Preface

It has now been many decades since international development assistance has been regarded as an unequivocally "good thing." To the extent that critics of development have referred to the presence of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the development process, even the sternest of them has usually found initiatives to commend.As for the NGOs themselves, though, far from being complacent, many were already engaging in self-reflection in the 1970s.Nonetheless, the publication of book-length critiques of the roles and relevance of NGOs by practitioners and former practitioners is largely a twenty-first-century phenomenon.Whether calling for the transformation of NGOs or their effective dissolution and whether writing from an international or a national perspective, these authors share an emphasis on how much has changed since the hopeful days of amateurs in the first Development Decade.Among those reflecting from a Canadian perspective, none, so far as I know, has harkened back to the existence of "a pre-Harper paradise lost, " as a recent polemic suggests. 1Indeed, they are far from romanticizing the good old days.Yet some of them, writing with strong institutional memories, do recall what was in many respects a better time for northern NGOs, a time, especially before the mid-1980s, when the governments that helped fund them remained comparatively supportive and nonprescriptive even in the face of politically inconvenient NGO activism; a time before the corporatization of NGOs, on the one hand, and the rise of volunteer tourism, on the other; a time when many NGOs were a good match with existing needs in the Global South and so successful at what they did that they contributed to their own obsolescence. 2Canadian University Service Overseas (CUSO), the NGO I write about in this book, was part of that better time.Canada's Global Villagers is intended as a contribution to historical scholarship rather than a commemorative work.As such, it engages in the kind of critical analysis of sources expected in the history profession.My sources, however, go beyond documents: they include more than one hundred living men and women, former CUSO volunteers and staff.In the course of conducting my research, I have developed a deep admiration for them, formed personal friendships, and felt more than a touch of envy for youthful pasts more adventurous than my own.These CUSO alumni are listed in an appendix and acknowledged along with many others whom I thank at the end of the book.

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