Reserving Judgement

Predeparture training is now in full swing. On Wednesday morning Henry and I boarded our plane in Winnipeg and arrived in Toronto. Henry is also a Junior Fellow going to Ghana this summer, but is from the University of Manitoba and will be working with the Africa 2000 Network in the good governance sector. Wednesday evening was fairly low key, we got to the EWB house in downtown Toronto, snagged two of the few remaining bunks and met the 20 or so other Junior Fellows for the first time since the National EWB Conference in January. Levi, EWB's director of overseas sending, gave a short introductory speech outlining the current bed bug infestation in downtown Toronto (still none to be seen) and gave a brief outline of the next week of training.

Thursday was pretty straight into workshops. We covered a number of more general topics including our hopes and fears for the summer, how we each choose to define development and what makes an effective agent for change. We were presented with the following list of characteristics of effective change agents:

1. Internally driven and motivated

2. Willing to push yourself

3. Committed to impact/results/Dorothy*

4. Committed to learning and thinking

5. Humility/patience/accepting of ambiguity

6. Able to build trust

7. Follow all communicating, reporting and safety requirements

Although we brainstormed what each meant as a group, number five seemed to have particular resonance with me. It reminded me of something Sarah Lewis (a former long term volunteer with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture in Ghana) said a few weeks ago about confronting moral issues that she felt very strongly about. She gave the example of the attitude many Ghanaian men have about the worth of female education and described how she dealt with these situations. She said her strategy was to reserve judgement. Before deciding this person was wrong, she would try to learn as much as she could about whether their attitudes were typical, about why the attitudes existed and about how they could be overcome. In the case of female education, Sarah described how it would have been ineffective to tell fathers they should send their daughters to school because it was the right of all women to have an education. Instead she said the key was to engage people on a level they really identified with. She would talk about this prominent Ghanaian woman who was very well liked and was about to enter the government before her sudden death. Throughout Ghanaian society she is held with respect and admiration. When she asked fathers, "wouldn't you like your daughter to grow up to be like that?", they would agree that this would make them very proud of their daughters.

I think this idea of reserving judgement transcends international development or cross cultural experiences. It's so easy to say someone else is just wrong, but it's so much more effective to try to understand what their feelings are and why they feel that way. Even if you do decide to disagree with them, just the process of trying to understand them builds respect. At the risk of sounding over dramatic, I think the world would genuinely be a better place if everyone took this approach. I think disagreement is always going to exist, but that it's the lack of respect that's really damaging in relations, either between individuals or on a larger scale.

* Dorothy is a metaphorical individuals used in EWB to represent our boss: a man or woman in a developing country striving to work themselves out of poverty but meeting often insurmountable obstacles.