Can we believe aid reports?

oleh | Jun 12, 2012 | Nasional

No one can take from Greg Mortenson that he worldwide created increased understanding about the importance of education in the developing countries, and indeed in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He is not a regular A-4 guy, but an innovative and creative crusader in cultural understanding and education for girls and boys. His book titled Three cups of Tea became a bestseller, especially in America. His second book, Stones into Schools, has also done well. They are books mainly about the northern areas of Pakistan. They are about girls’ and boys’ education. They are about the importance of aid workers not being arrogant and aloof, as diplomats, the UN staff and other “Besserwissers” can be. They are books about people at the grassroots and about Greg himself, a quite ordinary man, with a big heart, trying to do what is decent to do, notably help fellow human beings in need to do better in this world.

Now then, Greg is in some trouble himself. He is said to have spent some of the money of the Central Asia Institute (CAI), which he founded with his wife, without whom his mission would probably not have succeeded. He has been accused of spending some of the CAI money on travels for himself and his wife, and for other private purposes. Since much of the CAI’s funds originate from donations from the public, it is important that “administrative costs” are low and transparent. Over many years, though, Greg hardly made ends meet from his humanitarian work. His wife’s income – a large well wisher’s contribution to found the CAI – was essential. Now, when the CAI’s income has become good, it is perhaps not wrong either that Greg who spent private funds and time gets something back, although it should be done openly and orderly.

I believe people must have become envious of Greg, a modest man from a missionary family. His parents served at the foot of Mt Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, the continent’s highest, snow-capped mountain. They established one of Tanzania’s most prestigious hospitals, KCMC, in Moshi. I have seen it, and it is impressive even after some recent lack of maintenance. It is one of the few good hospitals for ordinary people in the region. Greg has taken with him to Pakistan what he learned as a child in Tanzania. He learned to be respectful to everyone and work in cooperation with the local people. After all, most of the work is always done by the locals themselves, not by aid workers.

Young Greg came back to America only as a teenager. He completed his secondary school there and went on to become a nurse and laboratory technician. He lost his father due to cancer not long after the family returned to the US. He got a job and he began wondering what he could do in this world. He worked part-time and could not afford an apartment so he slept in his car for some time, but managed to keep afloat. If it had not been for his wife-to-be, he might not have gotten back on track. But he – they – sorted out the existential and daily life issues, and the development aid work was finally founded and took off. I am deeply impressed – and I am a long time aid worker myself, in education and refugee work. But I can only show a tiny fraction of my work as compared to Greg’s huge achievements.

Why then are Americans suspicious, and some Pakistanis, too?

True, some of the facts in his books are not entirely accurate and may sometimes be exaggerated, written by him or his ghost writer. Some of the about 150 schools he has helped establish may not be running like clockwork. So what? Have you not listened to Ambassadors’ and UN heads’ glossy and far from accurate stories about aid projects? And how many development aid projects, costing ten-folds of the amount of Greg’s projects, have you seen running 10 or 20 years on? If 50 of the schools are not running, to have helped establish 100 schools in remote and conservative areas of Pakistan, and some in Afghanistan, is also not bad. Don’t you agree? How many schools have you and I established? None, probably!

The same goes for many, if not all of Greg’s critiques: they have done nothing themselves, perhaps not even read the books, but they feel they have the right to criticise someone who tried, yes, who can also show results. Maybe, his work was not perfect. But at the same time, much of what he did was better than any desktop aid worker could have ever planned and implemented. Maybe he challenged them, and maybe that is also part of the reason for the criticism.

All this is interesting in a broader sense. There are so many aid workers, well, office workers, diplomats, UN staff, NGO heads, and others, who somehow feel they have the right to speak about innovative and untraditional aid workers like Greg Mortenson. All the accountants and bookkeepers may not quite like him. One of the reasons is that he managed to get the results that they never got, in spite of all the money they spent on “planning, monitoring and evaluation.” I recently checked what an average donor country’s aid diplomat costs. You would not believe it! He or she costs in the range of Rs 100,000 per working day. What they do, in spite of being busy and bossy, is often difficult to understand. If Greg had that kind of money for a month or two, he would probably be able to build another school, add a library to the existing facilities, build separate latrines for the girls, a library and an office unit, and so on, and keep supplying books and stationery to schools in remote and mountainous areas. He would work with the elders, the young fathers and mothers, who want their girls and boys to go to school and have a less strenuous and uncertain life than they have had in the harsh climate near the Himalayan mountain peaks.

In aid projects, we do wish that we could have all report details in meticulous order. Alas, few of us are perfect, and if all the details are seemingly right, we probably miss out on innovation and creativity. There are few people like Greg. Most of us are A-4 guys and girls, who don’t really do the unexpected and impossible. We don’t dare take risks. We take the broad highway, not the twisted footpath. Greg is not an A-4 guy. Thank God, such people still exist!

Some decades ago, the story goes that a Norwegian-born Bishop in Pakistan had received some financial support from the Norwegian government for social work. He never submitted any financial or other report, so the Norwegians wrote a letter to request it. The Bishop felt a bit insulted and accordingly his reply was short: the money has been received and made good use of. Regards, Bishop Rudvin.

