GCI Series: Shinn and Good Work

The Global Citizens Initiative hosts an annual Fellowship Summit to cultivate young “global citizens” to become “lifelong leaders of positive change.” In July of 2019, 28 high school students from 15 different countries gathered together for a 10-day experience in Tokyo, Japan. These students are each responsible for the design and development of a service learning project to be carried out over the course of a 10 month period. Their projects are “glocal” – addressing a global problem at a local level. In Tokyo, the students were supported by a group of Teaching Assistants, themselves all alumni of the GCI Fellowship Program. The Good Project has been in consultation with GCI since its formation, and we follow the work of its participants with interest. We recently had the opportunity to catch up with several GCI alums and ask them about their work, their thoughts about Good Work, and reflections about their experiences with GCI.

---

About Shinn Taniya

My name is Shinn Taniya. I am a Japanese citizen, but you will usually find me in Southern California as I attend college there. As a junior, I am majoring in Computer Science, and I also hope to concentrate in Economics and Philosophy. I participated in the Global Citizens Youth Summit during the summer of 2016 and worked on a service project to raise awareness for LGBTQ+ teenagers in Japanese schools. I was also a TA for the summer 2019 session held in Japan. My passions range from music and sports to studying the ethics of technology.

What does it mean to do “good work” today?

To me, good work can be defined in multiple ways. One interpretation is the act of working on values and causes that one is passionate about. Hence, it is a way in which one can fulfill a purpose in life by earning achievements that are representative of their core beliefs.

Another way in which I understand this expression is the act of challenging the status quo. I am not stating that one should take on an anti-establishment persona. Instead, I am pointing out the importance of identifying and protesting against existing socio-political flaws.

Finally, I believe that good work can be interpreted as practicing self-care. Since almost all advocacy groups place the utmost importance on vulnerable communities, they often forget to maintain their personal health and wellness. Therefore, “good work” should not only be defined as bringing about change for others but also should include practicing self-improvement, as no “good work” can be done if the person attempting to achieve it is exhausted and insecure.

Tell us about your understanding of the community. What are the communities of which you feel a part of?

Since I had the privilege of being able to travel around the world, I have been able to immerse myself in a wide variety of communities. Through these experiences, I was able to master Japanese, Chinese, and English, which has enabled me to further comprehend the distinct attributes of each community.

However, this multi-cultural experience also complicated my sense of identity. Due to frequent transitions between significantly different environments, I do not identify with any particular community. Everywhere I go, I feel alienated to a certain extent due to this multicultural identity I have developed. For example, when I am in Japan, I am treated as Japanese-American due to my foreign mannerisms, and when I am in the United States, I am viewed as a Japanese international student. Since having a strong self-identity is essential in building one’s character, I am working hard to establish a deeper understanding of myself. Furthermore, I know that my struggle and circumstances share many similarities with others that embody this notion of a multicultural identity. Therefore, in any community, I try my best to make myself and those around me comfortable by encouraging the establishment of a just community sentiment.

Is there a particular role model who has helped inspire you to do “good work,” either real or fictional? What is it about this role model that has inspired you?

A role model who has inspired me to do “good work” is definitely my father. Although I see how this is a cliche answer, my father is the person who allowed me to explore all avenues of life and understand the moral values which define the person I am today. As an entrepreneur investor, my father has always reminded me that his work philosophy is to motivate himself and others to practice my above-defined notion of “good work”.

Tell us about your work. What projects are you currently involved with? How might what you are doing now relate to the work you began with GCI?

There are many different projects I am currently involved with. First of all, I am taking online courses to fulfill my requirements as a computer science major. This has taken up the majority of my time and has altered my sleep schedule greatly, as my classes go from 1 am-8 am in my time zone. Second, I currently have an internship as a bioinformatics programmer. My role is to extract/analyze genomic information to contribute to continuous improvements in the pharmaceutical industry. Finally, I engage in activism through my involvement with the advocacy group Japan in Solidarity. This student-led organization has the mission of educating the Japanese public about a wide variety of socio-politico-economic challenges. The three central topics for the past couple of months have been BLM, COVID-19, and LGBTQ+ discrimination.

A brief summary of my background includes: multiple internships with Human Rights Watch, a leader of my high school’s Human Rights Coalition, and organizing a project under GCI’s mentorship to tackle discrimination against LGBTQ+ teenagers in Japanese educational institutions. To provide a brief summary of my achievements in each, for Human Rights Watch, I worked as a journalist to write articles and attend conferences pertaining to topics such as: International Justice, North Korean and Syrian Refugees, LGBTQ+, Women’s

and Children’s Rights, Migrant’s Rights. For my high school, my co-leaders and I established a network between our high school and prominent human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty Resources. Finally, for the GCI project, my greatest achievement was working with Human Rights Watch personnel to film a documentary that highlighted the immoral treatment of LGBTQ+ teenagers in the Japanese community. Consequently, I was able to assist and participate in the premiere of the film at the Human Rights Watch Annual Summit in 2016.

It is evident that my current advocacy work aligns with the ethical issues I tackled in the past.

How do you feel your current projects are connected or not to this view of “good work”?

