The recent spate of articles and news in the media about corruption in the world of Aid makes for depressing reading. It is tempting to shrug one's shoulders in a Nepali way with the utterance “ke garne!” but this would be anathema to this blogger and his cohorts.Whilst “we told you so” is not in our nature, some of the recent incidents related to our own modus operandi in providing aid to a number of community schools in Kathmandu may be worthy of inspection.But first a few reported incidents. A recent article by Sushma Joshi entitled The Information Gap described how little seems to have changed in the last 15 years or so; “The donors still said they were giving a significant amount of money to government (20 percent of the budget at last count), and the grassroots and community groups continued to claim that very little was reaching them. Where, then is the gap?” She goes on to ask; “Is it the fault of the government, ridden with inefficiencies and corruption? Is it the lack of monitoring and evaluation on the part of donors, who hand out large grants to government and organisations without a great deal of track-back information? Is it the fault, perhaps, of civil society, which should have (but hasn’t) demanded greater transparency and accountability from government and NGOs?” In another article by Arjun Shah entitled “Fund goes down the drain in Bajura” he says:“Unplanned distribution of fund and lack of monitoring have led to the failure of these projects, said Padam Bahadur Shahi, a teacher at Kailashmandu VDC. Once the villagers receive money under these projects, they waste it on feasts and celebrations instead of investing in business or other income-generating activities. There is no mechanism to monitor the use of the fund once it is doled out to various groups in a community. Although most villagers receive money to rear goats under poverty alleviation programmes, they rarely do so. This has led to gross misuse of funds.”
Finally the headline today “Nepal's education programme totters after aid suspension threat” is only surprising in the time taken to uncover the corruption and then to react to it! So, where does a small UK charity supporting five schools and 700 underprivileged children get the right to criticise? Well for a start, with our “business model” which is based on some of us having years of experience in a corporate world where ethics, governance and a focused strategy were damn nigh essential to survival! So here it is, a prescription for donors, NGO's, INGO's of any colour, creed or size, and summed upin five areas: Rationale, Legacy, Strategy, Transparency, Governance.
The first of these, Rationale, is about the honesty and openness of donors, especially individual donors or community groups, as to WHY they are involved; is it emotional/conscience, or for social standing, or duty,or for market advantage as in the case of many corporate donors. Second is Legacy, easiest to describe with an analogy, “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach the man to fish and you feed him for life. So, the issues here are concerned with making the beneficiaries independent and giving them capability to fend for themselves.
Third is Strategy for the aid distribution which should be based on a clear mission, an attainable vision with in-built sustainability for the period in question.
Fourth is Transparency in anything and everything to include a covenant with ALL donors, big and small as to what the money will be spent on (every last rupee of it), open accounting and regular communication of inputs, actions and outputs. This is clearly something that has been missing in the cases mentioned above.
The fifth and final element is Governance which certainly includes a regime of scrutiny via monitoring and evaluation that goes beyond the merely legal and financial obligations. For the last three years Nepal Schools Aid has wrapped it's approach in these five values, they are things we believe in and match with our actions. This is why we are able to sustain the annual funding of 22,000 exercise books, 1000 textbooks, 100 school bags, 4 teacher salaries, two teacher training courses, a head teacher management course for 5 schools, 700 children, 45 delegates from schools, NGOs and the MOE every year on a sum of money so small and which is 95% of that given to us as donations. If a mere 5% is used on administration and material expenses, our business model must have something going for it!
Dr Brian Metters Chairman,
Nepal Schools Aid