If NGOs become local-based, aid will be more efficient

Nov 01, 2017

All international aid organisations now must ensure that their activities reach vulnerable communities in a different way

By Simon J Mone

For a long, long time, the humanitarian ball-game has been about aid services practically handed to vulnerablecommunities suffering various dimensions of emergencies.

A few tried to organise local people into groups tomake them to be among the actual solutions to humanitarian problems. The majority have not. And this practice has encouraged the ‘dependency syndrome', as aid organisations did their work hands-on. And when they exited communities, things fell apart. Communities that became accustomed to hand-outs could not attempt to do things independently. They lacked the capacity and so found themselves asking for more help.

But today, things are changing in a way that requires aid agencies to remodel their work. Re-organise local people to empower them. And work with them as partners to respond to the needs of the most vulnerable people.

With the old method, there were lots of success stories, as much as unsuccessful ones to write home about. Humanitarian agencies had to successfully navigate the non-navigable situations of war and other emergencies.

Despite the challenges, they endured to deliver their message. They did this in order to deliver humanitarian services in these very difficult circumstances, because of compassion. But many humanitarian workers laid down their lives in the process.

Many were held up in the situations and a lot escaped with bruises. Now, the humanitarian community demand that in order to optimise resources and create necessary impact, humanitarian capacity building of communities is the way to go, really. It requires everybody to throw their weight in it to re-define what has hitherto been called humanitarian aid and development around our world, and collectively make things work.

All international aid organisations now must ensure that their activities reach vulnerable communities in a different way. They can deliberately create local organisations or groups. And empower them with the necessary capacity building to gradually develop local community-based organisations from what they have.

In doing this, they ensure that even long after their exit; activities that they started can be sustainably managed. It will leave the funding agencies doing the coordination and advisory services as they bid to transfer their mission objectives to disadvantage populations. 

This move will do a world of good in as far as reaching out to needy people is concerned. It builds resilience of communities, and empowers them to succeed in the humanitarian agenda. It ensures the direct involvement of beneficiary communities.

Keep vulnerable people earning their assistance and pre-occupied with solving their own challenges. They will be empowered to impart the same skills to fellow vulnerable people. This is good as displaced person who can repair broken water facilities; a borehole, a well or who can build a low-cost latrine is a resource to communities.

They will use these skills even when out of displacement. And will fix facilities that become unserviceable even when aid agencies withdraw. This approach will motivate aid agencies to build the human resources to change many communities for the better. The impact will also be seen in other thematic areas. 

Like people working communally on say farmlands, in markets to reach their dreams. It will relieve NGOs off a load of burden, where they have had to be at the forefront of every humanitarian event. And act as if they were locally-based organisations.

Therefore, against all of the background above, we can change the face of humanitarian aid by turning some NGOs into local-based groups with the capacity to run the show and be more efficient.

Writer is a civil engineer

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