Applying a Spiritual Framework in International Development, with Barney Singer
In this episode of the podcast, Andrew speaks with Barney Singer, a social change leader with many decades of multidisciplinary experience in social development—in both the public and private sectors. Barney talks about his work, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, and how he brings a spiritual framework to his program, design, and delivery, as well as in his supervision of others. He shares a number of examples of the impact of his work and the impact of his belief system and approach on those whom his programs serve. Barney shares his wisdom very comfortably with the voice of both an expert and a “lifelong seeker."
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I’m very happy to introduce this next episode with Barney Singer. Barney is a lawyer turned leader in the field of International Development, working with an agency that's closely connected with USAID, and he's been working in sub-Saharan Africa in particular for several decades. Fascinating guy, a teacher at the university level, a former clerk to a federal judge, an attorney, and now a program leader.
The way he talks about his work in Africa is quite remarkable in this interview in that he talks about spiritual principles and uses a spiritual lens as he brings to his work. He discusses these things easily and naturally. I'm very impressed by how he does this and how we can translate it into what it specifically means.
I asked him, “What does that mean?” “What do you mean by spiritual lens and spiritual opportunity?”He provided some examples of this and what that looks like in his work, which has a great impact on a large number of people in parts of the world very far away from the US. He talks about how a spiritual framework helps him be a better leader, informs how he looks at the world, sees opportunity, and supports him and helps him lead and supervise others.
He also talks about some of the differences between the US and other parts of the world in terms of openness to talking about things that are what he would call spiritual, and also just the focus on relationships in other parts of the world as compared to here in the US. Just as a cultural difference, a typical generalized cultural difference, but recognizing what the opportunity is to invest more in relationships, which he also sees as something spiritual in his framework.
He talks about the trend towards localization in international development with the promotion of local voices and local leadership in those parts of the world where these international development programs are being rolled out and introduced. There's a recognition, as he says, that people have their answers.
Part of his work is to help those people bring these answers forward, which, as he says, is more powerful and sustainable when the answers are coming from those people. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. Barney has a very different point of view because of his work on the other side of the world and how he brings some of the themes we discuss in this episode brings them back from sub-Saharan Africa. Enjoy.
I'm happy to have with me my friend and colleague, Barney Singer, who just basically raises the average of what's happening in Washington, DC. That's how I hope to think about it through the course of your work and your presence. First, let me just welcome you to the show. Welcome aboard.
Thank you very much, Andrew. It's a pleasure to be with you.
Thank you. I appreciate Barney's journey. If you look at Barney's LinkedIn profile right now, it leads with a social change leader and practitioner. If you look at his career trajectory from clerking for a federal judge to working for the National Labor Relations Board to Health and Human Services, the US Small Business Association, and then directing programs related to the US in the developing world, as I understand it. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Some faculty positions along the way, both in traditional education, such as the George Washington School of International Affairs. Along with Insight University and then the Peace Theological Seminary's Transcendent Leadership program, which is where we met. I have great admiration for your journey, the diversity of that journey, and the evolution of that journey. I look forward to hearing about it. No pressure. I'd say welcome. Is there anything about your background and your journey that leads you to want to engage in this conversation about spirituality and leadership?
Thanks very much for that introduction, Andrew. The first thing that comes forward for me to say is that the journey continues. I feel like I don't have an endpoint in mind. As you were speaking about my past, I can remember those times and realize how early in my journey I was 30 years ago, let's say, how lucky I am that I have been on this spiritual path, how that's influenced my professional choices and what I'm able to bring to those circumstances. I hope that will continue for the rest of my working life and as it emanates out.
Spiritual Journey
Just picking up on some of what you just shared, being on this spiritual path, whatever that means to you, which we can discuss if you like, and then how it applies to your work and how you're able to bring some of that to your work. I'm curious to know what that means for you, and the way you raise it casually suggests to me that this is something that you have talked about with people. My point is that it doesn't seem like the first time. How do you talk about that in a way that is both personally meaningful, relatable, inclusive, and welcoming to people?
You've asked several questions in a row.
