Dignity through dialogue: redefining language in humanitarian aid

Several years ago, when an Alight Alight works alongside displaced people to co-create high-quality services and programmes that address their needs. staff member visited a group of Somali refugee students at a US college campus, one of the students shook his hand and said:

‘All that time that I was in the Dadaab Refugee Camp, I felt as though you were giving me food, shelter, and healthcare, but no one saw me. No one looked at me and saw me for me. So I want to introduce myself: My name is Mohammed.’

In that brief interaction, Mohammed highlighted something vitally important: that regardless of their circumstance, all people want and deserve to feel seen and heard.

Towards a new language of co-creation

Nearly 15 years ago, Alight started to integrate human-centred design into our humanitarian programmes and began to invite displaced individuals to co-create solutions alongside us. After introducing this model of co-creation and supporting locally led efforts on a global scale, we realised that the conventional language of humanitarian aid often falls short of our mission.

For too long, the humanitarian sector has been mired in vocabulary with roots in colonialism. For example, it is still common to hear humanitarians talk of a ‘mission’ in the ‘field’, language that reduces diverse communities from low-income countries to a monolithic other in need of saviours. Even the meaning of the word humanitarian has dulled over time, losing the sharpness of its underlying belief in the value of human life to become a generic synonym for charity or assistance. But there are other, more subtle ways in which the language we use undermines a human-centred approach.

How language shapes humanitarian action

After taking stock of the language we use at Alight, we created a language guide intended as a resource for a global team of humanitarians to continuously input into over time. More than just our organisation’s way of making sure our words match our focus on being human-centred, this guide is part of our efforts to contribute to important conversations about how the humanitarian sector can and should evolve.

Our language guide isn’t just about replacing old terms, it is part of our commitment to reinvent the way we do things. Of course, we’re not the only humanitarian organisation to move away from outdated terms. There are other organisations, like Oxfam and Amnesty International, that understand that the words we use can either uplift or marginalise. But at Alight, we place a lot of importance on the way we speak with each other about our work because language influences our thinking and shapes the way we deliver our humanitarian services. It encourages us to constantly question ourselves and to strive to embody the values we express.

Three transformative language shifts

1. From beneficiaries to customers

Without a doubt, the most transformative shift we made in our language in Alight is in the decision about what to call the people we work with. In 2016, as record numbers of asylum seekers sought refuge in Europe, we recognised the need for a radical shift in the way they were being served. We developed Kuja Kuja, a system to measure customer satisfaction, and from then on, we have been referring to the displaced people we serve as our ‘customers’, a choice that places their voices at the forefront of our decision-making. This term reminds us that people experiencing displacement should be active participants in their journey towards better lives, and that our job is to listen to their needs and ideas. It reinforces the idea that they deserve high-quality services and homes. And it shifts power dynamics, making it clear that Alight works for them.

As Raquel Orellana, Alight’s Director of Co-creation in El Salvador, says:

‘This choice often prompts curiosity and questions, as it seems to imply a transactional relationship. However, once we explain that it emphasises recognising people’s agency in directing how they receive our services, the response is overwhelmingly positive.’

2. From empower to enable

In that same spirit, while we enable and support, we don’t say we ‘empower’ people – because people empower themselves. But the language of empowerment is so firmly ingrained in humanitarian and development systems and mindsets that this shift has been the most difficult to adhere to. The change really took hold in our organisation during reflections on the impact of a programme called Alight 365, in which donors contribute $500 to fund an idea shared by one of our customers. In one case study from this programme, a group of 68 community activists in Rwanda’s Kiziba Refugee Camp wanted to start a small grocery store. However, they realised that the profits wouldn’t be enough to sustain everyone involved. Since the budget was fixed, they reconsidered and came to the conclusion that if they each contributed $13, they could use the initial $500 as seed funding for rent and supplies, and their collective investment would triple their overall budget and make them co-owners of a grocery co-op. As co-owners, they would then enjoy discounts on purchases and a share of future profits. Bernabé, one of the community activists, told us, ‘We just hadn’t realised we had the power to do it for ourselves.’

Communities have existing assets that they can use to build shared power and self-determination, and the language of empowerment diminishes existing strengths. As humanitarians, our role is to create an enabling environment and provide support for communities to access the power they already have.

3. From headquarters to global hubs

New localisation approaches require new organisational structures and new ways to describe them. As part of our focus on co-creation, we have implemented a distributed leadership model in which each country or region Alight works in is respected as a separate enterprise with local leadership. We also need to use language that affirms the decision-making power of our local leadership teams: we changed titles from Country or Regional Directors to Executive Directors, and instead of designating a central ‘headquarters’ where all decisions are made, each country team is an equal place in which to unleash ideas, stories and voices. The building in Minneapolis, Minnesota – which we formerly referred to as our headquarters – has become one of our global hubs, alongside global hubs in New York, Washington DC, and Nairobi. While our journey towards distributed and shared leadership is still ongoing, these terms help remind us that shifting power is an intentional and continuous process. As Alight’s Global Programs & Strategy Guide Leah Combs recently put it:

‘By making the change away from headquarters, we redistributed influence; instead of having ideas come from the top down, we made space to have multiple voices shape our values and strategy.’

Start with a conversation

All this said, we find it important to acknowledge that this journey with language is aspirational. We realise that there’s still work to be done to fully embody the values that our guide espouses. Yet this step is no small thing. Changing how we communicate challenges us to ask profound questions and consistently reminds us of the values we strive to uphold.

This is also why we see our language guide not as a static set of rules, but as a living document that embodies the collective experience of everyone at Alight. We encourage continuous feedback from our colleagues and customers to consistently refine our approach. After all, our goal isn’t just to create a 21st-century organisation – we want to bring about a more customer-focused humanitarian sector that prioritises the perspectives of the people it serves.

Every day we’re seeing how these shifts in our own language are improving our work. As Zeinab Mohamed Aidid, Alight’s Horn of Africa Communication Coordinator, said:

‘I didn’t always feel like the new Alight language aligned with who we were as an organisation, but over time I saw us begin to embody those words with our actions and become the organisation we said we were.’

Jocelyn Wyatt is the CEO of Alight, an organisation serving displaced people and refugees in more than 20 countries with dignified, human-worthy services.