For decades, international NGOs, bilaterals and multilaterals have recruited organizers and leaders from local communities. But what happens when those leaders leave the international aid system and try to return to locally rooted work?
Jonathan Kifunda experienced that transition firsthand. (https://www.proximate.press/latest-stories/i-lost-my-respect-doing-community-led-work) After several years as an INGO country director in Tanzania, he left to start a community-based initiative – and discovered that the power, relationships and access he'd accumulated inside the international system did not necessarily travel with him.
Today, as international development contracts and development professionals find themselves outside the organizations that once employed them, what happens to the power, relationships and access they accumulated? What do they bring with them, what have they lost, and how can they put what they've gained to work locally?