The thing about no longer practicing, Barney, is that we can ask compound questions and no one's going to object. I love doing that when I can. Sorry. I'll take a step back and listen.
That's quite alright. I just didn't write them down because you were going fast, but you can remind me as we go. Let me start by responding to your question about my spiritual journey. I think that this may be true for many people. I have heard from others just in conversation that I'm an individual who came into this lifetime as what you might call a seeker, which is somebody who isn't proactively to some degree, open to a spiritual journey.
Now, when I was younger, I wouldn't have called it that. I didn't have the language for that. I just knew that I was grappling for things and I was searching. It wasn't until I started to take some definitive steps to learn more about myself and my purpose in the world that I was able to find out that there was this whole spiritual dimension to what I had always thought was my personal search.
I feel very grateful that those things came together in the way that I did. In the same way that I said earlier, the journey continues. That was still true 30 years ago. It started before that, but when I first started taking some definitive steps that I was conscious of, I could feel the progression. I could feel the evolution.
Sometimes, I would start things for that purpose to enhance my own birth and development and they would be the most illuminating, eye-opening things that I could do. Other times, especially early on, they scared the crap out of me and I backed away as quickly as I could, but I had to learn that balance and I had to learn that I needed to get to the other side if I wanted to have the growth.
Often, in those times when I got to the edge of the cliff and found myself petrified and not wanting to do something, I kept going back time and time again until I had whatever I needed inside me. The courage to go forward. Finding the right opportunities that matched where I was became a critical part of that. For example, early on, I signed up for some workshops and things that had a pretty aggressive approach. I did a couple of them. I found some value in it, but what I found worked better for me was an environment that had a more loving and supportive approach.
It's more gentle and inviting rather than pushing. Not that it's always bad, but pushing and what you called aggressive.
Yes. For me, that worked. I don't want to leave the impression that the more loving approach is less rigorous or a lesser opportunity. It's just that it's a different way of presenting someone with a choice and inviting them to come forward to the extent they choose to and are feeling ready for. One of the things that I learned over time is there's always the next choice.
There's always the next one and the next one. One of the things that you and I have heard others say before is that spirit gives us an unlimited set of growth opportunities. We can act our own processes for growth, knowing that we can keep going, we can keep building, and evolving over time. I have embraced that in all aspects of my work and life.
Spirit really gives us an unlimited set of opportunities for growth.
One of the things I appreciate about what you're saying is that when I'm reminded that there's always the next choice there's a certain, “That seems to remove a little bit of the pressure from this choice.” I still need to make this choice for what's in front of me, but all I need to do is make this choice of what's in front of me. It seems to me that it relieves some of the burden of what I need to decide on three choices from now on. Does that make sense?
It does make sense, and as you were saying, I'm thinking of examples in my life where I knew that or where I didn't know that. Sometimes in the past, I have felt the pressure that, “My gosh. I have to make this choice right now, and I have to do this because what if there isn't a next choice?” If not, the next choice isn't “As good.”
What I found, fortunately, I'm grateful for this, is that there is always the next opportunity. Sometimes, it is even richer than the one that was right in front of me that I was feeling much pressure about. There are a lot of spiritual gifts or gifts from spirit in our paying attention to that and recognizing that there's an unlimited capacity in the universe for us to take advantage of.
Yes, thank you. I just want to capture so much of what you're saying, but I don't want to stop the conversation to do that. It seems to me that some of what you're sharing lands on me, and it is definitely in the realm of a spiritual way of looking at life, for lack of a better term. The way you share this seems very casual, easy, and almost second nature. This is something you talk about with fortunate people.
Spiritual Framework
I'm curious to know, his framework of a spiritual approach, if I could label it that way, how has that impacted your work in leadership, especially in areas like the National Labor Relations Board and the legal worlds, if you will, from which you have emerged, which may not necessarily be particularly receptive to things that are as far from grounded physical as this a spiritual framework can be.
Let me preface this by saying that my work with the NLRB was at the very beginning of my career. It predates my awareness of a lot of this and my embrace of a spiritual framework. I was very much in those early seeking days back then. I think examples that I'm able to give are going to be much more salient at later points in my career.