From an ethical perspective, I believe that the work I am doing is definitely connected to my interpretation of “good work.” However, the overwhelming amount of work I have on a daily basis is definitely exhausting and has taken a toll on my health. Furthermore, adding on COVID-19 induced stress definitely does not help my situation. In order to focus on recovering, I have taken a few initiatives. First, I have been spending more time exercising which I believe helps improve my mood significantly. Second, I have been frequenting my close friends’ homes so that I can enjoy non-academic activities without placing myself and others at risk of COVID-19. Third, I picked up new outdoor hobbies such as hiking, biking, and tanning to decrease the time I spend in front of a computer. Finally, I started to turn down requests to complete what I perceive as less meaningful tasks so that I can focus on more significant matters.

How and where do you find meaning in your work?

I have been asked this question many times, but the meaning in my work has always been the ability to personally observe the “good work” I have done on individuals and communities. Nothing is as fruitful as successfully challenging values and conditions that contradict my moral code, as I feel rewarded for my hard work. An archetype of this would be the aforementioned instance where I was able to attend the Human Rights Watch Annual Summit to premiere the documentary I helped to realize. Since I assisted in all aspects, including introducing to the director the protagonist of the film, an elementary school friend of mine who is a victim of extreme bullying that targeted his sexuality, it felt as though the documentary represented the culmination of all of my efforts. I still remember feeling incredibly satisfied after prominent activists walked up to me after the premiere and congratulated our team for shedding light on this complicated issue. Hence, I find meaning in my work by observing the impact it has on individuals and communities.

GCI Series: Ukay and Good Work

The Global Citizens Initiative hosts an annual Fellowship Summit to cultivate young “global citizens” to become “lifelong leaders of positive change.” In July of 2019, 28 high school students from 15 different countries gathered together for a 10-day experience in Tokyo, Japan. These students are each responsible for the design and development of a service learning project to be carried out over the course of a 10 month period. Their projects are “glocal” – addressing a global problem at a local level. In Tokyo, the students were supported by a group of Teaching Assistants, themselves all alumni of the GCI Fellowship Program. The Good Project has been in consultation with GCI since its formation, and we follow the work of its participants with interest. We recently had the opportunity to catch up with several GCI alums and ask them about their work, their thoughts about Good Work, and reflections about their experiences with GCI.

---

About Onyinyechi Ukaire (Ukay)

Ukay was born in Abuja, Nigeria, where he grew up until age seventeen, when he left for South Africa to complete high school. He then moved on to Tufts University, Medford, United States where he obtained his Bachelor’s in Biochemistry and Computer Science. Since graduating in May 2018, he has been working in Dr. Bruce Walker’s lab as a Bioinformatics Analyst, analyzing and visualizing sequencing data for different types of immune cells. In his free time, Ukay steps outs of his comfort zone to try something new. Recently, he tried making roasted halibut with lemons, olives and rosemary, as advertised in The New York Times. (It turned out about a quarter as good!)

What does it mean to do “good work” today?

I face a dilemma in understanding how to carry out “good work” every day. When deciding how to do good work, I might, for example, choose to help a friend achieve a goal by contributing a quota to their GoFundMe page, and the friend might feel helped; yet doing so each day would also mean that I would deplete limited resources. Of course, such an instance is just one scenario, as quandaries, I now realize, are present in many opportunities to do “good work”: affording routine food to the destitute might inadvertently insult their pride; saying “hello” to elderly neighbors might do little when those greeted expect a welcoming conversation; celebrating others might render “smiles” but can, possibly, do little to clean up pain that facile smiles belie.

Despite being ostensibly inevitable, these dilemmas have humbled me and, ultimately, taught me that to do “good work” is to deliver selfless services, however discomfiting they seem. What I think matters little. What really matters is that those I hope to help actually find my actions helpful. Doing good work, to me, means what I do is of adequate help, as perceived by intended (and hopefully unintended) recipients.

Tell us about your understanding of community. What are the communities of which you feel a part?

This question arouses identity conflicts within me. You learn from a young age that you are this or that, only to be told later — by uncritical societal eyes — that you are something else. For me, a perceived shift in identity started where I grew up in my home country, Nigeria, where I was time after time reminded that I am an Igbo tribesman who grew up in the north (where Igbo men rarely abide). That is, I wasn’t Igbo, at least not enough so, in spite of what my parents had taught me.

Funny enough, perceived shifts in identity continued outside Nigeria. When I moved to South Africa to complete high school, my identity “changed,” only this time I was called Nigerian. And later, in the United States (U.S.) and United Kingdom (U.K.), where I relocated to complete undergraduate studies, I was simply “Black,” if not “African,” or mistakenly “African-American.” Bear in mind these terms conjure notable yet divergent images in mind (Black, in a way, means my happiness could become fleeting when feelings of thrill are juxtaposed with unconscious reminders of unjust, racial discrimination; African confers knowing substantially about an immensely rich continent of which I know little), which made me feel like some super morphing organism whose identity is anything but fixed.

