, we welcome Manya Dotson, who shares her views on a career in the NGO community and the differences between development and defense. We also discuss the need for more mental health support for NGO workers.
---
Music courtesy of Broke for Free.
---
Transcript:
00:00:00 SPEAKER_02
You know, what I did was wrap it up in duct tape and throw it into the basement, hoping that maybe it wouldn't, if it was just wrapped in duct tape and compartmentalized and thrown into the basement of my mind, that it wouldn't come out, you know, that it would just stay down there. And it did for a long time. But then the thing is, you know, something happens and it's like opening the door to the basement, going down there and kicking those packages around. And then you're like, oh, wait, these now have thrown into zombies. And then they're, you know, stampeding up the stairs. into the house.
00:00:44 SPEAKER_01
Hi, and welcome to the 1CA podcast. My name is John McElligot, your host for today's episode, and we're joined today by Manya Dotson. Manya, I knew you under a different last name many years ago when we were serving in the Peace Corps together in Côte d 'Ivoire. Ivory Coast and West Africa. We recently got reconnected after many, many years and wanted to get you on the podcast to talk about your background, especially in the NGO community, non -governmental organizations, and talk about how it interfaces with the civil affairs forces of the Army and the Marine Corps. I understand you haven't worked directly with those forces, but I think it's really helpful for our listening audience to hear about your perspective in the NGO world. Because there's really no cases, I think, where CA forces are going in a steady state or in conflict areas, and there's not an NGO nearby. So they're always at the table. So thank you very much for being on the 1CA podcast.
00:01:44 SPEAKER_02
Thanks so much, John. I have to say, John and you and I share a connection that nobody really shares in the world, which is that we lived in the same house and worked in the same... Peace Corps Village, and we know the same characters. So what an incredible connection that is. And I was so thrilled to hear from you. And thank you so much for having me on the podcast.
00:02:07 SPEAKER_01
Thank you. And so now you're a global health consultant as well, coach, writer. You do some speaking engagements. What's the best way for people to find out information? Go to your website.
00:02:19 SPEAKER_02
Yes. My website is www. Manya Dotson. And Manya is like Tanya with an M, M -A -N -Y -A -D -O -T -S -O -N dot com. And that's the best way to get in touch with me. I'm also on Instagram. I'm pretty active on Instagram as well. And that's just at Manya Dotson. Okay.
00:02:41 SPEAKER_01
So I wanted to dig into some of the things you talked about. Public health, social marketing, worked a lot of different issues in public health. Could you start by talking about what social marketing is?
00:02:58 SPEAKER_02
of using all of those very powerful tools that we use to develop and sell products and services and taking that mindset, tool set, and skill set and applying it to development challenges. Specifically, I've spent my life applying that to public health challenges. So, you know, there's a lot of things that people could be doing. And buying, that would be very life -altering in a good way. And we don't always want what we need. So I would say at heart, social marketing is about helping make stuff that's good for people also really desirable.
00:03:43 SPEAKER_01
Okay. Is it connected to behavior change and behavior change communication ideas? Of course.
00:03:49 SPEAKER_02
course. Yeah, of course. I mean, it's... We use the four P's of marketing, so looking at your product or service, really looking critically at that, looking at the placement of that product or service, looking at promotion, which is very much about behavior change, behavior change communication, and figuring out why people are doing what they're doing, figuring out the alternatives, the alternative options that they're choosing to the option of your product, service, or behavior. You know, assuming that people have the dignity of choice and make choices based on some sort of calculation about value and, you know, vote with their money or vote with their presence or vote with the opportunity cost for, you know, that choice. So we're looking at those four things. So pricing, people, placement, service, placement and promotion. marketing is that there's this really relentless focus on the customer and what they want and their vision of value which can be different than a public health orientation which is like this is good for you and if you just were scared enough about how bad for you it could be if you don't do it you would do this yeah and I mean I think we all know that there's all kinds of things that we do that are absolutely delightful and absolutely terrible for us things we should be doing that just don't feel, we just don't do them. Even though we're very scared about not doing them, we still don't do them. So it's, yeah, it's really interesting. It's a fun discipline. And we tend to look in social marketing at market, the entirety of a market system. So all of the different places that a person might access anything related to that outcome. And then we would look at, so that would be both public,
00:06:10 SPEAKER_02
them with the option to do this thing that would be good for them.
00:06:16 SPEAKER_01
Okay. It sounds very similar to, for folks in civil affairs, our colleagues who do psychological operations or information operations, they probably use very similar means, but very different ends in analyzing social media, analyzing how to engage with not necessarily selling a product, but maybe an idea or behavior. Much similar thoughts.
00:06:39 SPEAKER_02
work around how terrorist networks grow through very skillful marketing and how to take that same very skillful marketing and turn it to other types of behavior or alternatives.
00:07:02 SPEAKER_01
And when you think about public health, I was thinking recently of a funny way to get what could be an otherwise boring topic. but preparedness, getting families to prepare for a hurricane or natural disaster. CDC had a campaign for a while about equating that to zombies and TV shows and movies about zombies and saying, hey, you want to prepare for a natural disaster or a flood the same way you would for a zombie invasion. And that really resonated with a lot of people. Yeah. That's awesome.
00:07:32 SPEAKER_02
with a lot of people. Yeah. That's awesome. I love that. Exactly. That's awesome.
00:07:36 SPEAKER_01
That's awesome. That's awesome.
00:07:39 SPEAKER_02
I love that.
00:07:40 SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it was great. And it worked. People paid attention. It got in the news. Mania, so the national security community talks about the three Ds, defense, diplomacy, development. You spent a lot of your working career in the development side of things. What do you think drew you and friends of yours to work in development?
