return to this idea because it's really important that you understand I am not saying charities or NGOs are a bad thing. What I am saying is that I think we need to question assumptions that NGOs are good, just because they are an NGO. It's true for all organizations and all institutions we can't just assume they're good, because perhaps we assume they share our values or we assume that they have good intentions. And I need, we need to remember three things about charities about NGOs, firstly, they have power. So they're not community based in the sense of they belong to are embedded in communities, their institutions with power. They get to decide what projects they will support with the money and for how long. So in other words they control the resources by being able to say when and where they get used, and that's an enormous amount of power that NGOs hold. And they can use that power to insist that other types of institution perhaps more democratically legitimate do what they say. So for example, in Nicaragua, a group of Danish non governmental organizations told the local elected council that he would only provide funds if that council adopted a specific policy in relation to the environment. So is this okay. Now on the one hand the NGOs had good intentions, they were trying to ensure that the council was committed to solid environmental policy. And they would only provide the funds if the council did that. But this is a foreign NGO telling a locally elected locally representative council, what kinds of policies, it must adopt. And that I think is actually quite worrying. We'll come back to all of these issues throughout the rest of the talk. Secondly, I think NGOs do have vested interests and it's really important that we understand that. They don't have to make a profit for shareholders that's true they don't have to secure votes from the public. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they are independent of interest they don't have any vested interests. Because what they do need to do is to ensure that they get hold of money in order to survive. They need to make it if they don't get donations, if they don't get funding from governments and donors, then they don't exist. And that is a huge vested interest, because it means, perhaps they're doing things that are more in their own interests than in interests of the communities and the people they say they're representing and working with. Again, I'm going to come back to a very specific example of that later. Let's see, how are donors accountable to the people that they work with we think of them as being close to people of close to communities of representing them and their needs and their desires. What happens in particular when things go wrong. How can those communities hold NGOs to account and things go wrong all the time some most of the time they're very small things, perhaps things that don't matter, or don't look like they would matter. When talking about the most vulnerable people in the world, perhaps even the little things matter a lot more than they might elsewhere. But also sometimes things can go very badly wrong. And what happens then to accountability and we've seen some real problems about NGOs being able to, I think get away with this perhaps not the right word but not being held to account and therefore not being required to change practices which can be incredibly damaging. NGOs are making decisions far away from the areas that the poor live, and therefore it's difficult for the communities to challenge those decisions. Now, as I said, this is not to suggest that NGOs or charities inherently bad, very much not. But remembering these three things can help us understand why things can sometimes go very badly wrong, and to hopefully then think about who we give our money to more carefully so we can give to organizations that are less likely to cause those kinds of harm. So let's have a look at a few of these issues in a little bit more detail. So you need to remember that NGOs are not public bodies they are private organizations, they're not private for profit organizations, but they are private organizations. So therefore if you ask an NGO to run a school to run a health clinic, that is part of a privatization process, because you are taking that control away from the state. So maybe this model where NGOs take on and deliver these services might be a bit of a problem if we think that it should be states who are delivering them. If we think that health education and so on should be publicly delivered through public institutions, rather than through private institutions. So if NGOs are responsible for providing health hospitals, water supplies schools at all level, aren't those the kind of things that government should be providing. And one reason why NGOs are doing this it's not because they are necessarily the best at providing them. It is because they have competed for donor funding from funding from organizations like the UK government or from the World Bank, in order to run those services often competing against governments from the countries in which they're going to be delivering those services. So they're not running them because there is no alternative they're running them because they beat the public administration in a competitive tendering for that project. Many NGOs when they're doing this then set up parallel systems. So rather than integrating into existing national health or national education structures, they set up their own programs. So for example an NGO might set up its own HIV prevention and care and treatment service, rather than help support an existing one that runs as part of the national health system. And there's a big problem here what happens when that NGO leaves what happens when their contract runs out, does that system then get