Moula

First off for those of you who do not know, I work for an NGO. NGO stands for Non Governmental Organization. It essentially means they are not part of the government and are not like your average for-profit business. The confusion sometimes lies in the fact that many NGO’s receive funding from governments. For example, CIDA(the Canadian International Development Agency) actually funds lots of NGOs.


Throughout my life I have heard from various people that they will only donate money to organizations where %100 of their donation goes directly to the people it is meant to help. This is an understandable desire, one I have shared. I get that often we are motivated to give based on a brilliant marketing scheme that pulls on our heartstrings or guilt or knowledge that what we practically throw down the drain each day in the form of a coffee etc can allow someone to feed an entire family. That we want our hard earned money to go to those in need, not Bono, not some NGO worker that drives a BMW or Landrover and lives in a swanky apartment (this is not me by the way, far from it, but they do exist- and I will go on to explain why this isn’t necessarily a problem).


Here’s a newsflash that I didn’t even fully understand until working for an NGO. You can’t do ANYTHING without money. First off and importantly, I want to point out that educated people are running these offices, managing money, managing people. Who do you want to run the show and to distribute your funds? The little kid in the picture that inspired you to give? The point is, people who work for NGO’s have expertise, education, and it is a JOB. Who should pay them? Because they are working in an industry that is meant to help people (or animals, or the environment etc) they should not be paid for the work they do? Perhaps doctors, nurses, therapists, and other helping professionals should not be paid for their work. Clearly this is absurd, but for some reason people don’t see that absurdity in asking people who work internationally in aid organizations to work for free.


Next issue that I have become very familiar with. Money to run an office. So since the funding for our program ran out in August it has been really difficult to do anything. It takes money to run an office. Seriously, there is rent, there is electricity, there is water. Not to mention that it is really hard to go visit sites, be active and supportive to the groups you are working with if you cannot get to them. There has been no money for transportation. Is it expected that an intern cover all the costs to continue business (sure I am a paid intern, but that pay does not begin to cover all my expenses here and back home so this internship will cost me in the end)  Perhaps I should buy the paper and ink to photocopy the receipts we copy to prove money isn’t being squandered. I am being facitious but I hope you see that money is necessary to operate and the theory that %100 of donations should go to the beneficiaries isn't really possible.


I was guilty of thinking it was a waste of money if that money didn’t go directly to the beneficiaries. However, with the experience of having no money at all to even get around, I can tell you that it is a big fat waste of time. All I wanted to do during the time we were without funds was work. To go see my projects. That was simply not an option. And without people like me working, even if you are sending loads of money to the “cause” you are just throwing money at something without any capacity building or guidance.


So this was just a little rant due to my frustration with lack of funding and the knowledge that if I am guilty of this line of thinking, I imagine others must be too.

I hope this has been at least a little eye opening and justifies that I may one day actually make a living doing a job, despite the fact that it may be working for an NGO. (although I am having my doubts that I will)


And here is something that is hard to admit. Now that our funding ended, we don’t have as much to do. When I first got here we had large sums of money to spend on projects. Things like I wrote about earlier like drilling for water and buying a greenhouse. Along with that goes supervision, training etc. However, when there is no money, these things are no longer happening and therefore there is no need for supervision and training. It’s hard to express how disheartening it is to work for years at university to get the opportunity to come to Africa to do work like this, only to be faced with little work to do.

Pretty Tanzanian Money.