In developing Healing Solidarity in 2018, I was trying to reignite conversations about re-imagining ‘development’ which had been happening for decades. At the time, I was amazed by the 1500 e-responses and took it as (further) evidence that many of us who work in and around the sector knew that substantive change in how we work was needed.

In time, and against a backdrop of the murder of George Floyd, Black Lives Matter and Covid, Healing Solidarity grew into an online space and community committed to unlearning old habits and building new ones. This included the need for collective and self-care, recognising that so many places in our sector were places of grind and self-sacrifice, driven too much by ego and lacking space and encouragement for self-reflection.

As a community and working with the Co-Directors who joined to lead the work with me, we recognised that change starts with ourselves. We acknowledged that without unpacking the ways in which how we show up contributes to harm in the system then we will forever believe that change is someone else’s responsibility and fail to recognise our contributions and role in the problem. This is especially pertinent for those of us working for minority world headquartered INGOs, where corporatisation has led to cut-throat competition to exert control and influence to protect brand and money, often undermining the change we exist to create in the world.

Given this, the ‘self’ reflection and unlearning work isn’t a self-indulgent luxury but a prerequisite, without which further institution or system level change won’t happen. Yet despite the adage, ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’, our institutions have largely failed to absorb the message that changing how we each show up and our organisational cultures are the very basis of the change we claim we want. It’s an essential, not a nice to have.

These days many INGOS regularly talk about shifting power, decolonising aid and anti-racism work. Over the last few years, there’s been a chorus of commitments to doing better and many initiatives were created to practically help and support the shifts required for sector wide change.

Now we’re seeing many of these initiatives sunset, pause and rethink – not because the work has been ‘done’ but because of a lack of resources and investment. It really feels as though the sector is unable to move beyond window dressing and performative behaviours. Indeed, at Healing Solidarity I lost count of all the requests for a simple to do list and for blueprints of change that could be copied. But the truth is that the inner work of change and the radical action that can follow it cannot be copied. It must be lived and experienced.

All this leaves a great many of the practitioners in the sector, in particular BIPOC staff who perhaps felt a glimmer of hope and possibility with the pronouncements that were made frustrated, angry and disillusioned. Many have left the sector altogether. It is worth noting that whilst Healing Solidarity has been providing a space to support BIPOC folk to process some of this for a few years now, we have not yet succeeded in getting that space funded.

At Healing Solidarity, we wanted to support practitioners – especially INGO staff – to welcome and navigate the change that is needed. But finding a workable way to fund that proved challenging and most of our offerings were funded by a handful of sustaining members and a single trust. We are now in a phase of paring back our work due to a lack of resources.

Within a paradigm where only work that demonstrates direct impact on so-called ‘beneficiaries’ seems to be rewarded with resources, catalysts for change in the system are cash starved. Loop’s recent ‘hibernation’ announcement is another example, while The Equity Index is similarly considering a ‘resting phase’ due to lack of investment, with more details to come soon. When will we learn that we simply cannot hashtag our way to system change, and that support for practitioners in self-reflective practice is critical if anything is to really change. This is the messy and personal work needed to unpack and unlearn which will enable us to rebuild systems and cultures in new, more equitable ways.

Where impact is focused tightly on lives changed, and failure, or at least talking about it, is avoided at all costs, it can feel hard to justify and measure the resources needed to create radical change in the system itself. But without support and sustenance, space for risk taking and deep learning shrinks, and with this, the hope for transformational change moves further from our reach.

If we believe that we need to replace the concept of ‘development’ with a form of solidarity that heals the deep injustice in the world then we need to look beyond an unhelpfully narrow interpretation of ‘impact’. To me, impact and change will come through reimagined forms of solidarity which heal and repair. But this work takes time, it needs space and critically it needs investment. Afterall, if we fail to nurture the seeds and shoots of change, they will never grow.

Mary Ann Clements is Co-CEO of ADD International, a member of Healing Solidarity and a feminist writer, facilitator, activist and coach.