integrated, or does it simply vanish and what happens to those people who rely on it. And we know that in many cases, those parallel systems those new institutions do vanish they don't get integrated. So that creates real problems of fragmentation, and it creates real problems of sustainability and delivering what, after all in many cases are literally life saving interventions. But also what about how NGOs run schools or run health services, if they decide they don't want to do a certain thing. Maybe they can do it is that a good thing just as a couple of examples, if a faith based NGO decides that it doesn't want to teach sex education or parts of sex education, because it clashes with its religious values. Is that okay. If the public system would do that again, what right does a foreign NGO have to push its own moral vision upon those living in a different country. Elsewhere in Uganda, some United States based faith based NGOs in the early 2000s decided they would no longer advocate the using of condoms. The HIV teaching relying instead on abstinence despite the fact that all of the evidence says and shows that this is a very bad idea, and that this can actually make things worse and need to an increase in rates of HIV infection. But because they had a set of a religious values and teachings, they felt that it was okay and justified to adopt that approach in delivering services in Uganda. And but it's certainly one of the reasons that having had a very successful couple of decades in controlling and bringing down AIDS. There was a spike in HIV infections during the mid 2000s, as this group of faith based NGOs came to shape the way that HIV programs were being delivered. So one consequence of NGOs perhaps delivering these services is the fragmentation of what should be national systems and this may undermine states, their capacity, and their legitimacy. NGOs have also been criticized for not actually being very good at representing the demands and the wishes of poor communities and sometimes presenting them in particular ways that are seen by some as not helpful, perhaps even damaging to perceptions about poor regions and poor people living within those regions. So firstly, who and I've mentioned this earlier who gets to decide what NGOs will fund and support in a community. Can communities ask for anything, or can they only ask for things that they know the NGO is willing and able to provide. In other words, this idea that NGOs are representing the expressed wishes and needs of a community isn't entirely true. They're representing perhaps those needs and wishes where there is alignment with what an NGO is willing and prepared to fund. And again there's very good evidence drawn from research from my colleagues at SOAS, looking at even the way communities respond to NGOs is shifted because they know that NGOs will only do certain things and not do other things. So when they work with these NGOs they tailor their demands in order to get access to the resources that they know the otherwise won't get, but not necessarily to ask for the things that they really need. So NGOs may not actually be that good at representing the poor. They may not be good at responding to all of the demands and needs that the poor asking, but the ones that they get filtered through their own worldview and their own missions. In other words, NGOs are deciding for the community, they're not deciding with the community. And if you believe that empowerment and participation are essential in global development, that might be quite worrying. Also NGOs decide for how long a project will run, how long they're going to fund it for, and in general it's very rare for projects or NGO projects in particular to be funded beyond three years. If you get to five years, that's actually a fairly long term project. Most of them are between one and three years. And again, this can create huge problems. In one case that I did research on in Tanzania, for example, because there was no external funding for a local health organization, it meant that they had to cut back quite significantly on the maternal health and the maternal support they were giving to pregnant women. And this is incredibly dangerous, particularly at the time and in a place where maternal mortality, where being pregnant and giving birth was one of the major causes of death of women. So again, that means that NGOs are not necessarily responding to what communities are demanding and asking for, but filtering it through their own processes and their own visions and their own theories about what is for the best, and the best interests of the poor. And many people in the global south feel very demeaned by the way that charities have presented them over the years, presented them as passive victims, presented them as people who are reliant upon charity, shown pictures that we certainly wouldn't allow our own children to be presented in. So this is given rise to something called poverty porn where charities have used images of sad, ill of people in want, especially children, in order to raise money for their own campaigns which may not necessarily even trickle down to those very specific communities that they've taken those images for. And it's certainly true that when we think about the way people understand Africa in particular or sub Saharan Africa in particular. Many of the public's views have been shaped by NGO charities when they do surveys about what people think of when they hear sub Saharan Africa, three things tend to come up. Firstly, or third, so at the lowest level sport. So of course those, you know from the major sporting events. And that's not just about wildlife, because of course, Africa is the site of huge number of documentaries about wildlife, but third poverty, when people think about sub Saharan Africa, they think it is