Interestingly, that notion made me impute some degree of naivety on those who were eager to trade one label for another. I am perceived as Igbo, Nigerian, African, or Black — and the list is likely incomplete. Whatever my observed identities from the point of view of another, there are landmark characteristics in communities to which I belong: they groomed me in significant ways, without them I’d not be the man I am today, and, fortunately, I call them family, not just community. To those to whom I’m beholden — my family (for affording me nostalgic memories and foundational principles of genuine love, care and comedy for painful issues); my high schools, Federal Government Academy in Nigeria and African Leadership Academy in South Africa; multiple families (for engaging my intellect, pushing me to grow, and challenging me to expect more from others); Tufts in the U.S., Oxford in the U.K., and indeed other institutions across Western Europe; the Global Citizens Initiative (GCI) who, on top of family, is synonymous to true friendship for they not only demand my learning but also invite my teachings; tutors I know in person and authors like Chimamanda Adichie, Chinua Achebe, Dale Carnegie, and Trevor Noah with whom I only interface through their various works; and many, many more — I’m immensely grateful. Once, my communities entailed blood ties and neighbors; now, they’re more numerous, less geographically bounded, and, surprisingly, unbridled in their positive effects on me.

The journey to finding rightful fits within my “communities” wasn’t without errors, yet they afforded unique opportunities to grow. Nigerian, as I’m often labeled, traditionally comes with a sprinkle of sexism, but I’ve grown to know the necessity of lifting women up as equal to men. Where I once subscribed zealously to advancing religious ideas into law, I now advocate for legislation that does not cripple another’s freedom.  

Is there a particular role model who has helped inspire you to do “good work”, either real or fictional? What is it about this role model that has inspired you?

I’ve had so many influences over my life that it’s best I limit my recollection to those significant ties that even a faulty memory cannot suppress. Many models stem from literary readings and group discourses (with faculty and peers) during the African Studies (AS) course at African Leadership Academy and during seminars led by facilitators like Dr. Eimer Page at GCI. I think of people like W.E.B. Du Bois, who took up the mantle to stand up for what he believed was the right thing to do, no matter the discomfiture. I think of people like Wangari Mathai, a Kenyan environmental activist and winner of the Nobel Prize, who consistently engaged with her community in social service. People like Ms. Friedman, my AS educator, who showed me why cynicism is important, what to filter as I read or listen or see, and how to do so. Those sets of people have taught and continually teach me how to serve others. In addition, however, my deepest inspirations to do “good work” predate the aforementioned readings and discussions and are based on spiritual tenets I first began to conceive at churches. It’s mandatory to tithe (Deuteronomy 14:22-23, 1 Corinthians 16:2), or, less dogmatically, you can do good work on your terms (2 Corinthians 9:7). Taken together, the Bible opines giving as God’s work and cardinal to unlocking prosperity for all. Although these biblical teachings talk about tithing and giving, I tend to apply their teaching more broadly and creatively, incorporating acts like offering time, thoughtful remarks, physical help, and whatever snags my attention.

It might seem surprising that my role models are distant. You’d expect that my immediate family or close friends continually inspire me to do “good work,” and in many ways, that view is not incorrect. Yet I find my tribal adage, Ora na-azu nwa — it takes a village to raise a child — to be a more inclusive capture of these influences, rightly described as eclectic. 

Tell us about your work. What projects are you currently involved with? How might what you are doing now relate to the work you began with GCI?

I currently work as a bioinformatics analyst for Dr. Bruce Walker’s lab at Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard. What got me to Ragon? Having lived in South Africa, I was conversant and deeply aware of HIV prevalence in the community; for some women their schooling was interrupted, and their futures hampered by the diagnosis. I was even more troubled when the World Health Organization published a summary which explicates how the African region is disproportionately affected, with 1 in 25 people infected and with two-thirds of worldwide infections (https://www.who.int/gho/hiv/en/). Around the same time, I was learning that health is inextricably linked to economics, as is demonstrated by the current coronavirus pandemic, and to development, since healthy citizens can more actively contribute to society than unhealthy ones. Bear in mind that at the time, I was learning biochemistry and computer science at Tufts University and thought my experiences thus far could somehow contribute to a solution. My interests landed me a spot at Ragon, where I have been contributing towards HIV immunology and vaccine research.

More directly, I support an orphanage at my hometown in Suleja, Nigeria, called God’s Love Trust Orphanage Home (https://aoafoundations.com/aoaf-visits-gods-love-trust-orphanage-home-suleja/). Although the two projects articulated are not directly linked to GCI, they are, in fact, borne out of the humanitarian need to subdue human suffering or enhance pleasures — a conscious effort GCI helped to nourish. I anticipate that the current projects will continue, and new ones will form, and in all, they’ll assist to making lives somewhat easier and happier.

How do you feel your current projects are connected or not to this view of “good work”?

It would be a dream for a therapeutic vaccine for HIV to be completed soon. If that happened, then a large number of downstream problems would be tackled. For instance, infected women will no longer face stigma associated with carrying rattling pills around; normally, people’s behavior debase around women who are considered infected. Likewise, uninfected women will no longer worry about carrying prophylactic pills which can also attract unwanted stigma. As with any speculative effects, the sanguine outlook can be viewed as reaching too far, yet that optimism is needed to pull through in a case as acute as handling HIV infections, particularly in Africa. Whatever the gleaned benefits active help offers, in immune therapies or in raising health awareness, tying those merits to doing “good work” hinges on the appraisal of recipients. Therefore, it is required to understand what those who receive help actually think about the help. Such a metric is better demonstrated with the orphanage I support, as they are wont to give invaluable verbal remarks, sometimes captured by videos.