I remember those pretty deeply. Looking at the parties that were involved in different kinds of disputes, I can think back to how I might have taken advantage of certain things at that time. Your bigger question though is about how my spiritual framework affects my work life. I would say that it has been extraordinarily valuable at different levels of my work.
I'll speak about this as an individual, as a supervisor, and as a program implementer because those are three of the large concentric circles in my current work. Individually, having a spiritual framework and the principles that underlie that help me be a better leader and a better professional in the international development field.
I think it informs how I look at the world, how I see opportunity and the connections I can make inside myself, and how that might infuse my approach to the kinds of work we do. In terms of being a supervisor for others, the spiritual framework and principles very much positively influence the way that I interact with my direct reports, my superiors, and my peers as well.
They're all in that second ring, if you will. Having some clarity around what I'm responsible for versus what someone else is responsible for. Boundaries, how to give and receive feedback effectively. All of those things are spiritual in orientation to me. They're very much valuable. They have great value in terms of how I interact with those kinds of individuals at all of those different levels. The spiritual framework infuses everything that I do with the people in my work life, regardless of position.
It sounds like what you're talking about the first level is the personal level and the second level, the supervisor is more the interpersonal level. The approach helps you with feedback and other important interactions at that level of being a supervisor.
That correct. Thanks for capturing it in that way. I want to add something to that, though, which is at the personal level, it's very much about what's going on inside me as I look at the world and interact with myself. At the interpersonal level, it's about two things. It's about what's going on inside me as well as how I'm engaging externally. There's a relationship between those two things. At the 3rd level, which you could call more of the community level, the intervention level, or whatever wonderful word I know you'll come up with for this.
You called it The Program Implementer level.
Yes, it is also about what's going on inside me, what I am choosing to create programmatically, and how I'm able to bring those spiritual principles alive into the work that I do, which might be public health interventions, related to education and developing countries, or many other different critical social issues of the day.
I recognize the spiritual opportunities that are available through that work at different levels. In some cases, it is about what I put into the design of an intervention. At other times, it's much more deliberate in terms of leadership what I might say to people, how I might introduce programming, and how I might facilitate a particular group working towards a common development objective.
There's sometimes subtlety to the way I bring that forward. Sometimes, it's quite overt, intentionally. An overt example is a time when I was able to create and implement a leadership development program for young people in seven countries in Southern Africa. We were able to talk about some of this stuff very directly. Those opportunities are not as ubiquitous as we might hope, but they do sometimes exist.
I was going to say, when you talk about bringing these types of things into a leadership development program, what can we do to talk about specifics? We're getting out of the potential vagaries of spiritual things to what was included and what made that particular leadership program in that developing country have that spiritual dimension element. How would the participants know that, feel that, or experience that?
One of the things that I've observed over the twenty-plus years that I've been working internationally is an openness to what we're calling spiritual principles, but we could call them other things. It's a general openness regardless of what we call it. I've noticed that more in some parts of the world than either. In particular, over the last decades, I've done a tremendous amount of my work in Sub-Saharan Africa.
What I've noticed is that in many of the African countries in which I've worked, there seems to be an innate openness compared to the US. Two spiritual principles and spiritual conversation. The introduction of the spirit into the world of work in ways that have not felt natural in the United States. Parenthetically, you asked me a few minutes ago how I am able to speak freely about topics like this with folks.
I think it depends on the audience and the extent to which I will bring forward certain kinds of language or certain kinds of references because there are degrees of openness. There are also opportunities for progression over time and I recognize that just as I had my evolution, I can respect that for others. Sometimes, that means a starting point that may not be as robust as you and I might start something at, but it's the appropriate place for a conversation with that individual, that group, or that community. It is just the starting point.
When you talk about the progression, meaning we start where we start, there may be an opportunity to expand this boundary. I think what you're talking about is expanding this boundary so that we can talk about more or perhaps even increase the conversation or, in some sense, it may be deepen the conversation depending upon which way you do your visual.