populated largely by poor. They don't have any understanding of what life is really like. And that's not only but is in large part the result of the images and the messages that charities have given. There's great anger amongst many people across the global south. And what happens when things go wrong, because sometimes, perhaps more often than we think things can go, not just wrong but very badly wrong. Many of you I'm sure will remember the Oxfam scandal that erupted over the case of sexual abuse of women and including young women and children by Oxfam staff in Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake. And I think what surprised everyone in the sector was how long stories like this had taken to break. Because this isn't new. This isn't even a secret. Everyone who works in the sector is aware of a lot of the things that go on and a lot of the problems that exist. But nevertheless, it was very clear that this was deeply problematic. But sometimes things can go wrong, not because of illegality, but because of a poorly implemented intervention. So for example, for my generation, for example, the response to the 1985 famine in Ethiopia, where band aid live aid first emerged was a really powerful moment for those of us who were teenagers at the time, and were getting to understand and know about global events. But actually, the major problems with this response it was presented by the NGOs and the charities as the result of a drought, but actually it was the result of a war. And it was very clear that a lot of the support that was given was being given in ways that allowed the government that had instigated this war and conflict and thereby created the famine to carry on perpetuating that it allowed the government to use food aid and famine as a weapon of war. In Rwanda in the aftermath of the genocide, again, a deeply problematic response. Many NGOs and charities had not done or had done very little to respond to those people in Rwanda who had suffered genocide, and then in the aftermath of genocide help them recover. But billions of pounds was plowed into supporting so-called refugees, people who had fled Rwanda following the genocide. Many of those people who had fled actually having committed genocide and violence or being implicated in various aspects of it. They were housed in refugee camps supported by charities in which the military and the militias who had led that genocide were enabled to reorganize and rearm and to try and carry on and overthrow the new government that had overthrown the genocidal government. So was it right that those charities were doing so much to help people who had perhaps committed genocide rather than the victims? And were they doing so in ways that actually contributed to the instability of that region and led to a series of wars and conflicts that are still ongoing in the eastern DRC area and that have killed, well, no one knows the number but probably more than 5 million people and probably a lot more than 5 million people since the 1990s. Similarly, in the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake, many NGOs went in. There was a complete lack of coordination. There was complete fragmentation. There were people who are going in to help with providing health services who didn't have adequate or the appropriate level of training. Now, if someone tried to provide medical services in the UK without having the right medical training, that would be illegal. They could go to prison for that quite rightly. You cannot provide medical care if you don't have the right qualification. But in Haiti and in many humanitarian disasters, it is easier and possible for people to provide services that they simply don't have the training for. And that's deeply problematic. Do people have to accept any kind of help just because they are highly vulnerable? Do they not have any rights to appropriate and adequate levels of health care and other forms of care? And finally, are NGOs really independent from any adverse influences? Firstly, many NGOs, especially the big NGOs, rely to a very significant extent on official government funding. In other words, donor funding. So this may mean that they're implementing policies that actually they would be highly critical of. Many NGOs, whilst at the same time as being highly critical of market-based neoliberal forms of intervention, have nevertheless been implementing programs, running services that are a core part of privatization and neoliberalism. So actually, they're not as independent nor as free as perhaps sometimes we like to think of them. And perhaps sometimes they may focus a little bit more on raising money for themselves than actually providing the support they are supposed to. So I've given an example here of a British NGO that was running a fuel poverty campaign accusing energy companies of charging too much and thereby excluding the poor and vulnerable from being able to access heat to be able to keep their homes warm during winter or having to choose between either heating their home or cooking a hot meal. Yet, because they were in receipt of money from two energy companies, British Gas and EDF, criticisms of those specific companies were taken out of the publicity. And we know this because internal emails were leaked by staff who were horrified about what was going on. So this clearly goes back to that point I was making earlier that actually NGOs may have or do have a vested interest, which is their own survival. In this case, raising money for the organization was prioritized over caring and supporting and campaigning for the poor and vulnerable that is stated as their core purpose, their vision, and their mission. And that undermines their legitimacy, undermines their credibility. So does this mean we shouldn't give any money to charity, or that charities