The Listening Zones of UK-Based Development NGOs

This chapter interrogates the listening practices of NGO workers in headquarters and in-country today. On the basis of a wide range of interviews with NGO staff working for four UK-based INGOs, it examines the role of languages and cultural knowledge in the construction of NGOs’ listening efforts. It records the voices of NGO staff as they describe their listening experiences and the challenges and uncertainties they face as actors at the core of development projects who attempt to listen to a complex mix of voices, including those of local communities, partner organisations, NGO colleagues and international donors. The chapter examines NGO workers’ responses to questions related to listening as they emerged in interviews: firstly, listening as an institutionalised practice, linked to accountability, monitoring and evaluation, mainly taking place in English, and secondly, listening as an informal practice that takes place outside paper-based frameworks and in a mix of languages and through informal translation practices. The chapter underlines the relevance of the framework of the Listening Zone, which enables a conceptualisation of listening as a complex and hybrid process, in which various actors listen in a variety of languages, motivated by a range of different aims.