On Funding Agencies and the Third Sector

A Cypriot Case Study

“NOT IN PARTNERSHIP WITH: USAID, SOME BANK, UNDP, EU.”

This is what the LT website banner read back in 2014, when I was in Cyprus and had reached the peak of my frustration regarding the dodgy dealings of funding agencies.

If you want to read more about my experience and why I felt and feel so strongly against funding agencies in general -in the context of all this talk about USAID making the news and our feeds- here goes...

When I was back in Cyprus putting the beginnings of Language Transfer together from thin air, I was both a delight and a constant nuisance to the third sector (activism/NGO) community. For one part, my project clearly hits all the right inclusivity buttons but for the other part, a little too genuinely so. You see, politicising difference was always the long term goal of state sanctioned activism, and that’s not what I was doing. I was getting people to fall in love with one another’s differences, to understand that co-existing difference is part of the self. And it was working, Language Transfer quickly became one of the best known projects on the island, I couldn’t do anything without local papers picking it up, and it all forged friendships between separated communities which endure to this day. Participants would write me gorgeous emails bursting with emotion after the workshops, about how ‘the other’ had suddenly become ‘the self’, and they were gobsmacked at how that felt. Yet, I never received a penny of funding and what’s more, the funding agencies seemed notably hostile towards me. What was going on? I wondered. Although I wouldn’t be left wondering for long.

I was always critical of the laboured norms projecting inclusivity which always seemed to miss the mark by a long shot. The inclusivity buzzword on Cyprus is ‘bi-communal’, and yet Cyprus is more than just two communities, and the ignored ones have been there at least twice as long as the more numerous Turkish Cypriots (previously known as ‘Mohammedans’, back when Cypriots were known for their religion rather than an association to some other nation state). It appeared that there was a deliberate illusion of bi-communality being maintained on Cyprus, and this idea not only formed part and parcel of what caused the war, displacement and physical division of the island in the first place, but was an idea being sustained to this day. Not least by all those funding agencies so concerned with ‘peace on Cyprus’ - and that too made me argue: we had 'peace', what we needed to work on and promote was the much more positively flavoured ‘reunification’. Why were these people talking about peace as if we still lived in a conflict zone? Why do they insist on ‘bi-communal’ when this false narrative led to the downfall of Cyprus? I began by assuming it was all ignorance, but that was only my own ignorance.

‘Bi’-communality on Cyprus was always an illusion - when Cyprus gained its independence from Britain in 1960, it was the British who wrote the Cypriot constitution, and according to that constitution other minorities of Cyprus would have to chose to be either Turkish or Greek Cypriot. If they refused, they would become second class citizens with reduced rights, unable to vote and unable to work in the civil service. Somehow, the powers at be had pulled off a genocide of Cyprus’s minorities without actually killing them. Armenian Cypriots were no longer a thing, Maronite Cypriots were no longer a thing, neither were the Latin Catholics. They were now all Greek Cypriots, having chosen the more numerous side of an increasingly divided Cyprus to associate with. In this way, the British along with other interested parties worked to manufacture a panorama of two diametrically opposed sides on the island - the Turks and the Greeks, red vs. blue, as opposed to the multi-communal panorama that had always existed on Cyprus. Such tactics of division culminated in increased inter-communal violence, the partition of the capital, Nicosia, in 1964 and the eventual Turkish invasion and occupation of the island in 1974. In that invasion my paternal village was occupied, as was the house my grandmother was born in, and it remains occupied by Turkey (not Turkish Cypriots) to this day, as do the lands and properties of a great number of Turkish, Greek, Maronite, Armenian and other Cypriots. USAID and other foreign funding bodies, although very aware of this calamitous history of colonial divide and rule, they remain intent on recycling the same premises of ‘bi-communalism’ that were weaponised to divide the island in the first place.