How and where do you find meaning in your work?

I’ve always been fond of social entrepreneurship and helping my local communities in whatever way I can. In my high school thesis defense, I argued, “Social entrepreneurship is gold, but capital entrepreneurship is the gateway to social entrepreneurship.” Here I was tempering my desire to positively impact my community with the practicality of doing so, especially under situations where resources are circumscribed. Applying the same philosophy to my current work, I knew contributing to health care should be a core focus for many, if not most, social endeavors. (I reasoned that without healthy workers, a lot of benefits like meaningful prosperity and happy living might not ensue.) While health care is important, the more I learned about it, the more I was humbled by the magnitude of the undertaking. So, I decided to focus my efforts on certain types of problems within healthcare.

 What I providently settled for was HIV vaccine research, which in 2018, when I graduated, was one of the most pressing issues in my time. Indeed, it remains so, except now I’m also increasingly thinking about coronavirus vaccines, on which I was able to deliver a presentation in the past week.

Tell us about your biggest challenges, and how you work to tackle them.

Finding like minds who are passionate about solving seemingly intractable problems like creating a vaccine for a rapidly mutating HIV that evades the immune system is exacting, especially from a standpoint of evaluating vaccine designs. People with interests within this field, coupled with skills and fueled by desire to translate scientific solution into imminent, practical human therapies, are quite hard to find. That could help to explain why finding the right collaborations within the field is difficult. Nevertheless, I’ve been able to find a niche at Ragon Institute and, fortuitously, have been able to find similar minds by networking with scientists and students through seminars within and outside the institute.

Have you ever faced a dilemma where you weren’t sure what the “right” course of action was? How did you handle this situation?

Certainly. And too often. One significant moment was when I decided to not pursue medicine as a career: in some ways, I was terrified of the decision, as I didn’t know what exactly would be the “right” decision. I ended up following my gut just to make sure that I sought to do what I thought was right. Another notable instance was my choice of whether or not to actively contribute to educating friends about racial issues. Although those willing to learn should work out the right approach to doing so, it can often feel nettlesome when the topic to be learned is as elusive as racism itself — it is difficult to understand what does not occur naturally and, in some ways, is counter-intuitive. This quandary is best illustrated in what I may safely deem the awakening racial consciousness in the United States. I, alongside many others, have known for a while that white cops lynch black bodies. That there will come a time of reckoning for justice to be demanded comes to us with little surprise. The gruesome murders of George Floyd, an unarmed black man allegedly guilty of employing a phony twenty dollar bill, by kneeling on his neck to choke him for eight minutes and forty-eight seconds, and Breonna Taylor, a black woman asleep in her own home, by shooting her with more bullets than needed to kill her, were the culmination of insidious and decades-long racial discrimination. During the weeks that followed those two deaths, I read a wealth of e-mails and texts aimed at addressing systemic racism and racial issues: my workplace sought help to draft a diversity and inclusion statement, and many acquaintances reached out for the first time in many months, even years, to check on how I was doing, and specifically ask how they could help. Given the circumstance, I misconstrued their inquiry to mean that they offered to help me. Upon clarification, it became clear that what they wanted was to learn how to help. What was particularly exciting to see was that many were receptive to discussing a tricky subject, perhaps heretofore not conversant with police brutality—more than enough mainstream black music artists have a song which broaches the topic, and popular films like The Hate U Give do justice to at once informing and entertaining the sympathetic and the curious. To some, it was their first time ever dealing with such a situation, and they were happy to simply hear from me that joining a peaceful protest was an honest attempt to stand in solidarity. Where I’d have once responded with nothing more than a friendly pointer to other resources, in that moment I found it worthwhile to educate others, even though it felt arduous, risked arousing resentment, or was seemingly futile. Trying felt “right.”

February Round-Up: Top 5 Articles

As usual, February has been a busy month at The Good Project. If you missed it, take a look at our February Newsletter, which offers a wealth of resources for Black History Month, and more. Here, check out a few more resources that caught our attention throughout the month:  (Links in title)

1. To Serve Better: This project from the Harvard Gazette shares stories of people who are “committed to public purpose and to making a positive difference in communities throughout the country.” You can read about people like Gwen Thompkins, executive producer of the music radio show “Music Inside Out,” sharing the music of Louisiana with the wider world. In reading the stories of these individuals, consider: do these individuals embody the 3 Es of good work?

2. Being Good in a World of Need: Take a look at this webinar with Rutgers Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Larry Temkin, hosted at Harvard’s Safra Center for Ethics. Dr. Temkin discusses some of his worries regarding global aid efforts and how they might actually bring about worse outcomes in some of the world’s poorest regions. He explains that what is morally right for the individual might be morally wrong for the collective, and vice versa. How might we take the lessons Dr. Temkin describes and apply them to our own efforts to do good work?

