The Good Problem

We're flipping things for the final episode of season five, and host Leigh Mathews is being interviewed by the wonderful Mel Harwin who has over 15 years experience working as a leader, implementor, human designer and evaluator in the international development, social, and environmental programs globally. Mel's experience, curiosity and critical thinking thinking skills contribute to a wonderful interview unpacking the privilege of doing good.

Ethics is a term we throw around quite often in the doing good sector. But what does it really mean? Where do ethics apply? Is it at the organisational level, the individual level, or both?

In the humanitarian sector, where staff are regularly placed in situations where they are required to make decisions that can deeply affect the lives of others, how does ethics apply? Is it ok to be placed in that situation? In a sector with a high burnout rate, and an expectation to just accept working conditions – who is responsible when things go wrong?

Today, we are talking about my absolute favourite topics, ethics and philosophy, with Dr. Matt Beard. Matt is a husband, dad, and pop culture nerd, who also happens to be one of my favourite moral philosophers and ethicists. He is also the resident philosopher on one of the best kids ethics podcasts around – Short and Curly. Matt is the Program Director for the Vincent Fairfax Fellowship at the Cranlana Centre for Ethical Leadership.

In the aftermath of the #metoo movement, we saw the emergence of #aidtoo and the resulting exposure of harassment, abuse and discrimination in the development and humanitarian sector. While the reports are shocking to read, it’s no surprise – abuse, sexual misconduct, racism, and discrimination have been long prevalent in the sector, and we continue to see reports naming major agencies in scandals. 

The rise of #aidtoo has resulted in long overdue attention on these issues, and the voices are only getting louder. The latest report to come out is by Decolonise MSF, an organic, unofficial anti-racism and anti-discrimination movement composed of more than 1200 current and former MSF staff, formed in response to decades of unanswered calls for change within the organisation.

The report, called Dignity at MSF, was a survivor led initiative to publicly assess and disclose findings on abuse and discrimination within MSF, and the first to involve MSF’s global and historical staff base, as well as community partners. On reading the report, it is damning: more than 50% of respondents witnessed or experienced one or more forms of abuse in a one year period.

I invited the report’s authors, Monica Mukerjee and Arnab Majumdar onto the podcast today to talk us through the report, their own experiences working in MSF and what it means to have publicly authored a report like this.

Organisations all over the world are engaging in a long overdue self-analysis and reflection of how they operate and how they engage with communities whom they have traditionally worked ‘on behalf of’. This can be both confronting and challenging, but it’s also entirely necessary if we want to dismantle the harmful systems and structures rooted in colonialism that underpin how we operate. So how do organisations best go about this when they are still part of, and beholden to these systems?

I’ve invited the amazing Aleem Ali onto the podcast today to talk about what this journey looks like in practice. Aleem is the CEO of Welcoming Australia, working with leaders and organisations across the country to cultivate a culture of welcome and advance communities where people of all backgrounds can belong, contribute and thrive. Aleem has spent the past 20 years seeding and mentoring the development of leading initiatives and social enterprises that advance welcoming and inclusive communities. He is also a mentor and advisor to various startups, community enterprises and government agencies.

Follow Aleem on Twitter

Working in a sector that is traditionally seen as ‘doing good’ can mean that often, actions and behaviours that are not good at all, and in fact, cause harm are able to proliferate. 

The international development sector is built upon colonial ideals and has traditionally perpetuated those through a harmful system of top-down do-gooding that actively suppresses development instead of encouraging it. 

In recent times, voices speaking out against the system have gotten louder and louder, and in fact, a number of them have been guests on this podcast. Today, I’ve invited Mary Ann Clements on to the podcast. Mary Ann is one of AltoLearn's course creators, and is someone who has been speaking loudly about these issues for years now and actively interrogating her own role in the system. Mary Ann is currently Chief Transformation Officer (interim CEO) at ADD International.

She’s a feminist author, facilitator, activist, and coach and has spent two decades working in the international development sector. 

She’s also the creator of Healing Solidarity, a project that brings together activists, practitioners, and thinkers interested in welcoming the change we need in international development practice and figuring out how to care for ourselves and one another in the process.

As somebody who has spent their entire career working to protect the rights of vulnerable children, today’s episode was challenging to record. While we know that children’s rights are violated daily, we don’t expect that harm to be caused by the very institutions created to protect them. 

