Why Not Practice What We Preach?
Adam Davies and Tom Allen argue that unpaid internships go against all of the values that international development NGOs preach.
These days, unpaid internships are a well-established way, indeed perhaps the only way, to start a career in development. The deal is that you work for nothing - or for a pittance - for six months or so, or however long it takes for someone to employ you properly and pay you.
Today's young graduates are often stuck in a classic Catch 22 situation: they need experience to get a job (since most international NGOs will not hire graduates without work experience), but they have no way of getting it without volunteering to work for free. It is not uncommon to find multilingual PhD graduates competing against each other for an unpaid NGO position.
No one is saying interns are bonded into slavery: they chose to volunteer while fully aware of the situation. So why pay them, when they offer themselves for free, right?
Wrong - unpaid internships are a socially exclusive, and occasionally exploitative, practice, bringing with them the risk that NGOs could be sacrificing principles of long term social justice - the very principles we preach - for short term gain.
NGO employers certainly stand to save money and to capitalise on enthusiastic young talent though the use of unsalaried intern labour - while at the same time ensure that what paid jobs there are go to the Right Sort of Person.
Because, and this is the big problem with internships, those without a private income cannot afford to live without a wage. If you want to work for a well-known UK development NGO, it really helps if your parents have a spare flat somewhere in central London, preferably within walking distance so that you can also save the travel and lunch money that the NGO gives you.
The internship system is massively biased towards the upper middle classes, helping to exclude many other sections of society from working in the field of development and human rights. While this is also the case if you are a young graduate who wants to go into publishing, media or politics - where interns are also found - it is even more striking as development NGOs are supposed to be fighting for core labour standards and human rights.
As NGOs we champion diversity in our employment practices. NGO people are recruited without regard to gender, race, religion or sexual orientation. Yet while everyone is happy to argue for positive discrimination to compensate for sex and race, and to monitor these forms of diversity in equal opportunities policies, no one would ever argue for positive discrimination to compensate for class. The idea of 'class diversity' is unheard of.
It's an interesting one because presumably it is not a conspiracy. NGO employers are probably not consciously excluding young people on modest incomes from their organisations - they are just taking advantage of the mismatch between supply and demand. Yet what will it mean to have organisations that are increasingly staffed only by the upper middle classes? Shouldn't our means match the ends that we profess to seek? Social justice and the eradication of poverty? Also, in terms of pure efficiency, by excluding a whole cross-section of society, NGOs ensure that their staffs are not necessarily the best but the best-heeled.
This should not be seen as a bashing of all NGOs, as some do run commendable internship schemes, and it is also important to distinguish 'official' internships that receive university credits and are part of a formal curriculum, such as those that exist in Belgium and France.
An internship at the IMF pays US$4,500 per month plus flights to Washington DC. At the European Commission's Development Directorate you can earn euro950 per month. It goes without saying that if you are an intern at Shell you get paid well. Why shouldn't you be remunerated if you work for an international development NGO?
Why indeed? Sure, many NGOs operate within severe fiscal constraints, but surely exploitation is not the way forward. How long before all NGO jobs are transferred to unpaid interns or experienced volunteers keen to 'give something back to society'?
If we as NGOs really want to create a sustainable society based on the principles of social justice, why don't we practice what we preach in our offices back home?
Adam Davies and Tom Allen are former interns. Currently Adam is Communication Assistant at CONCORD (European NGO Confederation for Relief and Development) and Tom was Campaigns and Media Officer at BOND.