3. Evolution from an ‘I’ to a ‘We’ Culture: In this article on his new book with Shaylyn Romney Garrett, The Upswing, Robert Putman (of Bowling Alone fame) speaks to how American society moved from an an individualistic ‘I’ culture during the early 1900s “Gilded Age” to a more collectivistic ‘we’  culture, only to become more individualistic since the Reagan years, with the 1990s serving as a new “Gilded Age.” Putnam urges a return to a more ‘we’ oriented culture and hopes that movements like Black Lives Matter will help urge Americans in this direction. At The Good Project, we use the Rings of Responsibility to help individuals think about their responsibilities to self, others, community, profession, and wider society. How can this framework help you think about moving from an ‘I’ to a ‘we’ culture in your own life? 

4. Your Ideas are not Your Identity: Adam Grant’s new book Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know delves into the importance of intellectual humility--being aware of what we don’t know--and how that relates to our ability and willingness to change our opinions and ideas. In this article, Grant speaks to the “value of rethinking” ideas; he argues that rather than argue for a binary (I’m right, you’re wrong), we need to complexify ideas and try to get to the nuance of various arguments. To do this, we need to ask questions and listen to each other’s arguments. If you’re interested in thinking more about arguments and their connection to Good Work, check out our workbook with the Better Arguments Project. We contend that “better arguments lead to good work.” 

5. Myth of the Lazy Genius: Who do you think of when you think of a genius? Bill Gates? Steve Jobs? As Andrei Cimpian points out in this article for Character Lab, you most likely thought of someone male. At The Good Project, we often talk about the importance of mentors and role models--and certainly, who we look up to helps create our ideas of what it means to do good work. But as Dr. Cimpian points out, it’s important that we don’t unwittingly think only of mentors who “naturally” come by their skills or who we think have innate talent (often male role models), and thereby shun role models who work hard to get where they are in life and persist through challenge after challenge (often female role models). What implicit stereotypes might you hold about role models or mentors in your life? How might these stereotypes affect your views of what it means to do good work? 

Good Work for Dutch Civil Servants

By Hans Wilmink

Introduction

Several months before national elections, the Dutch coalition government resigned in January 2021 over what has come to be known as the ‘allowance scandal.’[1] [2] For years, an inhumane and unlawful execution of day-care allowance policies took place, ruining thousands of already vulnerable families. In this blog post, Hans Wilmink of the Professional Honor Foundation briefly summarizes the scandal and formulates several key points for Good civil servant Work.

The day-care allowance scandal

The Netherlands has a relatively wide array of social welfare services, ranging from unemployment benefits, to disabled care, to youth care, to day-care support. However, all these services come with strong surveillance measures that serve to safeguard the spending of tax-payers’ money and ensure honesty and integrity. For day-care, parents are eligible to receive an allowance, provided that they pay a certain amount of the contribution themselves and meet some other requirements.

The Dutch day-care allowance policy came into force in 2005. Parents can get up to 230 hours a month of day-care reimbursed. The exact number of reimbursed hours depends upon others on parents’ number of employment hours. The day-care allowance can count up to large sums of money per family, especially for lower-income families. After the day-care allowance is granted, it is paid either to the parents or to the day-care facility directly. Parents must pay a part of day-care costs themselves as contribution. The amount of that personal contribution depends upon income. 

Already since the beginning, strict surveillance had been in place. However, in 2013, after media coverage exposed fraud and misusage of the day-care allowance, public uproar erupted, leading to exceptionally strong surveillance measures of the program. While the scale of the fraudulent practices within government allowances turned out to be relatively small, the strong surveillance nevertheless led to a situation in which even the smallest mistakes were labelled as fraud. Moreover, in those cases labeled as fraud, day-care allowances were all reclaimed from the families that had received them for previous years. Individuals who stood up in protest of this practice, such as a legal advisor who addressed the unlawfulness and injustice of these practices,[3] were overruled and put aside.

In the years that followed – up until 2019 – ten thousands of families with lower and middle class incomes were all of a sudden saddled with ten thousands of euros in debt. The social consequences for many families were devastating, including house eviction, broken relationships, and medical problems.

A parliamentary inquiry commission scrutinized the wrongdoings in the summer of 2020.[4] During public hearings of top civil servants and politicians, including the Dutch prime minister, the politicians themselves expressed shock about the scale of the consequences for families. However, they argued that they had always been unaware of the scope and severity of the scandal.[5] The commission concluded in December 2020 that the very foundations of the rule of law were violated: the three powers of state – the legislative, the executive, and the judicial branches of government – did not function as proper checks and balances, keeping each other in check as should be the case in a state governed by rule of law. On the contrary, they strengthened one another in unjust and inhumane actions perpetrated against citizens. The commission’s report led to the Dutch coalition government resignation in January 2021.

The tasks for government

In the Netherlands, this scandal has raised the question of whether policy implementation – especially in social welfare – is too strict and therefore unjust. Two recommendations seem to gain wide acknowledgement:

1) Laws and policies need to leave discretionary space for implementers. After all, not all unique circumstances and contextual factors can be anticipated in the real world.

2) In the implementation of social policies, the principle of proportionality should be abided by. This principle states that a governing body has to try to come to decisions that do justice to all relevant interests, in order to ensure those decisions are lawful and just in the eyes of the citizens involved.

What this means for civil servants: dilemmas and tensions for Good Work?

