Humanitarian FOMO: An observation from the field

I arrived early at the emergency response site to make sure that my team were prepared for the day and for the arrival of our special guests. A donor team was coming to town!??

I was in large flat field at the top of a hill, the green grass lightly shrouded in whisps of mist and peacefully still in the early morning quiet. The ubiquitous branded NGO tents formed the boundary of the refugee holding area, (a term I really dislike as it sounds like something to contain cattle). In the middle of the green, two huge empty gleaming white, branded tents cast a long shadow across the empty field. Down the far end, our medical tent and my twelve-member team were busy setting up for the day’s outpatients that would soon begin arriving.?

At this time of the morning – 4 hours before the scheduled arrival of our guests, mine was the only vehicle in the area. But the serious work associated with FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) transformation was about to begin. Within the next four hours one beautiful, new NGO co-branded tent was quickly erected and styled with furniture. Children appeared in the fenced of safe space and began playing and dancing to the beat of a yellow, plastic jerry-can drum.

By the time the donor convoy appeared there were fifteen white SUVs lined up and waiting, emblems gleaming in the morning sun, at the entrance to the site. Five of these, and their dozen passengers, came from an organisation that until this morning had not been seen at this site, but they were looking smart and busy in there bright co-branded cargo jackets.?

The visitors joined a well-choreographed circus designed to make it look like life and work here was always this busy, this chaotic, this welcoming.

But, maybe like me, you have been the special guest at an event like this before? Don't you know, or at least sense, what is an act and what is genuine? And after an off the record discussion with one of the visitors it was evident that he knew what was real and what was a FOMO activity and presence.?

Of course, we need to honour and welcome special guests, and our donors, we need to show them that we are accountable with their money. We must show them the impact of their funds and the remaining needs and gaps. In other words, why we need more money. We know it and they know it. The visit for our donor is to see and understand the context firsthand, and to evaluate what their partners have done and are doing. For us it’s about convincing them that the response needs more investment and that they (obviously) should make the investment through us. Let’s be honest none of us are innocent in the ‘game’.?

Let’s be honest none of us are innocent in the ‘game’.?

However, while we all know the rules of the game, most of the humanitarian actors that I have worked alongside (and for) are genuine, hardworking, accountable, and transparent in their work. We may not get it all right all the time, but we do everything we can to ensure that the people we serve receive the best we can give them. And the people and organisations who trust us to spend their money can be assured that their funds are spent in accordance with their guidelines and passion. Donors can be confident that what they see, is what they get and what we say we will do, we do.?

But, in a context of competitive and decreasing funding many of us are also held to account to attract more and new funding, so that we can do more and better. My concern and observations in several responses, not just this one, are that sometimes we NGOs (some more and ‘better’ than others) act disingenuously out of FOMO. If not creating, then playing a key role in the aid circus to convince funders (donors) that we are the best (and often only) viable option.?

I acknowledge and am embarrassed by the aid & development FOMO circus. But I also fully believe in what NGOs (both local and international) do and the impact we have and will have in the future. (Can we do it better – of course what industry can’t?) I believe that most NGOs are respected partners, cost effective and exceptionally capable of delivering durable solutions for some of the world’s most vulnerable people. Because of our trusted grassroots connections through a long established presence in, and committment to the communities we serve, we are much better placed to affect genuine, sustainable, contextually sensitive transformation than a global multi-institutional. But, we need the trust and funding of the donor (supporter) community to do it.?

Because of trusted grassroots connections through a long established presence in, and committment to the communities we serve, [NGOs] are better placed to affect genuine, sustainable, contextually sensitive transformation than a global multi-institutional.

Will I stop advocating for more resources and trying to influence donors to support the people of concern through the NGO I work for? Of course not! But I am equally determined that I will not be one of the actors driven to put on an act of intentional misrepresentation from the FOMO.?

[As always, these are my personal observations, (and confessions): they in no way reflect a position of any of organisations I have worked for.]?