Decolonizing OneVillage Partners: What We Are Learning and What We Are Doing
A letter from Jill LaLonde, OneVillage Partners Executive Director
As we reflect on 2020 and look ahead at 2021, we find ourselves embedded in the global call for racial equity and social justice. Last year, this call compelled us to pause and shift our perspective on how we think about ourselves and our impact on communities beyond our programs. OneVillage Partners prides itself in our community-led programs, born out of the need to address how aid and development has traditionally been done – top-down, with little community involvement. Though our programs are based in equity and inclusion, we started facing a hard truth: that we are a U.S. based non-profit with majority white senior leadership and a majority white board making decisions about programs in Black African communities. For an organization working on the African continent as a U.S.-based nonprofit, the call to action must be intentionally interwoven into our work beyond what we were already doing.
Last summer, after George Floyd’s murder in our U.S. fundraising home of Minneapolis, OneVillage Partners’ white staff began interrogating how we – as individuals and as an organization – are perpetuating white supremacy and how we can become anti-racist, decolonize our way of working, and root ourselves in justice. We want to be transparent with you about our lessons learned – not because we get it all right – but because others’ candidness has given us optimism and direction.
We have gained a better understanding of how racial justice in the U.S. is unequivocally linked to the international development field. The history of the slave trade, colonialism, and a globalized economy built on exploitation have all played a role in establishing and maintaining the status quo of power dynamics. Behind the curtain of “good intentions” in aid and international development, there is no shortage of white saviorism and a lack of collaboration, and therefore respect for local expertise.
As an organization, we value community-led approaches and equity, and we have always strived for these values to be front and center in our work. However, being values-driven isn’t enough if we don’t continuously interrogate the ways in which we partner with communities. Recently, we asked ourselves: while community decision-making is front and center in our programmatic work, how can we ensure that community partners’ voices are contributing to organizational strategy? This is something we will be incorporating into our strategic plan moving forward.
We have also been examining how we perpetuate inequality within the organization. How are we addressing pay scale and ensuring all staff receive a beyond-livable wage? What opportunities are we providing Sierra Leone staff for advancement? What kind of pipeline are we building for leadership? What kind of recruitment strategies should we be using to attract diverse talent?
As we continue our education and discussions and find ways to put our learning (and unlearning) into action, we have begun channeling this work into two distinct tracks.
The first track is a monthly reflection to continue our individual and organizational education and introspection. Having regular conversations with our team has helped us all to keep the challenges we are working through front and center, rather than as a side project of the rest of our work. What characterizes of white supremacy are we harboring as individuals and leaking into organizational culture? In what ways can we dismantle those characteristics?
The second track is identifying and taking actions to address what we uncover in these reflections. What we thus far have identified and proposed for action isn’t actually very radical at all – but they are necessary if we are to truly live up to our values. It is not enough to read articles and listen to podcasts about decolonization, we must identify and implement actions that build momentum toward equity, inclusion, and justice.
Some of the work we have committed to so far includes:
Collectively define OneVillage Partners’ approach to decolonizing aid and development
Draft a Compensation Philosophy to guide the review and updating of our pay scale
Determine how our community partners can meaningfully engage in strategic organizational decisions
Board Committees will include actions into their annual plans that are focused on decolonizing aid and dismantling white supremacy within the scope of our work
Critically analyze the way we communicate – with each other and externally – and be intentional about the language we use and the images we employ
We are committed to dismantling the current system of aid and international development starting with keeping ourselves accountable. I look forward to sharing more lessons learned and updates on our actions as we work together towards a more equitable and just world.
In the spirit of community and sharing, I would also like to share some of the resources that our team has found most insightful and invigorating during these last eight months. I hope that you, too, will learn and unlearn with us.