When discretion of implementation increases, that power is not a freedom that can be used arbitrarily. Instead, it is a responsibility that civil servants need to fulfil professionally, geared towards a righteous and humane delivery of public services. After all, when many tasks and services are orchestrated by the government – as is the case in the Netherlands – expectations are high. Government officials have to respect and abide by the rule of law, ensuring high standards of precision and good governance. Needless to say, the aforementioned principle of proportionality, badly afflicted in the day-care allowance scandal, is one of these standards.

In likely 20,000 cases, families have been disproportionately affected by the reclamation of large sums of money. For example, if a parent paid 500 euros too little in personal contribution, or provided incomplete information, the total sum of allowance received – sometimes reaching ten thousand euros – was reclaimed by government. While a reduction of the allowance and possibly a fine could have served public interest, the total reclamation of funds is out of proportion to the offense, leading to severe and acute financial problems.

Good Work for civil servants according to the Professional Honor Foundation

Large organizations and bureaucracies have a tendency to easily lose sight of individual human cases. This is certainly the case when millions of decisions are involved, as with day-care allowances on the scale of an entire country. Large-scale automation of processes which emphasize technology and systems thinking is inevitable. Tasks and responsibilities of civil servants are split into separate units, causing bureaucratic systems’ behavior. Both civil servants and their managers have a tendency to limit their own engagement and ethical responsibility.

The Professional Honor Foundation strives to promote civil servants’ ‘craftmanship’, using the concepts of the Good Project to counter this allegedly ‘unescapable’ bureaucratic systems behavior. Against the background of the day-care allowance scandal, the foundation formulates six starting points for good civil service work:

1. Implementation without discretionary space is incompatible with Good Work. Straightforward application of rules does not do justice to complex realities, obstructing Good Work.

2. Automation is not a goal in itself, but a means that could also be used for Good Work purposes. Automation systems have been used to formulate ‘high risk’-profiles for fraud detection. The same systems can be used to formulate ‘high risk’-profiles for the unintended disadvantaging of citizens. This could help single out special cases that require more attention and care. If necessary, a feedback chain can be organized to report to policy makers, legal advisors, and governors.

3. Within this Good Work feedback, one should strive for excellence in content and technique. Knowledge about the goal of regulations, the considerations necessary to make decisions, the appropriate principles that are at play, the way systems operate, and skills for feedback is necessary.

4. Professionals should seek alignment when filling in their discretionary space (by engaging with colleagues, managers, and eventually legislators).

5. Good Work for civil servants implies aiming for plurality when it comes to engagement and ethical responsibility. This simultaneously serves the organization, colleagues, public service, politics, and society.

6. Good Work for civil servants requires a form of open accountability for the way civil servants fill in their discretionary space, enabling judicial review at all times.

No policy or act is able take into account all possible circumstances individual citizens or organizations are confronted with. However, implementation has to ensure a legitimate and fair execution of policies. Organizations and civil servants involved in implementation have to apply generic legal frames to concrete and specific cases. The considerations and decisions necessary for that require thorough professional motivation and peer feedback. This can be organized and trained for throughout organizations. It is also possible that new modes of public accountability are necessary for public services. However, successful change requires managerial and political support – or even better: bravery.

---

About the author

Hans Wilmink (1948) was trained as a sociologist and a senior administrative officer. From 1982, he worked for the ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations fulfilling several positions. Since 2013, he has worked as a volunteer for the Professional Honor Foundation, helping to apply the Good Work Toolkit into Dutch practices with a specific focus on Dutch government. In spring 2020, the Professional Honor Foundation published an essay by Hans titled Beyond angry and careless: a sense of the rule of law as moral compass for government and citizen [title translated from Dutch].

About the Professional Honor Foundation

Group coaching

The Professional Honor Foundation offers group coaching for professionals. The approach – using participants own experiences and cases – appeals to professionals’ intrinsic motivation to strive for good work and challenges professionals to stand for the quality of their work and to do what they deem really necessary. Our central coaching question is: do we do our work right, and do we do the right things? The Professional Honor Foundation has shaped this coaching into two variants: Good Work Trajectories and Good Work Places. Both are based on the valuable insights of The Good Project.

Empirical research

The Professional Honor Foundation empirically examines professionalism, publishing about research in various sectors/professions, including education, healthcare, accountancy, and town clergy.

Keynotes

The Professional Honor Foundation gives keynotes on professionalism and themes like craftmanship, engagement, responsibility, professional pride, integrity, and authority.

Publications

The Professional Honor Foundation publishes books on professionalism, professional honor and good work, often in collaboration with professional practice and science. Published work includes studies on public professionals holding authority, craftsmanship of civil servants, and moral authority of policing.

