"I remember once partnering him and going about seven down doubled redoubled vulnerable".
Wonderful example of a correct use of jargon. Do you mind if I use it?
Using partner as a verb is 'new' (in my experience at least) typically an NGO / UN thing. When I worked in Somalia there was a marvellously useless document that came out from one of the many secretariats or coordination bodies that Somalia always seems to produce called 'FORGING PARTNERSHIPS'.
It was an attempt to justify a steep decline in donor funds, and so a retreat by the aid body concerned from frontline work, by suddenly seeming to think that using local partners was a good idea.
Long sections about vetting the partner (nothing about the partner vetting us!). I used to mock it by always misspelling it 'FORCING PARTNERSHIPS'.
We are seeing that now again: we are belatedly discovering RESILIENCE (ie that beneficiaries do 90% of everything themselves anyway) to cover up our inability to provide full coverage.
I have documents from the 90s which say that children are ALL traumatised by events and MUST HAVE counselling (draw pictures, do role play whatever the 'culture decides', but usually what a Swedish or Norwegian university professor thinks is good for the moment)*.
Now we have resilience everywhere, 80% of children are perfectly all right after any manner of disaster … (I exaggerate).
There are a dozen resilience jobs on reliefweb this week. I have even applied to do one (full disclosure) for West Africa.
* Some of you will recall that Fugnido camp in Ethiopia was the farm for growing SPLA soldiers (25 000 boys and 4 girls – the boys eventually became the 12 000 lost boys. ) SPLA would only allow Swedish SCF to work there and they were heavily into psychosocial as was the mode in the 90s. So the only word you ever heard in the meetings was (given a general lack of front teeth) Shy-ko-sho-sal.