and NGOs are bad. No, no, of course not, you know I give money to charities I give money to those NGOs that I think are doing a good job. And I'm aware that, of course, there will always be problems that's true for any kind of institution that is trying to do good trying to make social change. But there are some many NGOs and many individuals working for NGOs who are doing good work. But what I think it does mean is that we shouldn't assume that NGOs and charities are good, just because they are a charity, just because of their publicly stated values and intentions. And that we can't assume that just because an organization and individuals in that organization have good intentions. That means that bad or poor practice should be tolerated or excused or understood. Good intentions are not enough when we're talking about the well being of the most vulnerable people on the planet. So what can we do? Well, some charities are better than others and that's very clear. So when you're thinking about giving money to a charity, think about it. Find out what they do and how they do it. With whom do they work? Do they look like a credible organization? Do they share values that you yourself have and therefore you're willing to support? And think about the way they talk about the issues. How do they represent the poor? Are there pictures full of sad, passive victims waiting for white saviours, the global north to come and help them? Or are they showing images that are empowering that show active agency? Are they presenting themselves as saviours without whom people will die and suffer? Or are they talking about a language of partnership working together, supporting people in their own initiatives to improve their well being? And the thing is we need to apply this questioning approach to all development actors. So I'm not picking on charities because I think they're particularly bad. No, in fact, I'm using charities as an example because most of the students who come to do our programs and most of the public have a much greater trust in NGOs and a much greater faith in their model than in any other type of development organization. And sometimes that faith and that trust can become unthinking and that's when it can become dangerous. And this is precisely what our teaching and global development more generally is getting to getting you to do. It's about developing a questioning approach, a critical engagement with organizations and issues and ideas and theories, a questioning and analytical approach to help you challenge policies, institutions and individuals to help you bring about better change so you can make a difference in the world. And we apply this across a number of key areas, things about what actually makes the poor poor, what are the global responses to poverty, what policies are being implemented, what is being done by whom, how do we know if it works and if it isn't working, what is being done if anything to change it? What does it actually mean to be poor? How do people in communities experience poverty? Perhaps a question about poverty versus inequality, which may be more important, which may be a more significant driver of marginalization and vulnerability. And what actually is it that makes countries grow richer, more educated, healthier, stronger with greater well-being for its citizens? So I'm going to stop here and open the conversation for questions or comments. I can see some in the Q&A already. So I'll go back to those that are already in the box. And if you disagree with anything that I've said, please do say so. I mean, just as I've said, you should be questioning all development organizations and actors. That includes academics. That includes those people who are teaching you. We welcome criticism. We want to have our views and ideas challenged. Before I do, just to say very quickly that if you are interested in finding out any more about our department, our programs, my colleagues in our research, there are some links here up on the screen. I've also put up a link to my rather neglected at the moment blog where I write on a number of development themes, including on the impact of COVID. And you can find links to blogs and pieces by my colleagues on our website. So thanks very much. And I'm going to now open it up to questions. Kim, if you want to give any instructions at this point, or I'll just otherwise I'll just dive in. Yeah, Michael, we've had a few questions in. So I think if you just start from the top, I think there's a question from Carl there if you want to have a look at that one. Sure. And if you do want to ask questions, you can also put your hand up. I think that works as well. You can also raise your hand and then we can unmute you and then have your question raise live if you would like to. Okay, great. So I'm going to do the ones in the Q&A, and then I'll come to you Vivian because I can see you've got your hand up. Okay, Carl says so VSO ICS is a perfect example of a government funded organization that offer sustainable development projects and you volunteer with them in Bangladesh. You can also more accountability if they are monitored and involved with government entities. That's a good question, Carl. I think the problem with account being linked to governments is that accountability then goes upwards because you're actually accountable to the governments and what most governments are interested in is a fairly narrow range of financial accountability. It may depend if you're talking about national governments, so governments in I suppose the countries where these projects are running versus donors. But even in the countries where these projects are running, the accountability with VSO I think is actually rather weak now this isn't, I think VSO does some great things and they are perhaps better embedded, because they're