One edition was published in English: Professional Pride- A powerful force, edited by Thijs Jansen, Gabriël van den Brink & Jos Kole, p. 366, 2010, Amsterdam: Boom Publishing. This book contains the professional Honor Foundation’s mission: Professional Pride as a program - Onwards to a different administrative philosophy.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/15/world/europe/dutch-government-resignation-rutte-netherlands.html

[2] https://www.government.nl/documents/speeches/2021/01/15/statement-by-prime-minister-mark-rutte-on-the-government%E2%80%99s-resignation

[3] https://www.trouw.nl/binnenland/de-afdeling-toeslagen-zette-de-ambtenaar-die-stop-riep-op-een-zijspoor~bed2f08b/

[4] https://www.tweedekamer.nl/sites/default/files/atoms/files/20201217_eindverslag_parlementaire_ondervragingscommissie_kinderopvangtoeslag.pdf

[5] https://www.politico.eu/article/dutch-lodewijk-asscher-labor-leader-tax-office-scandal/

GCI Series: Michi and Good Work

The Global Citizens Initiative hosts an annual Fellowship Summit to cultivate young “global citizens” to become “lifelong leaders of positive change.” In July of 2019, 28 high school students from 15 different countries gathered together for a 10-day experience in Tokyo, Japan. These students are each responsible for the design and development of a service learning project to be carried out over the course of a 10 month period. Their projects are “glocal” – addressing a global problem at a local level. In Tokyo, the students were supported by a group of Teaching Assistants, themselves all alumni of the GCI Fellowship Program. The Good Project has been in consultation with GCI since its formation, and we follow the work of its participants with interest. We recently had the opportunity to catch up with several GCI alums and ask them about their work, their thoughts about Good Work, and reflections about their experiences with GCI.

---

About Michi Zaya Tumur 

Michi Zaya Tumur is from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.  Currently living in New York City,  Michi is working on a dual-degree program at The New School's College of Performing Arts, pursuing a BFA in Dramatic Arts and an MA in Arts Management and Entrepreneurship. She strongly believes in the power of creative education, so her objective as a teaching artist has been to use interdisciplinary theater and arts to create thought-provoking work that connects human beings. This is especially important to Michi when it comes to telling the stories of those whose voices are not often heard. Through her work, she hopes to build understanding among communities by encouraging audiences to experience empathy and new perspectives. She also has interests in debate, public speaking, and dance.

 What does it mean to do “good work” today?

Many people forget the value of self-care and the importance of intersectionality. I think “good work” today finds a balance between those things. It can be work that enriches the self in order to better serve your community and other communities. It can be work that thinks outside-the-box and reaches causes that are rarely, if ever, given attention. To me, the bottom line is that your heart is in the right place and wants to see a difference that benefits the world.

That being said, I don’t think it needs to be a massive, world-changing task. Recycling your bottles is good work. Participating in an internationally recognized initiative to protect the environment is good work. Some of the best “good work” I’ve seen has started small. Ridiculously small. The beautiful thing about that is that it makes it easy for anyone to do.

In the theatre community, we have a lot of LGBTQ+ artists working hard to gain recognition in an industry that, like many industries, is still run primarily by old white men. I once sat in a production meeting and witnessed a wonderful production manager quickly check-in that she was using the correct gender pronouns for a cis white female playwright who was not in the room but was being brought up in conversation. The tiny action could have been missed by anyone who was paying loose attention. However, seeing this consideration be put in so simply and casually was so impactful to me that it became a practice I now regularly use in conversations and in my rehearsal rooms as a director or stage manager. This small step has made the productions I’ve worked on incredibly warm, welcoming environments for all, regardless of gender identities beyond the binary being present or not.

Tell us about your understanding of the community.  What are the communities of which you feel a part?

To me, communities have two major identifiers:

1. People in a shared space/interest group/relationship.

2. They support one another, in different ways and in different measures.

The community I feel a strongest connection to will always be artists. After that, it would be my family (both by blood and by choice). Artists who come from diverse and unique backgrounds are always the ones I can resonate with the most. In my first year of college, one of my design professors had said to me “the more personal you get, the more relatable your work will be”. I’ve found this true over and over again. Despite being a theatre artist, I’ve found a wonderful community among dancers, illustrators, and even culinary artists.

The art community is intersectional as well. I love working with other artists of color in the U.S., artists from international backgrounds, queer artists, Mongolian artists, teaching artists, interdisciplinary theatre artists, the list goes on- all of whom I can identify with.  Everyone has a story that you will either find yourself in, or you will discover more about yourself. I’ve had the pleasure of being surprised by relating to work I’d never imagined I would. In the rehearsal process for theatre, the preliminary stages are called “table-work”, which is my favorite part of the process due to the amazing things you can learn about your collaborators. One night, a table-read rehearsal of half the play led to a conversation with a fellow actor that lasted all night discussing our experiences and values. I learned there can be similarities in growing up in an Asian household to growing up in a strict and sheltering Catholic household. I also learned there are some differences I’ll never fully understand, but can appreciate deeply.

Is there a particular role model who has helped inspire you to do “good work”, either real or fictional? What is it about this role model that has inspired you?

Mine is definitely fictional, and this may sound ridiculous, but it’s myself. Not in a conceited way, however. I don’t see my current self as my role model, but I see the version of myself that I would like to be as a role model. I imagine someone who is taking initiative, reaching all the goals I want to reach, doing the things for communities I would like to do, and I paint a picture in my mind of that person as me. Then, I try my best to become that person.

Of course, I gain a lot of inspiration from my parents, my peers, and my mentors from all parts of life, but I think everything they have instilled in me becomes combined with the imaginary me who has done everything I’d like to do. I find that as much as others can voice their belief in me or support me, I need to believe in myself as well. Being my own little cheerleader helps, because even if a part of me is terrified that I cannot accomplish something, the imaginary me already has accomplished it.  So, why can’t that be the real me?

Tell us about your work.  What projects are you currently involved with? How might what you are doing now relate to the work you began with GCI?

