Two days ago I was walking around Ubud with one of the other students from my program, talking about our summer plans. I mentioned something about an NGO and she stopped me and asked what an NGO is. It threw me off, and I spent a couple of minutes trying to come up with a suitable definition, NGO's being a sort of nebulous concept.
Her confusion was the same that I remember feeling when I first learned about them (in high school, maybe?): can't "non-governmental organization" refer to almost anything? So that part of it didn't surprise me quite as much; it was more that she, a twenty-year-old American college student, had no idea what I was talking about. For me, NGO's are a huge part of what I do at school. The Africa relief club I was part of freshman year works closely with them, and so does the Women's Center and QSU. Most of my friends work with them during the school year and get internships with NGO's in the summer. A few of my friends have plans to start their own after graduation. So I find myself wondering if maybe it's just the crowd I hang out with at school. Are the majority of students in my generation unfamiliar with NGO's and what they do?
If yes, what does that indicate, if anything? I know that my generation is sometimes pointed to as the generation who sits on our hands instead of going out and protesting or being activists. That, of course, is something I'll argue any day; most of us just have a different approach to problem-solving than our parents' generation. But does this student's unfamiliarity with NGO's demonstrate that there is a section of my generation who fits that description? If so, what will that mean for the future?
(Of course, there's also the question of whether NGO's and other humanitarian organizations are the way to fix things. Maybe more on that question later, but I took a whole course on that last semester and still don't have answers.)
I'm not sure how many people are regularly reading the blog at this point, but I'd love to hear any and all opinions you guys have about this.
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ReplyDeleteI think we are such a generation, in part, but to be frank, I never interact much with NGOs. If I didn't know the word from academia, I'd probably not be able to match the names of the NGOs to the word "NGO."
That said, you do have a big point in that a lot of people are clueless, and our luxury (even in the midst of rescission) allows that. Being comfortable will always make you a little soft, and this might have been a symptom.
NGOs are something I primarily understand only in a medical context (what a surprise). I don’t claim to know that much about aid organizations and movements. But I do know that “NGO” is in most medical students’ vocabulary. This in itself is interesting. However I suspect if you did a random poll of American students in general, most would not recognize the term.
ReplyDeleteCoincidentally I've been thinking about this type of thing recently myself. I volunteer with the American Red Cross in Boston. The primary focus of the Red Cross in the States is to provide relief services to victims of fires, power outages in winter, the recent flooding in New England, etc. As it turns out, if your house burns down in the United States and you don’t have insurance or a friend/family member to put you up, you are instantly homeless. There is no government service responsible for providing shelter to you in this situation, period. An NGO (the Red Cross) provides essentially all of the immediate relief in the US for these types of situations. Given this, it seems we really should have a greater understanding of the “NGO.”
Happy travels!
i don't think i know a single person who doesn't know what "NGO" stands for, and, frankly, most of my friends aren't all that sophisticated. anyone who reads any news publication or volunteers anywhere would HAVE to know. how could that just slip by?
ReplyDeletei think she makes a bigger statement about her school and her family than she does about our generation. clearly nobody has exposed her to real news media or engaged her in conversation about--well, gosh--about ANYTHING having to do with international events. or domestic charity, as jared pointed out. or charity in general. THAT'S the biggest tragedy of all, perhaps.
but please: texted donations from a cell phone didn't become the biggest trend in giving because our parents adopted it, so clearly a whole lot of our generation knows what an NGO is--and we even know how to interact with them! this one person surely doesn't speak for all our lot.
(really, though, we ought to call out her college, because this is inexcusable!)