Tentmaking

The romantic idea was that an intercultural worker could earn a living while conducting an effective intercultural service apart from work responsibilities. For the most part, the service (or ministry) is given to the indigenous people and is done in a personal rather than a professional capacity, because it is not the job for which one has a visa work permit.

Jake was a computer engineer whose visa was sponsored to provide training in another country. In his spare time, he helped a humanitarian organization. Jake planned to establish a reliable, clean community water supply in a remote village.

Unfortunately, the idea hasn't worked for many. In one experience of channeling tentmakers to indigenous organizations with sympathetic company owners, only about 50% of placements lasted for more than a year. The main problem is that the worker's time, money and visa responsibilities relating to his job are in opposition to his ministry and family.

Things go wrong

Things can go wrong for the employer:

• He might want to make a profit from the arrangement and expect the worker to generate it. At least he needs to make enough profit to avoid insolvency, and preferably not to go into loss and put strain on the relationship.
• As he (or she) sponsors the visa (i.e. he is the indigenous employer and makes the visa possible), he can control the worker who might be powerless to negotiate.
• Some employers don't know enough about the visa procedures to get or maintain visas. Consequently, the intercultural worker never knows if his visa will terminate at short notice and he will need to leave the country.

Things can also go wrong for the tentmaker:

• He needs to work long enough hours to keep his visa and job, get enough money to live on, and probably pay visa fees and children's schooling costs.
• Many tentmakers cannot stay long enough to develop a ministry.
• He might be contracted to work long hours in an international company where he earns lots of money but lives in a luxurious expat ghetto without much contact with indigenous people. He might not be able to give adequate time to his family, language study, cultural orientation, and ministry.
• With little language and cultural orientation, and pressure to work longer hours, cultural misunderstandings with the employer become more likely.

A Solution

The solution is to get the time, money and visa factors into harmony with ministry and family. You need to be legitimately working, but your work should create access to people. It is usually best to have full financial support from the home country.

Some good options are:

1. For the first several years, a student visa works well. You can study language and culture full-time. It's easy to meet people and they easily accept your role and identity as a student.
2. The other solution is a government-to-government aid visa. These are difficult to get, but can work well when they are in place. The kind of visa can be more secure and easier to extend, but might also depend on the political relationship between your country and your host country. It might also determine the kinds of ministry and locations available to you, especially if the worker will be under continual surveillance, or the host government controls the work role and program.
3. If you teach conversational English, your work can create ministry options because you meet people in class and may be able to socialize outside class.
4. Visas to conduct people-oriented research can be good. Depending on the country, the research topic might need to be approved by the government as part of the visa process, and dealing with the government on it may be quite difficult. However, when it is approved, it can be a bonus if it legitimizes wide interaction with the focus people.
5. Some kinds of small businesses are legitimate reasons for a visa without taking unreasonable amounts of time.
6. A few people have skills or qualifications that are in such high demand that they can negotiate a position that leaves most of their time free. There might not be much work, but the visa is stable.

Your own local organization

Another solution is to own the national organization, and these are usually either consultancies or educational institutions. It is easy to negotiate time usage if your organization is owner or part-owner of the organization. You are in essence negotiating with your own people. In some cases, the work that you are sponsored to do is the ministry; teaching tentmaker kids is a good example. In a few cases, like teaching, you might get paid for doing your ministry, although the trend is that it is not enough to live on and pay all costs.

You can start your own local organization that will sponsor your visas. The pitfalls are many, and the list below is not comprehensive. For simplicity's sake, we will assume that the local organization is a school that teaches both English to locals (sponsoring expat personnel to teach) and sponsors foreign students to learn the local language.

Beware financial pressures. Teaching English in a small city doesn't pay the bills, no matter how good one is.

1. How competitive is the market?
2. How difficult will it be to plug into the market at the right point?
3. Do your expatriate personnel really have the necessary skills? (This is not the same as asking whether they have an acceptable qualification.)
4. Does the school use the language for expats program as a cash-cow?
5. To what extent is the school a public service or ministry (supported by donations) and to what extent should it be on a business footing?
6. Are there intercultural dimensions as to how power and money should be used in the school?
7. Do nationals presume that there are enough westerners around that there will be more money if it is needed?
8. National staff might be fine, trustworthy people, but do they have marketable skills? Are they dependent on the school for their long-term livelihood? (If they have families and futures to consider, they might have a lot more riding on the school than expatriates.)
9. How well do expatriates understand the business of running a school in that culture?
10. How well do national staff understand the business of running a school?

Cultural factors

There can also be significant cultural factors. Are there cultural difficulties in communication (especially negotiation) between expatriate and local people? How different are expatriates from one country to those of another?

New students also bring another cultural dimension to the mix. A common aspect of culture shock is to blame the organization. The language school is an obvious whipping boy if students aren't coping emotionally with something else or are frustrated by their unrealistic expectations. Having indigenous teachers can make it more complicated, because westerners seldom expect to need to learn how to learn from an indigenous teacher in an indigenous situation.

Career paths

Tentmaker service can adversely affect career paths, so count the cost beforehand. For no good reason, experience in non-western countries is not always valued in the West, no matter how valuable it is. Home culture might change rapidly, leaving you with irrelevant experience. And some professional registrations can lapse and be very difficult to get back (e.g. nursing and teaching).