Australia’s family court was established in the 1970s, underpinned by a naive belief that if couples could separate quickly and easily, family violence would perhaps disappear. Forty six years later, we are faced with an institution that has, and continues to cause irreparable harm to children and families. 

The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was damning and resulted in the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations, which are designed to guide how institutions are required to protect and safeguard children from harm. Sadly, despite being an Australian Government institution, the Family Court does not follow the Principles. 

I’m joined today by the wonderful Camilla Nelson, co-author of the new book Broken, a searing account of how Australia’s family law system is failing. The book explores the complexities and failures of the family courts through the stories of children and parents whose lives have been shattered by them. 

Today’s episode is a deep dive into exploring doing good in the context of activism. This podcast exists to explore why we do good, how we do good, and what the implications of our do gooding are. In activist communities, we often see a spectrum of people – from those who participate in activism sporadically, to those who dedicate their entire lives to the causes. At this extreme end, we see the outcasts and visionaries – those living on the fringes of society and making change in their own unique way.

In spaces where emotion is high, and beliefs are held closely about the ‘right’ way to do things, we often see tensions. People tearing each other down – a dogma of the right way to do things. How does this impact the cause itself? And is something good if it still causes harm?

I’ve invited author and poet Lisa Wells on to today’s podcast to talk about her new book, Believers – Making a life at the end of the world, which introduces us to these visionaries and outcasts who have found radical new ways to live and connect to the Earth.

Today’s conversation is a topic very close to my own heart, and one that’s formed a core part of my professional career: children living in orphanages. 

The evidence tells us that growing up in an orphanage is harmful, yet it’s still happening at scale with millions of children globally stuck in institutions. A key fact that I want to continue to drive home is that the idea that there are millions of orphans in orphanages waiting for the love, care and attention of well meaning foreigners is a myth. These children have families. In fact, anywhere between 70 and 90% of them have one or more living parents who with support, would be willing and able to care for them. Orphanages are harmful and result in the unnecessary separation of children from their families.

It’s a complex, and often emotive issue. There’s no single driver for children ending up in orphanages, there are many: trafficking, exploitation, poverty, abuse, neglect, child protections systems that don’t function, and the insatiable desire to do good among those more fortunate. 

I’ve invited Brandon Stiver onto today’s podcast to unpack these issues with me. Brandon is the Community of practice director at 1MillionHome, an organisation that works to shift mindsets about orphan care and scale community based care models that reunite children with families and eradicate practices that lead to family separation. Brandon is also an evangelical Christian who was called to work in an orphanage in Tanzania, where he and his wife adopted a child.

Brandon and I have a wide ranging, and at times challenging conversation about the intersections between evangelism, missionary work, colonialism, race, adoption and orphan care.

Ethics don’t exist in a vacuum, they are developed over time, at an individual level through the course of our relationships with people, animals, the environment, and systems. In our modern world, it’s difficult to be independent of systems we don’t ethically align with. Advances in medical technology are moving at an unprecedented pace, and the frameworks we have to guide the ethical application of these are unable to keep up. At what point does innovation become destructive? 

My guest today is Eben Kirksey, an anthropologist known for his work in multi-species ethnography which argues that all species, however small have agency and importance. That lifeforms such as invertebrates, microbes and plants are not simply the backdrop for the agency and action of animals and people. 

Eben is also the author of the utterly riveting book, The Mutant Project published by Black Inc Books, which explores bioethics through the story of CRISPR technology and how it led to the birth of the world’s first genetically modified children: Lulu and Nana. 

Find out more about Eben here.

Today’s episode unpacks a topic that can be uncomfortable for some of us, but is something that we will all experience. Death. \

Death is the natural end of life, one certainty that every human being will experience, yet something we are often deeply unfamiliar with and shy away from. My guest today is Zenith Virago, a professional Deathwalker of over 20 years. Zenith is a leader in the field and has pioneered the concept of empowered continual care at the end of life.

So what is a Deathwalker? A Deathwalker is a person who walks their own journey towards their death as openly, courageously and as best they can. They also walk with, or accompany someone else in their death journey – whether it’s their own, or a loved ones.

Zenith joins me today to talk about her own journey through life and places and spaces she navigates daily.

You can find out more about Zenith here.