Holding up the Mirror: Recognizing and Dismantling the “White Savior Complex”
By: Janine Guarino
Tags: Volunteerism, Servant Leadership, International Development, Community Development, White Privilege

It’s hard to believe that I am over two months in to my time in Budondo and my work with the BIC. Things have been moving quickly and I am still trying to keep up with all of the cultural, intellectual, physical, and emotional dynamics of this experience. Over the past month we have had visitors from Mama Hope and other Uganda-based organizations, have received a $1,000 grant, have fostered a partnership with French Montana and Adam Levine to help fund the expansion of Suubi Hospital, and have strengthened our main income-generating project, the Motorbike Loan Scheme, with the purchase of four new motorbikes. Further, after working with the leaders of the BIC to figure out how to most effectively spend the remainder of my fundraising money, we’ve agreed to bolster our Sustainability Program and purchase five more motorbikes for the Motorbike Loan Scheme. Spending on income-generating projects continues to bring money to the BIC over time, moving toward an eventual independence from Mama Hope Global Advocate funding and ensuring self-sufficiency.

Layering all of these dynamics is my recent connection with a Uganda-based group, No White Saviors. This group calls out development organizations that perpetuate the White Savior Complex, the self-serving assumption among white people from developed nations that they should be saving poor people in Africa. The White Savior Complex in practice looks like this: foreign volunteers doing work that can be done by local people and local leadership, voluntourists exploiting local people by treating them as entertainment and taking photos of them in their day to day life (often without permission), international adoptions through illegitimate means (systems are often broken and adopted children aren’t necessarily orphans), the general idea that white foreigners should be adopting children in Africa as a means of saving them* (this is an issue on a systematic level), voluntourists exploiting the lives, stories, faces, and culture of African people through social media (often in the form of selfies with African children — imagine if random tourists posted selfies with your kid?), and storytelling that exoticizes the community they are working in (talking about how “poor but happy people are” — an oversimplification of human emotion).

Created by No White Saviors

This is by no means an exhaustive list of the ways in which White Saviorism manifests throughout East Africa. As a white woman with a range of experiences in international development, I too have operated under White Savior assumptions and have made mistakes in the countries I’ve lived and worked in. I’ve captured what I thought were cool, cultural photos of people in their daily life without permission. I have grown impatient with the work pace of certain cultures, internally and wrongly assuming the U.S. work ethic is the most efficient. I have oversimplified people and cultures by portraying the “poor but happy” narrative. I have over-exalted customs and traits of other cultures in a way that exoticizes them. In the times that I am not in the mood for confrontation, I still shrug off comments, remarks, and perspectives that have White Savior undertones (that, my friends, is privilege). Learning my way out of deeply internalized White Saviorism, and committing myself to always dismantling these notions, is an ongoing process.

Learning more about the power dynamics that exist within this line of work have made me question my own desire to work in development — why have I chosen to work with underserved populations abroad but not in the U.S.? Has my love for travel influenced my desire to work in an industry that fosters travel, and is that problematic? Even in my current role as a Global Advocate with the BIC, even in supporting local leadership, and even while actively challenging White Saviorism, I still question my role and very presence as a white development worker in Uganda.