One Year After the Stop-Work Order

Before it Fades team

It has been a while since we posted here. Part of that is practical. Part of it is that we have been unsure what this project should be now.

A year ago, the stop-work order hit and everything changed. Work paused, teams fractured, and a sector that had shaped so many of our lives started to feel unfamiliar. We know we are not the only ones who have struggled to make sense of what happened, or what comes next.

We have also been wrestling with a question that many of us are carrying. Is it useful to keep looking back?

We have been thinking about something Wayan Vota wrote: “I cannot live in the past and show up for my family in the present.” That lands because it is true. We do have to keep living. We do have to take care of the people right in front of us.

And then this week we watched Mark Carney’s speech at Davos, where he said that the old order is not coming back, that we shouldn’t mourn it, and that nostalgia is not a strategy. He also said that from the fracture we can build something bigger, better, stronger, and more just.

We agree that nostalgia is not a strategy. That is not what we want this space to be.

So why are we still here?

Because stories are one of the few ways we can tell the truth about what happened without turning it into a slogan or a political argument. Stories can hold nuance. They can hold contradiction. They can hold the human cost of all of this, including what it did to our sense of purpose, our careers, and our relationships.

We started Before it Fades because we did not want our experiences to disappear in the noise, or be rewritten by people who were not there. We also did not want to lose what we learned, including what we did well, what we did poorly, and what we would do differently if we had the chance.

We want this to be useful in the present, and useful for the future.

If you worked in foreign aid, or alongside it, and this past year changed your life, we would love to hear from you. You do not need to write a long essay.

You can share:

• one moment you keep thinking about

• a lesson you do not want lost

• what this year has been like for you

• what you think needs to be built next

You can comment, or reply privately. If you want to share anonymously, say so. If you are not ready to share publicly, that is okay too.

We are marking this one-year moment because it matters. Not because we want to live in the past, but because we still believe we can carry something forward from it.

If you are still here reading, thank you. And if you have a story, we hope you will consider adding it.

— Before it Fades