Yes, that's exactly correct. Those kinds of opportunities, I think, show up throughout our work worlds. One of the things that you and I were talking about a couple of minutes ago was how we interact with our clients. I've invoiced this principle over the years, and I always intentionally focus on what I've agreed to bring forward for clients.
Sometimes I can see that there are even richer possibilities available but clients are also focused on what they're paying for and what their expectations are. Once there is a relationship, though, when there's trust and a recognition that we are delivering what we've agreed to, there can be entry points to have conversations about what else might we be able to do here. How might we enhance or deepen the work that we're doing together? It's very much about that level of expansion as you were describing it.
Once there is a relationship, trust, and the recognition that we are delivering what we've agreed to, there can be entry points to have conversations about what else might we be able to do.
Could you give an example of a client that you're talking about? What is the work that's been agreed upon, what does the delivery of that work look like, and then what is the expansion? Perhaps bringing in some of the more spiritual framework things, what does that look like? What are we talking about? What would be an example from your experience about what that arc looks like and where it is happening? For example, is it a country in Sub-Saharan Africa, a government agency, or a nongovernmental agency that you're working with? How does it work? I'd love to hear something I could visualize that would help me.
A few examples in mind with different angles to them. Let me start with the program that I was involved with for about a decade in the Republic of South Africa. My team and I were hired to create and implement a Public Health Intervention related to HIV prevention and maternal and child health. There were some very specific outcomes that the client was interested in having in terms of the health care delivery system.
For example, the training of health care professionals in the country. There was a system-wide angle to that. What those healthcare professionals were doing was serving the needs of community members. At its most basic, there is a finiteness potential to that. Write a curriculum. You do training. You implement that with these healthcare professionals and support them in their medical interventions with their community, which is all wonderful and linear, and it makes a lot of sense.
You're training this number of people during this period with this level of expenditure. You're tracking progress in this way. Am I understanding that?
You are, and the other end of that is also measuring the impact on the beneficiaries. Is this training making a difference in terms of the care that these people were receiving and their health outcomes? With that as the base level of intervention, the question that I had in mind was, “What could we do with that setup with those parameters that might be even greater than the sum of those parts?”
That is not necessarily what the client was asking for at the beginning or had in mind but to me, as a professional and certainly within the context of spirituality and leadership, I'm always thinking and asking myself and sometimes others, “Is there a bigger opportunity here?” “Is there a way that we can do what we said we were going to do and do more?” “Bring more and have an even greater impact than what we have been contracted to do?”
What I realized as we were implementing this particular project over more than a decade is that there were a number of those kinds of expansion opportunities. Let me give you a couple of specific examples. We realized that the chain that I described of training physicians for the Ministry of Health who then worked with their hospitals and trained community health workers.
That was just a small slice of the system of healthcare providers in the country. It was enough to do what we said we were going to do, but there was much more. There were many more different kinds of providers and interested parties that could play a role in what we were trying to do. For example, who else might need to know about what we were teaching and the opportunities for greater impact? One area where we found that was with students of health professions.
We were able to bring what we were doing and repackage it into curricula for schools around the country. That had a tremendous impact on the next generation of providers. Was that helping our agreed-upon outcomes? We would reach the agreed-upon outcomes through the linear thing we had created.
What we were doing by working with students of all different kinds of health professions was setting something up for the future that was going to have a much greater potential impact than what we were where we started. A second example that we realized is that in addition to just this element of training, there were other needs that the beneficiaries or the recipients of this training, had a lot of other potential needs.
One of the big ones related to nutrition was treated as a separate public health subdiscipline. What we recognized, my team and I, was that there was an opportunity to bring that into what we were doing and have an enhanced group of stakeholders and providers as well as additional government ministries engaged in the conversation.
We were able to broaden what we were doing and invite people to the table who may not have been in the same lane that we were in, but where there was a natural synergy and potential benefit for us and for them, for the beneficiaries that we were all trying to serve. Exploiting those kinds of opportunities, I think, can be very powerful. It's merely a matter of being aware and being on the lookout for beginning those conversations. Do we talk about them as spiritual opportunities? Not necessarily, but are they? I think, yes, they are.