00:07:57 SPEAKER_02
I think I kind of accidentally fell into development. The Peace Corps for me was a way to prototype being a doctor before. being a doctor before committing to seven plus years and zillions of dollars to medical school. And at that moment, I was at this crossroads where I knew that magazine editorial, I was a health editor at Fitness Magazine, was really interesting, but I just wasn't feeling that individualized impact. And there was this desire to explore and see the world and this deep curiosity about the world. I've always had these four driving qualities. One is a drive to explore the world, to know the world, in a more extreme kind of a way. The second one is a deep interest in health, women's health, and sexy health, reproductive health, and all that stuff around sexy health. A third has been this, I'm very creative, and need an outlet for creativity. I really create. And the fourth has been a desire to be of service. And that manifested through volunteering and, you know, lots of different ways of attempting to be of service. So, you know, for me, public health, what I found was that being the medical profession. So for me, it was never really a question of diplomacy or development. It was that public health.
00:09:40 SPEAKER_02
driving pillars of my personality and identity in a way that can also be productive and helpful. And in ways that, you know, for me, that diplomacy was never an option, nor was the military. Those two things were not really a mental option for me. I was looking at it more relative to a medical career or an applied anthropological career.
00:10:10 SPEAKER_02
disciplinary. And being a doctor could be great. I loved working with patients, etc. But being a doctor is really being an auto mechanic working on a jelly donut. It's really procedural. Yeah, it's really procedural. And you don't really want your gynecologist to be super creative. You don't. You want your waxer to be a little creative maybe, but not your...
00:10:36 SPEAKER_01
maybe, but not your...
00:10:40 SPEAKER_02
So for me, sitting in that clinic and drawing mangoes and figuring out how to get, you know, how to have a conversation with the community that would get people excited about building a spring box or, you know, how to get the dads to buy the stuff that would help the mom prepare the things she needs to prepare so that the kid would get fed and fatten up. That was very creative and brought these things together. So, yeah, it was really, I just feel like I fell into it and got incredibly lucky to find this field that allows me to really express all of these things in such a fascinating way.
00:11:20 SPEAKER_02
me to really express all of these things in such a fascinating way.
00:11:25 SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so we both have a lot of friends who are still in development and have stayed. They may not be making as much money as maybe you could have if you stayed in publishing. But it's a career field that they really enjoy. Their heart's really in it. And there's the excitement to it as well. You could be living in other countries, speaking foreign languages, understanding and sitting with people, breaking bread, having different meals that you would never dream of before.
00:11:51 SPEAKER_02
would never
00:11:54 SPEAKER_01
It's very exciting.
00:11:55 SPEAKER_02
exciting. I've learned so much. I truly believe that I have...
00:12:06 SPEAKER_02
I hope that some things that I was a part of in some way have made a difference. I know that they have because the data is there, but I just feel so humbled by the incredible things that I've gotten to learn and see and witness and be a part of in the way that I've gotten to participate in the depths and breaths of humanity and the human experience. It's been very rich, really rich.
00:12:34 SPEAKER_01
That's wonderful. So, Manja, I'm not going to say that you can generalize for the whole development community, and it's really helpful just to get your perspective. But you've also been in a lot of conversations with fellow employees, host country nationals, working with you on projects. And in those other two Ds, defense and diplomacy, is there a general sense of how the development community views, for example, the military and defense?
00:13:06 SPEAKER_02
there's perspectives on different levels. First of all, when you're working in smaller countries like a Togo, the expat community is often a very tight -knit community, and that community cuts across diplomats, military, and development folks who are there as expatriates. Often, socially, those can be very tight -knit social communities. I think that those three three different Ds are fundamentally different. And the development objective is, and I would say like the main difference is that, from my perspective, is that diplomats are about bringing the U .S. to a foreign environment. Military is about protecting U .S. interests, U .S. interests in a foreign environment.
00:14:10 SPEAKER_02
USAID was pulled back under the State Department. But to be effective in development, development workers really have to integrate and really effective development happens when there is deep local ownership and where the local government and local players and local actors are driving the agenda.
00:14:44 SPEAKER_02
to align those objectives with global objectives coming out of the World Health Organization. So often I have found that diplomats...
00:15:11 SPEAKER_02
in the civil affairs branch. But my perception is that those activities also are fundamentally driven by a desire to ease entry and make the local population more open to U .S. military presence.
00:16:01 SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it's very helpful to hear your perspective. And I think if I asked the same question of many people who have worked in NGOs, I'd probably hear a similar theme there. Stick around for the rest of my conversation with Monty Dotson. We'll talk about the reluctance of NGOs to engage with the military or be seen working with the military. We'll also talk about the burnout and emotional toll that members of the NGO community experience.
00:16:30 SPEAKER_00
and where they turn for support.
00:16:40 SPEAKER_01
Mark your calendars for the 2019 Civil Affairs Roundtable to be held on Tuesday to April at the National Guard Armory Conference in Washington, D .C. This year's roundtable will conclude the seminal discussion of optimizing civil affairs started at last fall's symposium at Fort Frag, North Carolina. and in the 2018 -19 Civil Affairs issue papers to be published before the roundtable. At the roundtable, the discussion shifts to a more granular identification of .mil PFP pathways to guide CA modernization and continuous investment in an innovative and adaptive force that is well -networked in planning and operational relationships and persistently engaged and aligned regionally to facilitate political -military goals and objectives. In addition to the speakers and panel discussions, attending members and friends of the regiment will conclude by looking at how to advance civil affairs at a more ambitious multilateral scale over the next year's cycle. In order to maximize official travel for uniformed members of the regiment, the roundtable immediately precedes the PKSOI Training and Educati