doing something slightly different. But nevertheless, and it made it will of course depend on the country. The oversight is weak. It's not tokenistic, but it's more there because it has to be, but there's not actually real oversight going on, more so at the local levels. Certainly my experience of East Africa suggests that there are some of the same problems with accountability with VSO, but it's also about what goes on. And again, I'm sure you will know of examples from your time in Bangladesh of really bad practice that is going on, where volunteers have perhaps done things that are perhaps deeply unethical. I think it's quite rare, but it does still sometimes happen, and there isn't really any comeback, and that can be problematic. So I think it's, it's a good example to draw on. And I think the precise problems with accountability will vary depending on the organization and its links in the country and so on. But I think all organizations have issues around accountability to some level or another, but you know a good example. Thanks for that. Manuel has asked to what extent I believe that NGOs can become just as impactful powerful or as effective as government in African countries. Actually, I would be really frightened if they did they should not be as powerful as as governments in Africa they are not. They have no legitimacy in the way that governments do and of course there are problems in many countries about just how legitimate elections are and so on but nevertheless. Foreign NGOs in particular have no political, democratic or legal legitimacy in those countries so I'd be very worried if they became as powerful. And I think in some countries you can see that they are very powerful because they have access to the international community they have access to major donors and can therefore insist on changes. I think what has to happen is that NGO should be there to help support governments build their capacity. Build their effectiveness in being able to respond to the development and poverty and other social challenges in their own countries, rather than taking that responsibility away. And that is one of the difficult challenges to how exactly that is done. I was asked if there's a regulatory body which operates internationally. No in humanitarian sector there are various codes but not everyone signs up to them. And this is a problem. Of course having an international regulatory body does create its own problems, because it might mean that NGOs become more bureaucratic less flexible the things that make them good in some ways. I wouldn't want to see kind of a strongly legalistic approach, whereby NGOs become too afraid to do anything because they fear they may get taken to court. I think it's much more about, you know, there is certainly a place of best practice codes that NGOs should be signing up to. But I think it's much more about how you establish relations on the ground within the communities between those NGOs and other organizations. I'm just going to take one more from the chat and then I'll go to, I don't know if the hands come down but Vivian's hand was up so if you want to ask a question will bring you in. Katharina has talked about a phone app called Share the Meal by the UN Food Programme, sorry, WFP. Do I think it's safe to donate via apps like this and does our money really go to the proper places? But I think organizations like WFP and other UN organizations are actually pretty good and they have pretty good systems for ensuring transparency. And they should have statements, very clear statements about how much of the money you donate goes and where it goes to and so on so you can track it. There are other kinds of organization doing some quite interesting things allowing you to give to actually an individual rather than to a community. And again, my concern there is less about the legitimacy. There may well be some types of organization that are doing this fraudulently but you know the ones that are doing it legitimately should be relatively easy to tell that this is a legitimate organization. But my worry then is about how you select an individual to support and the value of it given that a lot of the problems that exist are actually community based. So helping an individual might not actually make much of an impact in addressing wider poverty might make an impact for that individual of course and that's important. But if you want to help individuals, there are other ways of doing it. So, you know, an increasingly popular way of giving aid is simply to give people cash handouts. You know, there's plenty of experience in Latin America where the governments and others give cash handouts sometimes on the condition that, for example, parents and their children to school or get them vaccinated. They're very good at using the money in appropriate ways, but we do need to remember that some things need to be funded community that isn't a good way for example of funding the building of a school or the building of a health clinic or the building of roads and so on. I think the person who had the hand up is perhaps gone so I'll just carry on going down the list of Q&A's. So Safa has said, what are the specific countries we look at this degree. I can't really answer that because there isn't a specific country, not least because even the examples that maybe talked about in lectures, when you are doing your further reading and when you're writing your essays and when you're taking your notes, you can focus on the countries that you want to if you have a particular interest in a region or a particular country. You can shape your knowledge by reading about a particular issue in relation to that country. So of course we cover the Africa, Middle East and Asia regions, but of course we have to also talk about other regions. A lot of the global