Spiritual Opportunities
I'm curious to know, for you, what makes them spiritual opportunities through your framework or framework you may be as a way of categorizing things other than just, “It's a value add.” Someone else might look at this. My McKinsey friends will say, “No. It's just a value add. That's what we do.” That's giving the client more than they ask for. Great, but what makes it spiritual?
Sometimes, talking about something as a value add is appropriate. Sometimes making the business case is critical to be able to do whatever you need to do and whatever you want to do in addition.
Yes, there is a certain language we have to speak in this world and that language is different. First of all, it's very different than sub-Saharan Africa. Talk about cultural differences and what a culture can tolerate. To your point, where that line is is where people are open.
What makes it spiritual for me is that it's a question of envisioning an end state. It's a question of having enough perspective and getting enough elevation to be able to think about what would be the highest potential good for the most number of people. You and I talk about that in terms of the highest good of all concerned.
How can we bring that forward in this business context? How can we demonstrate spirituality and leadership in what otherwise might be a very simple business transaction? I think we can do that when we are paying attention and how we introduce that to all relevant folks who can be part of a greater solution.
Something magical can happen when people come together, not simply to serve their purposes or their organizational purposes, but to recognize that they are part of a larger system. By contributing their piece, the whole can be greater than the sum of the parts. Helping people to recognize that commonality of purpose, which is not the typical way most things are approached, can be very powerful.
We can then position ourselves to support folks to achieve those common objectives or the common agenda that they may set. There are ways of bringing that forward, but with a spiritual lens, I would say that it is about having an awareness of the unity of what's in front of us, the unity of consciousness that's possible if we invite that forward. If we help people get past the boundaries that they currently experience, whether they're aware of them or not, we can help them become aware.
We can help overcome them because they are often barriers that simply were inherited from the work that they're doing or that we're doing. The level of support that we can provide to help everybody step into a larger joint vision is very spiritual. There is business terminology for how we do that, which makes it acceptable for those who might otherwise have trouble embracing it and that's great. That's fine, but we're infusing this spiritual opportunity into the context that's in front of us.
I say that there's magic that can happen because I've seen it over and over again in many contexts and cultures over the years, which facilitates a process like that. We have different kinds of stakeholders, some of whom may have never been in the same room before, and some probably have competed for resources. People come to the same table and do so with a level of respect and equality. If we're setting the tone and facilitating the way that people can experience that is remarkable. It feels like this great spiritual blossoming is possible.
If I could attempt to tag a few of the things that you're talking about, forgive me, and double-click on this thing of what the spiritual lens is in action. I hear it as a certain respect for people in conversation. I hear it as the highest good. You talked about what else is possible. What other good can we do here and what other ways can we contribute? You use the word unity.
How can you help me if I'm a client tech and you help me potentially see beyond my simple, “What is my interest.” How might my interest connect with others' interests? See that whole a little bit more so that what you call the elevation that I like to call altitude that I can see there is more of a we involved. These are some of the things you're talking about.
Yes. Very much so.
Spirituality In Leadership
It's interesting. This thing about needing to speak the language in different languages. I grew up in a different part of the law than you did, but you Clerked for a federal judge back in the day, and you needed to address the bench, say a certain thing, may it please, and this is how you needed to speak. I suspect that if you are in Sub-Saharan Africa with certain groups or tribes, you approach things a certain way, and this is the way you have to speak.
That's not something to be judged or dismissed as, “What is that? Why can't we just?” No. That's the way it works. Those are the local rules, sometimes codified in binders by Princess Hall or whatever, and sometimes just passed on verbally, orally for generations, or if not millennia. The need to speak that language and at the same time to be open to what else is possible.
I appreciate it. I don't want to say tension, but that is back and forth between respect for what the boundaries are, what the rules are, or the way things get done over here. The want, the desire, or perhaps it's a little bit coming back to something you and I talked earlier about. It's not aggressively pushing, but it's more inviting and opening a space where more can be included. Not because we're forcing it but because more can be included. It says that maybe there's a tension between the current language limitation and ways of working, and then what else is possible and how can that be brought in?