I remember when I first arrived (back) in Cyprus, I went on one of those sponsored (funded) tours of the old town that was focused around ‘Bi-communal Nicosia’. At the Maronite Church a tourist asked if the Maronites were also Cypriots to which the guide automatically responded that they weren’t. When I and others protested that they had inhabited the island substantially longer than the decedents of the Ottomans, he ummed and ahhed before concluding that yes ‘I guess you can say they are Cypriots’. That was the first sign for me, that those working in this newly celebrated field of inclusivity were maybe not living or thinking inclusively for themselves in any coherent way. How curious! So why were they doing it? Could it be that well paid? There should have been no doubt as to whether the Maronite people who have been in Cyprus since the late 700s were Cypriots or not, in fact it should have formed part of the tour, but maybe then it would have never gotten funded, it certainly wouldn’t be called ‘Bi-communal Nicosia’, and this guy wouldn’t be another agent affirming the bi-communal myth. The most powerful shift in perspective for Cypriot reunification is understanding the island’s identity as pluralist, rather than a battle for dominance between Greeks and Turks. This is also wildly closer to the true cultural reality of the island - all historic communities on Cyprus have more in common with one another culturally than they do to any ‘motherland’ from whence they may have once came. Turkish Cypriot as well as Greek Cypriot is spoken with Italian intonation, they deviate from mainland Greek and Turkish in similar ways, they use translations of the same expressions and even songs, we all eat the same foods, have the same familial quirks and superstitions, we have the same stories, even the stories about atrocities during the war are the same, simply replacing ‘Greek barbarian’ with ‘Turkish barbarian’ when naming the culprit. The Cyprus Problem is gorgeously complicated and it’s within these nuances that reunification resides, where we can see one another’s humanity, when we stop thinking in terms of red vs. blue but understand ourselves as a collection of interdependent identities. All that nuance, though, is destroyed with the funding agencies’ insistence on the backwards goals of ‘peace’ and ‘bi-communalism’. Was this just your quintessential ‘ignorant westerner’ not understanding the world they set out to save? That would be difficult to believe, especially since the historic foreign effort to redefine Cypriots as Greeks and Turks is so tangible. I began to feel that if it weren’t for the agencies and their attempts at ‘peace’, we’d already have figured it all out for ourselves and be living a reunified island.

I applied for funding a few times before I promised myself that I would not put myself through that again. The gruelling applications, tens of pages long and unnecessarily complicated and repetitive, were clearly meant for insiders and I soon realised that this was precisely what was being assessed - how ‘insider’ I was. Surrounded by so many funded and -as far as I could see- meagrely impactful projects, I was initially sure that someone would see the value in Language Transfer courses for all the languages of Cyprus, as well as the other activities I was proposing such as the language exchanges and cultural events employing the Cypriot dialects. I was sure I would be lapped up, but I wasn’t. I kept getting rejected for funding and ignored when I searched for collaborations without funding, as I saw millions and millions of tax payer money from other countries squandered on weak initiatives which did nothing but maintain the status quo of ‘bi-communal' friction. I soon understood that in applying for funding I had been asking for permission to act, almost asking for someone to tell me I was good enough, like how a publisher might accept your book and only then you feel like an author. I needed the funds as well, of course, but also I didn’t. I could teach private classes, live from that, and then use my own time, my ‘free’ time, to create these free products. I’d need help, collaborations, freebies, but it was doable. USAID, UNDP (United Nations Development Programme), the EU, and all those banks and companies getting in on this new type of publicity too, they could all go and do one, I’d decided. It was then that things started to happen, what a fool I had been in wasting time asking for permission, which in fact I never needed …let alone their censorship. When I realised that, I knew I didn’t want others to feel like I did, like they needed to be approved somehow by one of these reality-bending agencies. When every project has some funding agency’s logo on the footer, this is what is communicated, there is an officialisation of a sector which is, by definition, unofficial, a sector which arose to bridge the gaps of officialism. That’s when I made the ‘NOT in partnership with’ banner. And that worked too - there are groups active in Cyprus today which have told me they were inspired by my outward and vocal rejection of the funding culture. These groups make more impact than any funded project, but of course, with a fraction of the fanfare.

When funding is normalised as a sort of approval, funding agencies act like filters for would-be local activists, nipping in the bud anything that is challenging to the desired narratives, whilst creating agents to maintain those preferred narratives. The paradigm represses real grassroots activists and replaces them with agents who, in the most part, don’t ever realise that’s what they are. This language may sound very conspiratorial but it is simply a natural consequence of only funding those who repeat your approved narratives - they become agents of those narratives. The individual might not realise they are getting funding because they don’t have too many thoughts of their own (much like the tour guide who never realised Maronites were Cypriots by himself), or because they have the personality type that indulges unquestioningly in whichever truth authority authors. Either way, whether you’re lacking the critical thinking or the backbone to make noise about thinking critically, then you are likely to get funded, and can even go on to create a life out of one funded project after another, as long as you don’t rock the boat. Those are the insiders they are looking for. The funding bodies are mostly interested in funding safe bets, those who will process the funds into ‘successful’ initiatives and create the necessary fanfare and celebration of the agency through said initiatives - which are always less far-reaching than the associated fanfare. The agency continues processing these funds without incident, and everybody is happy. But by definition, the funded hold their posts as agents, unaware or indeed wilfully ignorant about that situation. They live from the division of Cyprus, not from the reunification of it, which is what the funding agencies appear to want.

