Bullshit without Borders: Let's Change the Way We Change the World
International development is full of good intentions. It is also full of examples of outsiders arriving with money, expertise, and solutions only to discover that what looked good on paper did not work for the people it was supposed to serve.
Sometimes the results are ineffective. Sometimes they are absurd. Sometimes they actively make things worse.
Bullshit without Borders: Let's Change the Way We Change the World takes a critical look at what happens when the desire to help runs ahead of listening, local knowledge, and accountability. Using stories, data, and examples from international development, it asks why the sector continues to reproduce approaches it already knows can fail and what it would take to change them.
But this is not simply a catalogue of what development gets wrong.
The book also looks for what its author calls “Sparks of Hope”: approaches that point toward a different way of working. Local leadership. Shifting decision-making power. Taking the knowledge and priorities of communities seriously. Listening before designing. Recognizing that people closest to a problem are not simply beneficiaries of someone else’s solution.
This session will use the book as a starting point for a wider conversation about the habits international development needs to leave behind and the practices worth carrying forward.
Where are good intentions still getting in the way of good development? Why do approaches the sector has criticized for years remain so difficult to change? And what happens when local leadership and shifting power move from the language of development into the way decisions are actually made?
What to expect
An interactive and occasionally irreverent conversation rather than a conventional book talk. Stories and arguments from Bullshit without Borders will open up discussion about some of international development’s persistent contradictions, including the gap between what the sector says it believes and how it often behaves.
Expect surprising development statistics, uncomfortable examples, humor, and opportunities for participants to contribute their own experiences. The session will also turn toward solutions, exploring the people and practices already demonstrating more locally-led ways of working.
Who this is for
This session is for development practitioners, funders, locally-led organizations, nonprofit leaders, researchers, policymakers, and anyone willing to examine the gap between good intentions and good practice in international development.
What you will get out of it
A candid look at how well-intentioned development efforts can go wrong
Examples of the assumptions and incentives that keep ineffective practices in place
A stronger understanding of why local leadership and shifting power matter in practice
“Sparks of Hope” pointing toward different ways of working
Space to challenge some of the development sector’s most persistent habits and assumptions