You used the word invitation a second ago, and I want to pick up on that. One of the very positive things that's happening in the international development field at the moment is a conversation about localization and locally-led development. I think that's something that many of us have been doing for a long time, but it has a higher level of recognition by several funders at the moment and it's getting a lot more attention. What it's about in relevant parts is local power, local voices, and local leadership.
As we're talking about spirituality and leadership, the invitation for folks is to step forward in that context and claim their power and their voice. Recognize their leadership potential. I contrast this with a historic development approach from colonial powers around the world going back some number of decades where we assumed, you and me, but there was a general assumption by the Western countries, the North, who had the resources that they had the answers.
International Development: As we're talking about spirituality in leadership, the invitation for folks is really to step forward in that context, claim their power and voice, and recognize their own potential for leadership.
They were going to show up with those answers, have them implemented, and have them embraced. What's great about this local-led development trend and the promotion of local voices, local power, and local leadership is it's the antithesis of that. It is the recognition that people have what they need. They may or may not be aware of it, but they have their answers. A powerful thing that we can do is to help facilitate their bringing this forward. That's going to be much more impactful and much more sustainable than if we show up and say, “Here, do this.”
I'm pleased that this set of principles around localization has legs now because I feel like it's very consistent with a spiritual platform, if you will, that some of us who do this professionally, not only do get to, but we we step back and leave room for other people to have their process, their growth and development. It's much more respectful, I would say, to use a word that you were using earlier about different cultures.
It very much fits with what I was describing in terms of the multi-stakeholder engagement processes as well. It's very much built on trust, respect, and relationships, which play such a critical role in Africa and many other countries and continents around the world. Far more than it ever has mattered in the United States. The idea of relationships and putting time and investment into nurturing relationships is one of the most beautiful lessons I learned about my work in Africa or from my work there.
It's more than okay to do that. It's critical to do that. To put it into business terminology conversation, many of us are familiar with the different kinds of resources that we are juggling on projects, financial resources, human resources, and the like. Money is only one kind of capital, but what doesn't get talked about as much as financial capital is social capital.
The bonds and the bridges between us and all of the others. There's a whole body of literature around all of that, which is great and it's served me well, but it's also very spiritual in orientation because it is about how we engage with other people and how we support each other in creating a future stage that is going to have the biggest, benefit for those people.
Money is only one kind of capital. What doesn't get talked about as much as financial capital is social capital, the bonds and the bridges between us and all of the others.
I loved and appreciated being able to bring some of those elements into the work that I do whether I'm using spiritual terminology or not. There have been examples, though, just to give you one more, where it has been very overt intentionally. I'm working on a project at the moment. It's a soon-to-be-signed project that is very specifically about leadership and leadership development for young people throughout Africa.
I can explain the details of how it's all set up to you at another time if it's interesting and relevant for your readers but what's remarkable in the context of this conversation is that it is a deliberate focus on leadership. Leadership is not a tangent, if you will, that we bring in. This is taking leadership on directly and saying, “We want these young people from across this continent to claim their voices, to claim their ability to set the agenda for their communities and their countries.”
How can we, as a project funded by an international funder, support them in doing that? What structures can we put in place not by ourselves but with all of the people that have a vested interest in this? I sometimes glibly say when I start a new project, “I'm this middle-aged white guy from the US. I'm leaving at the end of this project.” “I don't want this to be about me. This is about you and what's best for you and your community, your families, neighbors, country, and region.”
I say it in a joking and teasing way, but do you know what? I'm also serious about it because if we're going to have an impact and do things that are for the highest good of the most people that we can, I think that's a critical element to what we do. In a program leadership program that I'm describing, we can talk very deliberately about leadership competencies that we don't always get to talk about.
Leadership competencies from your and my work together, we know are very spiritual. The creative competencies and the reactive tendencies, all of us have deep spiritual bases. I feel a tremendous sense of both gratitude and freedom to have programs where that's possible because I feel it's an elevated conversation and I get to leave even more behind than I otherwise might through those kinds of interventions.