When I was a Fellow with GCI in 2016, my concern was improving creative education in Mongolia. My project eventually evolved into creating a space for performing arts for students, faculty, and staff at my K-12 school. Now, my school has a bi-annual talent show called “Hobby’s Got Talent”, in which anyone can participate and showcase their talents. The year I graduated, I got to see unforgettable performances.  My physics teacher performed opera, and an impressive rock band was formed by fourth-grade students. It was wonderful to see people in my community truly express themselves and show each other their passions. I remember seeing one of my classmates tearfully prepare for her performance - it was an opportunity that she’d never had before, and I could tell it was incredibly meaningful for her to be able to sing for our whole school in our final year before graduation.

Currently, I have been doing more writing. In particular, I would like to write stories and plays about Asian teenage boys. I never see Asian teenage boys on stage or on screen, and I only know one male East Asian actor in my entire college program. Yet, I grew up around so many Asian teenage boys who all are full of life and have experienced the things that make us hurt, smile, cry, laugh, and fall in love. I think they deserve to share that with others, so I'm writing about them.

I like to think that I’ve continued to work on giving people who aren’t heard very often a chance to tell their stories and show us who they are, beyond the surface.

How do you feel your current projects are connected or not to this view of “good work”?

I grew up wanting to be an artist without any means to express myself. I had no actual theatre experience prior to college, beyond acting in fifteen minute plays in a gym that could hardly fit a comfortable audience of fifty people. I never saw characters who looked like me, or stories that truly reflected my own. I spent my childhood wanting and worrying about whether or not I’d ever get to do what I love. Luckily, I managed to get here. Now, my work is driven towards making sure other young artists, who have the same fears as myself, have a space to feel like they do have a chance. I want others to feel hope. Being able to do that for others does everything for me.

 How and where do you find meaning in your work?

One of my acting professors once said, “If you feel frustrated afterwards, you held back. If you feel good afterwards, you were truthful.” This was life-changing for me. I think to find meaning in my work, I need to be truthful and I need to delve into the work without holding back. The more I can be honest, vulnerable, and effective with my work, the more I feel I’ve gained something from it while putting out all that I could have for the world. Even if my professor was referring to acting, this was an important lesson in everything I do. Keeping this in mind makes the work I do feel tenfold more impactful and gratifying. While I cannot do much to control the outcomes or impact of my work, I can find meaning in the work’s journey.

Tell us about your biggest challenges, and how you work to tackle them.

I struggle in finding balance between myself and my work. I’ve had many times where I will deny myself basic needs such as sleep or a healthy diet in the name of “working hard”. Every time this has happened, I’ve re-learned the lesson of how working “hard” non-stop only leads to debilitating yourself to the point where you cannot work at all. In my third year of college, I had a schedule I’d purposefully packed so densely that I hadn’t had time to sleep enough or spend any time on myself. Eventually, between taking on nearly 60 hours a week solely dedicated to working on projects, school, my job, and an internship, along with barely getting enough sleep or eating enough whole meals, my health could not take it anymore and I ended up in the emergency room with severe chest-pains and exhaustion from stress. Even while my friend was trying to take me to the hospital, I was in denial of my own (very visible) pain and told her I couldn’t go because I had class in an hour.

Since then, I’ve worked hard to balance my work and my personal life. I now prioritize sleep and my diet, and I have learned to take a step back from the work to really examine how I am doing. If I am not running at my best capacity, I cannot dedicate my best to the work. In a way, I had to teach myself that, as important the work can be, I am important too.

Have you ever faced a dilemma where you weren’t sure what the “right” course of action was? How did you handle this situation?

When this kind of dilemma arises, it is easy to feel so anxious about making a decision that you’d rather give the responsibility to someone else. When you have partners or collaborators to turn to, it’s helpful to hear their insights. Of course, it eventually may come down to your call. I find what works best for me is to really examine my options and their impacts, and then find what solutions I may have if problems arise post-decision. In other cases, what works best for me is to try and find a new solution altogether. Sometimes, the weight of a dilemma will get you so caught up and overwhelmed that you don’t notice what else is available or possible.

That usually requires me to step away momentarily from the problem and think about what I have going on beyond the context of the dilemma. What else is there to do? What else needs attention? What have I done before? What haven’t I done before? Eventually, I do have to come to a decision and resolve to deal with whatever may follow. It isn’t always easy, but it is important to remind myself that I am working towards something important, so it must be done.

A recent personal dilemma was deciding whether or not to leave New York when COVID-19 started spreading in the city. I was terrified to go to my relatives in another state in case I’d get someone sick, I was unsure if I’d be able to return home to Mongolia due to border closures, and I was concerned about being completely alone in New York right after getting laid off from my job and as lockdown was approaching. I was calling my mother, my brother, my aunt and friends every single day trying to figure out what to do. I was desperate for guidance, but was met again and again with the conclusion that I was the one who had to make the decision.

In the span of three days my plans changed from staying, to leaving via car, to flying to my relatives in Colorado. In the end, what swayed my decision was learning that there was a place I could self-isolate after arriving in CO, eliminating my concern about spreading sickness. I know many others haven’t had the same options or privileges, which makes me feel even more strongly about the importance of keeping one another safe during these times.