Vincent Möller

From 2014 to 2016, I worked for Misereor as an AGEH professional in India. My job was to promote the integration of renewable energy into the project work of local partner organisations. When I arrived in India, the whole country was celebrating because the Indian space probe, Mangalyaan, had successfully entered orbit around Mars. There were countless very well-trained people In India – including in the fields of solar power and wind energy. So at first my task was to learn as much as I could. During many visits to the poor settlements of Mumbai, and to partner organisations in the countryside as well, I became increasingly aware of the complexity of people’s problems. They can rarely be overcome by simple technical solutions. So I grew into the role of a mediator and networker. I was often unable to present my partners with a perfect ready-made solution, but through my many project visits I knew people who were working on similar issues, so I was able to put people in touch with each other and establish valuable contacts. I also found it increasingly easy to adopt the perspectives of my Indian partners and to introduce these into the development policy debate in Germany – at specialist conferences, for example. By the time I “arrived” professionally in India, my time as a professional was already coming to an end. We had to plan our next steps as a family – our daughter was by then 18 months old, and our second child was on the way. Should we stay or set off on a new path?

Life in Mumbai isn’t easy. You can’t find peace and quiet anywhere. The noise is deafening, the traffic is dangerously life-threatening, and during the dry season the water dries up for several hours a day in most households. After some time, it feels as if all the dust and noise has become a second skin – and then you are surprised to find that it fits amazingly well. So we had a hard time saying goodbye. Nevertheless, we decided as a family to move back to Germany. And I found a job In Emden as a city planner. In Mumbai, you often crave for fresh air, green meadows, and being able to slow down. But in East Frisia, it sometimes feels like someone has slammed on the brakes. So I was pleased and thankful when, in 2018, I was given the opportunity to serve as an unpaid director on the Board of AGEH – now AGIAMONDO.

Representing the Perspective of Professionals

The seven-member Board gathers each year for a whole day and at four or five shorter meetings, usually for half a day and usually in Cologne. During the COVID lockdowns, we were obliged to meet online. And a hybrid format has developed out of that, which means that I can participate in some of the meetings digitally from home. This significantly reduces the amount of travel involved in this voluntary activity, although the face-to-face meetings in Cologne are the most pleasant, of course. The role of professionals in development cooperation has changed a lot. There is a lot of expertise in the host countries and the transfer of knowledge is no longer the main focus. On the contrary, the global South and the global North are confronted by similar issues – such as climate change, for example – to which answers can only be developed jointly and in dialogue. This new self-understanding and the resulting organisational changes have shaped the work of the Board in recent years. So important topics now include, for example, the South-South and South-North exchange of professionals and the establishment of a climate action service. My role is to bring the interests and perspectives of professionals into the thinking about organisational structures and future prospects. I can often draw on my experience of service in India, which seems to me to set a new paradigm for personnel cooperation that relies more on networking and mediating between the worlds of North and South. This voluntary work on the Board enables me to stay in touch with what’s going on in the field of development cooperation and to share responsibility for the decisions that are made. And I can give something back to AGIAMONDO for the fruitful and important phase of my life that I experienced as a professional, an experience that I would be happy to repeat at some stage, if family circumstances and career development allow.

Vincent Möller, geography graduate, 2014 - 2016: India, AGEH, now  AGIAMONDO

(article published in transfer volume 01/2023)