What I hear when you say that is that you're able to plant something that can grow at a higher level rather than coming with bags of whatever. It might be grains or something. I'm noticing a tree of life behind your shoulder there that's reminding me of that. Beautiful. The word that's coming to mind for me is empowerment.
I don't believe that I can empower else to do A, B, or C, but this notion of allowing that space for people to step into their power, inviting them, and opening an inquiry suggests that there are other ways to lead more personally and with more autonomy, self-determination, and self-agency. That's what I'm inferring.
That’s beautifully said. I agree with you on your comment about empowerment. We can't do that for someone else. It's potentially the wrong tone or it could come off as pejorative to think we can empower somebody else.
Also, condescending.
Yes, that's exactly what we're trying to get away from. What we're talking about now is the more powerful approach.
I would agree. It's funny. It reminds me of this thing about motivation. I'm going to motivate somebody. I can't motivate anybody. I used to think maybe I could motivate people, but then I had a child. We think that what motivates us is what's going to motivate the child. It's not. What I can do if I'm smart is figure out what motivates him and then feed that but I can't. I can't motivate, empower, or anything.
Reach Barney
In any case, thank you for that example and I look forward to learning more. One question that I have is, although I feel I could get overwhelmed by trying to learn about what your world is and how it works, there's much going on. If people wanted to learn more about these deeper conversations and where they're leading. Where would you direct them?
What I'd say also is that you're talking about operating in the international development space from a US focus, but there could be global funders, et cetera as well. Is that correct? I'm trying to place where this is just to let people know to explain where those resources might be coming from. That's what I'm getting in.
Once again, a compound question. My organization's work is funded by several different entities and agencies, but our number one largest funder is the US government. Among US government agencies, the biggest is the US Agency For International Development or USAID. Many countries, the countries that have the financial resources to do this, set aside some small portion of their revenue to support the development of countries that may not have that same level of wealth.
The US government, through the US Congress, sets aside a small percentage of our GDP. It's less than 1% of our GDP to support developing countries. It's great for the United States in a self-interested way because it does help us with our own development, diplomacy, and defense goals to varying degrees. We can have a very profound impact in places where that's needed. It's both valuable for us and something that we can generously offer to the rest of the world.
This work that I'm speaking of that's funded by the US government and by you and me as US citizens is very much global in nature. More and more, we are not only looking at individual countries and regions. We are also talking about some of the big global challenges. The organization that I work for has just spent more than a year articulating the big global challenges that we want to address, which deserve and demand our attention and our best energy.
They're not things that any one organization or any one country could do. If we're talking about something climate change, that's bigger than all of us. Dealing with the challenges nowadays about social cohesion is another thing that we all need to be thinking about. By the way, these things are, as I said, global, but they're not exclusively outside of us. These are also things that we need to recognize or opportunities for us inside the United States as well.
How many do we handle the social cohesion thing here?
I think there's a bit more left that we might want to be able to look at. In terms of resources, there are tons of resources that I can share with folks or point folks from my work and my organization. I'm not sure what the best way is to do that for you. I could send you some links or your readers are welcome to email me and I'd be happy to share information with folks.
Great. Maybe a place to start would be your LinkedIn profile, which, although you told me maybe you haven't updated it very recently, is still broad and informative. It could connect them to you and some of your work as well. Wonderful. Thank you so much for this conversation. I feel like I want to go sit under that tree with you and just talk more.
I hope we have that opportunity in the not-too-distant future.
I hope so as well. Thank you very much, Barney, for sharing your wisdom and your perspectives. It's interesting. We open a conversation then we close the conversation and in a way, it feels more open than it was before we started.
Isn't that just the way it should be?
Isn't that just the way it should be? Absolutely. Thank you very much for your time and look forward to continuing the conversation.
As do I. You're very welcome, Andrew. Thank you.
Thanks, Barney.
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About Barney Singer
A social change leader, experienced manager, skilled communicator and inspiring educator and trainer with more than three decades of multi-disciplinary experience in social development in the public and private sectors. With advanced degrees in law, psychology, and education, Barney brings a unique perspective to the design and implementation of programs in the U.S. and internationally.