development organisations are based in the global north so you need to understand what's going on there. How to address poverty and marginalisation is as much an issue in global north countries as it is in the global south so we may pick examples from the UK, from Europe, from North America. And if you're thinking about diaspora, if you're thinking about refugees and migrants, of course we're interested in looking at the places that they go to as well as the places they come from. And we also have colleagues who work on Latin America, so although it's not a formal part of SARS's geographic identity, a lot of the examples we'll be picking on will come from that region as well. So actually, it really is a globally focused degree in terms of the countries that you can and will focus on as part of your studies. So Aparna has asked about whether it includes elements of global migration or superpowers in the development of cities as a whole. You know, migration is one of the main focuses of our department in terms of our research, and we have specific modules on migration on diaspora groups on refugees. So yeah that is a fairly major focus and allows people to develop that particularly through the optional modules that they will take. We do have modules looking at urban development. There is obviously a large emphasis on poverty but actually there's an equally large emphasis on inequality, because that is perhaps one of the, is a really important aspect of global development. So I'm kind of rushing through these questions because we have limited time. I may not get through them all but as I say if I don't get to your question or if I don't answer it in sufficient depth you've got my email, you can always get in touch with me. Amy, from my experience, do I think that NGOs are often in competition with each other for funding, and whether that impacts how willing they are to work together to create better outcomes great question. They are often in competition with each other, but they often do work together as well, particularly in humanitarian disasters. When there is a major crisis you will probably have seen adverts for something called the DC the Disasters Emergency Committee, and that is an umbrella group of all NGOs who work in emergency response, and they're working together they're collecting money together as a pool, and they're working cooperatively so to that extent, there can be a lot of cooperation and certainly NGOs are quite effective or more effective when they work in collaboration than in competition. But there is quite a lot of competition, just referring back to the lecture I think perhaps a bigger problem is when NGOs, either individually or in cooperation with other NGOs are competing against national governments for those same funds. Because NGOs are actually very good at competing for the funds, not necessarily because they're better, but because they're staffed by people who are extremely good, and their job is to write convincing looking grants. And they can make the case and of course they're much closer to the corridors of power where these decisions are made so I think that is problematic. And there are efforts are always efforts increasing coordination since certainly the 1960s, a lack of coordination has been identified as a major problem. But it's difficult because different organizations have different views as to what is best. And even thinking about things such as best practice in the humanitarian sector, for example, there is a big divide between organizations like the MSF, who are highly resistant to international codes of best practice, because they see it as perhaps undermining their independence and what enables them to do what they do so well, and other organizations who see this as a responding to the basic human rights of those people most in need. A question here about how often the measurements of vulnerability are questioned. And are the reasons for measuring vulnerability based on poverty or wealth ever questioned and is colonialism imperialism, another complex system brought in. The answer is, those things are continually questioned, not least by kind of academic programs like development studies, but many people working in the, the sector and systems as a whole and there are continual efforts to try and better understand what the drivers of poverty inequality are and why poverty and inequality exists and certainly amongst kind of the academic critique of aid and aid systems and poverty. There's long been a focus on the role of colonialism and post colonialism, but I think we're starting to see a language around decolonizing aid, picking up momentum and being talked much more seriously about within the actual organizations themselves now. And that's quite exciting, and hopefully will lead to some interesting changes, as with all changes that you then have to look about and look at them and think well are they doing the things we hope that change would make as has it worked, has it not. So it's not about kind of solving a problem and then moving on. It's about trying something and then seeing if it's worked because everything has unintended consequences. But by kind of continually challenging and asking the right questions and critically analyzing things that will over the long term improve the process and make things better for those who most count which are the vulnerable and the poor themselves. Yeah, good question. So coming on from Anna here, which I suppose follows on from this, which is about, you know, as a white European, and within the colonialism, I suppose post colonialism and white saver complex. What is the best most adequate way to get engaged in working in development. You hear I think it's about how people are doing it if you're going in thinking that you are making a positive change and you