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Save the Children International’s leadership is blaming financial hardships for significant staffing cuts. But some staffers are blaming leadership for mucking up the process.
Also in today’s edition: Several employees in South Sudan say they have been left high and dry by the sudden collapse of a major U.K. development supplier, and do employees at the U.K.’s premier development finance institution deserve such generous paychecks?
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Save the Children is embarking on a major restructuring called “Fit for the Future.” But to some employees, the organization’s leadership has been unfit in planning for that future.
More than 200 Save the Children International staffers have signed an open letter declaring that they “have lost trust in our senior leadership team,” my colleague David Ainsworth writes.
The letter follows an internal announcement that more than 500 staffers are at risk of redundancy in the central and regional offices of SCI — a U.K.-registered charity that acts as the hub of a movement with nonprofits in 30 countries. With an annual revenue of $2.5 billion and around 25,000 staffers, SCI is one of the largest humanitarian organizations in the world.
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Rising costs, high levels of inflation, fundraising challenges, and reductions in total spending from major donors accompanied by drops in unrestricted funding have hit many INGOs hard, particularly humanitarian organizations.
The SCI letter said that while staff recognized the financial pressures facing aid organizations, they also expect leadership to present a long-term vision and learn from past mistakes. It said staff were concerned about a lack of transparency and hierarchical decision-making, and that the Fit for the Future process had excluded staff while relying on external consultants.
It said these approaches had “crystallised widespread concerns among staff about a lack of accountability” and that “therefore, we have decided to take the deeply uncomfortable step of writing to you to state that we have lost trust in our Senior Leadership Team.”
The letter calls for greater staff representation, increased transparency, and an independent review of structural and financial decisions over the last five years.
Read: More than 200 Save the Children staff ‘have lost trust’ in leadership
Related reading: IRC poised to shed 1 in 9 UK staff amid funding crisis
Most people enter the development and aid sector to do good, not to get rich. The work can be personally rewarding, but it’s usually not professionally lucrative.
So the ballooning salaries of top earners at British International Investment could easily raise eyebrows, with 75 of its staff members earning more than £250,000 (around $323,000) in 2023, an increase from 57 in 2022, and five people earning more than £400,000 in 2023, up from just one.
But Nick O’Donohoe, outgoing head of BII, told my colleague Rob Merrick that you get what you pay for, arguing that staffers join to “make a difference to people’s lives” — and could easily earn more in the City of London.
O’Donohoe, in a wide-ranging interview with Rob to mark his departure after seven years as chief executive, said BII’s growth inevitably involved “a significant amount of hiring at the more senior level, so they typically have higher salary levels.”
“We are responsible for £10 billion of taxpayers’ money and it has to be invested properly. There are certain skills that are needed to do that — and, I suppose, a price for those with that skill set,” he said.
“I’ve had a wonderful career working for financial institutions,” he added, “but it's a different feeling you get, it's a different type of reward — and increasingly, people, particularly young people, put a really high value on that.”
Read more: BII chief says top-earning staff join for ‘the mission’ not high pay (Pro)
ICYMI: ‘Core’ task is tackling poverty not climate, outgoing BII chief tells DFIs (Pro)
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Crown Agents, one of the largest suppliers of development services to the U.K. government, is in far worse financial hot water than Save the Children — it’s completely and immediately shutting down after nearly 200 years in operation.
As we recently reported exclusively, the nonprofit, which employed around 340 people, said in a statement that it had been struggling with a £50 million pensions deficit it inherited from the U.K. government — equivalent to almost a year’s revenue — as well as cuts to British official development assistance, and a frustrated contract in Ukraine.
Devex asked the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office about the status of its contracts with Crown Agents. An FCDO spokesperson said that there are “appropriate contingencies in place” to mitigate the impact.
Yet as my colleague Jessica Abrahams found out, Crown Agents employees in South Sudan say they are missing tens of thousands of dollars in social security that the company was holding for them when it collapsed.
Three employees that Devex spoke to allege that they are collectively owed more than $100,000.
“This is our social security, our insurance,” said one former staffer. “Now we are not secured after all those contributions.”
Those who contacted the liquidation agencies have received generic advice that they are not eligible for redundancy payments because they are not U.K. nationals.
However, as a former staffer stressed: “We are not asking for a benefit [compensation], we are asking for our savings.”
“I am feeling that we have been robbed because it [the money] was deducted from our salary,” the staffer said. The funds should have been returned when their contracts finished but Crown Agents was “extending and extending [the contracts] and finally … they disappeared.”
Read: The staff who fear they 'lost everything' in Crown Agents collapse
ICYMI: Crown Agents shuts down (Pro)
The world’s attention has turned to the latest deadly — and terrifying — health crisis: mpox, with a highly contagious and severe strain of the disease spreading rapidly in Africa and making an appearance outside the continent as well.
But another disease is fanning out to new places in Africa and straining health systems in the process, Devex contributor David Njagi reports.
It’s called kala-azar — also known as black fever or visceral leishmaniasis — and it leaves many patients struggling with chronic conditions. It’s one of three strains of leishmaniasis, a disease caused by an infection with parasites spread by the bite of infected sandflies. The World Health Organization estimates there are 700,000 to 1 million new leishmaniasis patients each year, and kala-azar, if left untreated, is fatal in over 95% of cases.
Equally worrying is the fact that the disease is being propelled by climate change, as rising heat and prolonged drought create the ideal petri dish for the sandflies that spread it to flourish.
Despite the dangers, experts say kala-azar is one of the deadly neglected tropical diseases that has not received a lot of attention. In 2022, $81.83 million was spent globally on research and development to address dengue, for example, while leishmaniasis only received $37.81 million.
Read: What is kala-azar, and why are health experts alarmed by its rising spread?
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A U.N. report found that 2023 was the deadliest year even for aid workers, with 280 killed globally. The Gaza Strip, South Sudan, and Sudan were the most dangerous areas. [DW]
Escalating conflict and severe flooding are worsening Myanmar’s humanitarian crisis, with over 3.3 million people internally displaced. [UN News]
Experts gather in Bangkok this week to negotiate a global plastic pollution treaty. However, environmentalists, tribal leaders, and those directly affected by plastic pollution say they are excluded from the discussions. [AP]
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