There are always some ‘insiders’ though, which makes things interesting. Those who went into the third sector wanting real change, but who would quietly work out what was really going on from the inside, and begin looking for a way out (i.e. a career change). Meanwhile, they’re desperate to help folks like me. They’d bing me messages about events so I could swing by on my bike and get in on the lavish free food at the open buffets - famously hungry as I was. I was also given the keys to a UN portacabin which is where I recorded some courses. It felt hilarious to be occupying the UN buffer zone for the reunification of Cyprus by day (a separate and yet slightly overlapping activism project, which led to UN attempts to intimidate me), and then to be secretly using the UN studio by night, located in another stretch of the buffer zone behind locks and heavy chains which rattled and echoed in the still of the night as I'd use unfamiliar keys to negotiate them, feeling like I was in some strange movie. I’d enjoy the irony of using the photocopier there to print leaflets about Occupy Buffer Zone as well as Language Transfer, usually during the pause I'd have to make when doing my edit-ins, for the noisy call to prayer at the break of dawn.

The world is always so much more complicated than the unworldly would have us believe. The fact these agencies are so negative doesn’t mean they do no good, nor that they necessarily consist of bad people, things are more complicated than that. It’s not that everyone is in on it either, conspiring with one another, it’s just that most people choose to ignore it, their minds conspire with themselves for an easy life. In interviews, I often share one of the main things that led me to create my own project and stop dealing with other NGOs, and that was being a coordinator of two projects in an important Argentine NGO, realising there from the inside what a waste they made of American Express’s money, trapped in a funding cycle and spending the great majority of the funds on securing new funds from the same funder. Or in other words, they were busy creating fanfare -publicity- for American Express, rather than focusing on the local actions they supposed to be focused on. I could have lied to myself about that, to enjoy my dream job, but that’s not me. I tried to change the NGO from the inside, and then I left once that was met with the hostility that one might expect. Cyprus showed me both that this situation is not uncommon but the norm, and that most people will lie to themselves about it. People on the inside of these organisations are just ordinary people - some with the strength to see but not the awareness, others with the awareness but not the strength, and fewer with both. Many begin with genuine dreams to change the world, others to be seen in the image of someone who is doing just that. Either way, most will happily plod along, attending award ceremonies with their ego-caressing cronies, dripping over one another with displays of mutual and mirrored admiration. They aloofly replace words like ‘history’ with ‘herstory’, or turn ‘Turkish Cypriot’ into ‘Cypriot Turk’, and gasp at the wisdom in one another’s new coinages. They speak slow and wide and leave pauses for expected worship. They’re really just having a ball, high on their own grandeur, and not about to entertain challenges that may jeopardise that.

I always assumed the world would join me in my repudiation of this situation, and you have whenever I’ve discussed it over the past decade, but such is the state of our own division in the western world that it’s been a long time that what is being said is not as important as who is saying it. Now that it’s ‘the republicans’ saying this, it necessarily can’t be true, and I am necessarily ‘anti democratic’ or ‘ultra right’ for saying it. I’m hoping discussing it again in this context will help highlight that latent, all important, issue. What the ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ is exposing about USAID is true, and it should be something that unites people from both sides of the political isle. Whether this came from a Biden, Harris or Trump administration, I would be celebrating it in the same way.

When I made that website banner back in 2014, I never imagined that a decade later the whole world would be finding out about these agencies and what they get up to, and at the same time it’s disconcerting to see everyone so distracted by discussing the actors rather than the plot. We are so distracted by character judgements that we neglect to judge each issue on its own merits, in spite of whether supposedly desirable or undesirable people agree with our conclusions or not. Until we can look objectively at each issue, without worrying whether our conclusions are ‘left/right talking points’ we’ll remain as easy to govern badly as we have been. The simple truth is that most people on the left as well as most people on the right are correct about most things most of the time. If we are not artificially skewed by trying not to associate with one another’s ideas, that is. If we were able to think more freely about each issue on its merits and unassociated with political doctrine, then maybe we wouldn’t be so easily divided as Cypriots were.

Whilst legacy media wants to frame the purge on USAID as racism and misanthropy, I simply wanted to share my experience of this to give an alternative vision of what the dismantling of agencies like USAID might look like - and that’s more projects like Language Transfer, more independent locals providing what their communities need on the ground without the censorship of aid agencies telling them how and what at every turn. The third sector needs to find new ways to operate and sustain itself, otherwise -as has been the case until now- it is no longer the third sector, but whatever has usurped it. Those who have usurped this sector need to accept that the jig is up, exit the sector and find a way to be productive in the world. Those of us who are the third sector, because it’s just the way we were built, will finally get some much needed room to breathe, and our work will be less overshadowed by the fanfare of the trite narrative-bending rubbish that tends to secure funding. Funding agencies which work to make sure that an exceptional sector of society is populated by unexceptional ideas and individuals will have to cede space to real activists which are a far cry from the types we’ve begun to associate with that word. I don’t expect this is necessarily an intended consequence of this purge on USAID, but it will hopefully be a very real one.