20 Feb 2021
Today is the World Day of Social Justice, and this year’s theme is: "A Call for Social Justice in the Digital Economy.”
Beyond the economy, and economic rights in our digital age, this theme resonates deeply for us at Kuja Kuja: how can digital tools advance the social justice of displaced people?
We aren’t thinking of the fabled “ICT4D” revolution of the 1990s, when many thought that then-new technology would be the solution we were looking for to overcome poverty and injustice. Over time, that promise seemed to boil down to using mobile phones to check commodity prices, so that rural farmers had stronger bargaining positions when they negotiated with middlemen.
Nothing wrong with that.
But when we think about social justice and our work with humanitarian organizations working in some of the most-challenging locations in the world, we go right to the concepts of massive customization – digital tools enabling products and services to be tailored uniquely to many people.
And we think about commitments that humanitarian organizations have made, in Core Humanitarian Standard 4.4., that they would “encourage and facilitate communities and people affected by crisis to provide feedback on their level of satisfaction with the quality and effectiveness of the assistance received.”
And we are reminded of Daniel Wordsworth’s call that we return to the idealism that brought us to work for social justice in the first place.
What if we could put aside the mechanical systems that we’ve been using to support people who have fled disaster, conflict, and oppression? Systems that, unintentionally, further dehumanize these people, treating them like victims and burdens, instead of the beautiful human beings they are?
We say we want to work in a different way, but we don’t – the Grand Bargain Annual Independent Report in 2019 found that “only half of aid organizations with an operational presence reported evidence of systemic links between feedback and corrective action to adjust programming…”
Something is getting in the way. What is it?
In part, it’s that the scale of the problem is overwhelming. How can we listen to millions of displaced people in such challenging, rapidly-changing contexts? OK, let’s say we can, somehow, listen to those millions. Now, how can we understand what they are saying, appreciate the meaning buried in so many voices, quickly? And, finally, if we somehow can listen to millions, and understand their meaning, how can we connect all of that to changes that improve things?
We don’t, we didn’t, have the right tools, the right systems. The linear, mechanical tools of Logframe World are not suited to authentic listening. At best, we forced in “consultations” with displaced people about our plans. We knew what we were doing, and we allowed displaced people to have opinions, at least at “baseline” and “summative evaluation” time. On our terms. In our language.
The wrong tools. And the wrong mental model. Another way of saying it – our ego got in the way. No wonder we have failed: our mental model is industrial and linear, and the displaced person is the object of charity, the “target” of our work, our statistically-significant indicators. Our well-meaning, well-intentioned work. Trying to build feedback from the displaced person in that system is like asking us to live for a month in a refugee camp, or in a conflict zone or disaster area. Like Texas as I write this.
Good luck.
Kuja Kuja provides the tool. Humanitarian organizations can listen to millions of displaced people, hear what they are saying, and take immediate, cost-effective action to improve services. We have shown that this is possible.
And we help these great organizations shift their mental models. This is the key change. Our products lead inexorably to a focus on the displaced person as the customer, the beautiful human being who has every right to determine what happens around her. A transformation of our organizations, towards what we thought they were, when we were thrilled to see that offer letter come in the mail, or the email.
Imagine that: treating people as valued customers leads to better services. What a discovery!
For us, in our work, social justice for displaced people in the digital age translates to hope. Hope that we will use the tools of information technology to enable humanitarian organizations to treat displaced people as human beings, as customers, as assets, not as victims and burdens.
Join us.