never question that you just assume you are. Then that's when it becomes dangerous. I think it's about when you continually evaluate what you're doing when you weren't when you are asking the right questions and you are gathering data on the right kinds of impact. So you're questioning and challenging yourself and the organization for whom you're working. That I think is what makes the biggest difference. It's underpinned by an acknowledgement that actually most of the world's poor do not survive because of charity they do not survive because of external actors, they don't even survive because of their own governments. They survive because of their own day to day struggles, the relationships that they have with within their own communities and with other communities. That is what is keeping most people alive and enabling them to improve their lives where they can. So charity again I think is part of that. And an understanding that it's about collaboration and cooperation it's not about going in as a white savior as the person who can save this and we use the term white savior of course. A better term would be global north savior for those people who've been born and brought up in the global north are then going into other poor communities it's not necessarily about your race or your cultural background. It's more that you bring with you from being a resident and a citizen of the global north. But I think what there is a place is for understanding that this is about collaboration. It's about understanding that there is a problem to be solved and only solving it together can we address it. I think some of these instincts we can see actually in the response to covert and in the understanding that only coming together as a world, will we be able to overcome the challenges that covert is presenting us. And if we can bring some of that into our thinking about global development. That can be really useful so humility, continual questioning and analysis and understanding what kind of questions you need to ask and what kind of data you need in order to see the difference that is being best. I know we're after court to so I'm just going to check Kim do we still have time for a few more questions. I think we have time for about two more questions. Okay, but we will be recording the chat so any questions that aren't answered I can always send over to you after the session and we can put them somewhere where students can view them. Brilliant. Okay we'll do that then. And of course you've got my address again in touch if you need to. So, again, something about will the behavior of NGOs conflict with the mainstream ideology of local government. I mean, again, none of this is is, there's not an inherent conflict I think in terms of ideology but I think I certainly think that where NGOs work best it's when they integrate themselves and support the actions of local government, rather things different and in parallel one NGO that I've been working with quite recently for example devise their interventions and programs in collaboration and in talks with the local government finding out what the local government was willing to do. And what they are prepared to support once the NGO role comes to an end and that is a better way I think than setting up parallel systems and not even engaging sufficiently with the local government. So, Sebastian asks, will the course look at specific companies and sectors that are allowing development to happen. For example, firms working in infrastructures. Yeah, so yeah we do look at specific organizations and specific sectors. I think the best answer to that is to look at the modules which will give you a better sense of what is being looked at so as I say you can click through the links and you'll see what a specific module looks like and that will give you some a much better indication than I can give in such a short amount of time as to what exactly and what kind of institutions what kind of sectors we look with I overlooked sorry. So I'm just going to very quickly answer that. Do I think that international age has been effective at fighting poverty long term. Look, this is something that you will be discussing over the three years of your degree or the four years if you're doing the one of the joint degrees. It's a really difficult question to answer and you really need to kind of understand how the way people have asked that question and the kind of data that they have used have shaped the answers that come to that as a very simple answer I would say that international aid has done some some things very well, especially perhaps in health, it has done other things less well, and it's really important to try and therefore understand what made the success of success what have made the failures of failure and other lessons that can be learned that can be spread elsewhere. However, if international aid was stopped tomorrow, it would be an absolute disaster for not just countries, but the individuals who do still rely on it in order to be able to survive in those areas so it's highly complex and that of course is perhaps one of the biggest questions of global development that is faced not just by students as you will be but also by those people who are working in the sector and have spent their lives working in the sector. Thank you. Thank you everybody for such a great session today. Thank you very much, Michael for your presentation and also for answering all the questions. I'm sorry Shane we didn't quite get around to your question but if you would like to send it through by email we can answer that and I'll try and see if we can get the answer put up with the recording as well. So thank you all for attending to again today. And if you have any follow up questions please don't hesitate to let us know. Thanks all and I hope to see you soon.