I don’t know if the story is true, and if the good reverend got away with it. However, the story depicts a different way of working, in a different time. Perhaps, we have become too petty and technological today? After all, development, which always includes human beings, can never become a technology. The bureaucrats seem to have begun to realise this in recent years, when they are less keen on using the Logical Framework Analysis (LFA) – a poplar planning and monitoring tool for project managers in their offices.

True, we need plans, control, accounts, and so on. We need accountability and check how humanitarian aid organisations collect and spend their money. We need to know that it is a clean business meant to reach those people they say they want to help. That also goes for the bilateral and multilateral donors, who are so good in covering their tracks that we rarely discover their flaws in their convincing reports. We also need to give room for people, who sometimes are larger than life, but reach higher and wider than any of the regular bookkeepers. I believe the UN agencies, the World Bank and all the fat cats in the development aid industry would do much better work, if they focused less on bookkeeping and more on being development evangelists and preachers. And then, I hope that more of the aid money and the control can be left to the recipients themselves. They are in the end the only ones who know if help has reached.

If we ask the great people in Korphe and other areas in the northern outposts of Pakistan – where Greg has help build schools – whether they think the assistance has helped, I am certain they would stand behind him in thankfulness. When one of Norwegian aid’s unsuccessful fisheries projects in a large lake in the semi-desert area of Turkana, Kenya, flopped, the Norwegian government aid workers were ridiculed. I was an aid worker in East Africa myself that time. But nobody could take from us that we had tried to do the right thing; that is, all we can do. The project was not a success, but when we in a research project 20 years later asked the poor people what they thought about the aid, every person was positive: it was the only time somebody had bothered to help them, they said. I would give Greg Mortenson, and other unique people like him my wholehearted support. They are needed to get results and to teach the bookkeepers in us all that it is the result that counts, and the goodwill and the optimism created by the good men and women who try their best – in God’s name, but only God is without fault.

The writer is a senior Norwegian social scientist based in Islamabad. He has served as United Nations specialist in the United States, as well as various countries in Africa and Asia. He has also spent a decade dealing with the Afghan refugee crisis and university education in Pakistan.

Email: atlehetland@yahoo.com

http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/columns/24-May-2012/can-we-believe-aid-reports

The Nation Pakistan © 2012 Nawaiwaqt Group of Newspapers

 

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Better use of technology could lead to more open government

Better use of technology could lead to more open government

oleh | Jun 12, 2012 | Siaran Pers

imagescross the world, technology has transformed the relationship between consumers and businesses. The unprecedented opportunities it provides to easily and instantly connect with each other and with information is changing the way we communicate, how we do business and how we live our lives. By putting power in the hands of billions of consumers, prices have fallen and the choice and quality of goods and services have improved dramatically. Businesses, too, are gaining through the chance to know their customers better, strengthening relationships, building trust and increasing sales.

But while individuals as consumers are already reaping these benefits, as citizens they have yet to see the same improvements. Governments have often been slow to see the advantages that openness and dialogue brings for their countries. Some, to be frank, remain suspicious of the power it might hand to individuals and communities.

Slowly but surely we are seeing this change. Last year, we saw a small number of governments including the United Kingdom join the Open Government Partnership to promote openness and improved engagement with their citizens. The efforts of this partnership were stepped up at a recent conference attended by Hillary Clinton and Francis Maude and hosted by Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff. The conference saw 43 new countries join and announce their plans to increase government transparency, openness and accountability.

The initiative is still in its early days. But by improving accountability and transparency, it has rich potential to improve public services, ensure money is spent wisely and break down the barriers between the government and the governed. At a time when this divide has never seemed bigger in many countries and when public finances are tight, these are goals of crucial importance.

Countries that sign up to the partnership have to demonstrate their commitment to open government. Each has set out their plans on how more information will be made available to citizens, how genuine engagement will be encouraged and how this dialogue will help drive social change. These action plans include innovative public accountability mechanisms, the creation of open data portals, new legal and institutional mechanisms and the introduction of e-petitions to collect and respond to citizens’ needs more effectively.

Having seen first-hand what can be achieved if we can better connect people, I am excited by its potential to deliver positive change. The success of eBay, created by my firm’s founder Pierre Omidyar, was based on confidence in people and creating a network to enable them to come together. Many millions of consumers have gained from sharing their passions and interests. Consumers have gained from sharing their passions and interests. Many thousands of new businesses have been able to compete on a level playing field, challenging the dominance of established players.

Technology gives us, on a scale and speed never possible before, the opportunity to magnify the power of every individual. There will always be some who might abuse this opportunity. But our experience at eBay is that the overwhelming majority use this power responsibly. We must have the confidence to harness this ability to give people a voice. If we do, the rewards will be enormous.

Governments that tap into the collective expertise and experience of their citizens will make better decisions. Increased transparency, participation and accountability will increase protection against corruption.
By using technology to empower individuals, they will enable them to influence policies and priorities at a national and community level. This in turn will raise ambitions and increase interest and participation in public life.

Through the Open Government Partnership, citizens are trusted to help strengthen their countries. But using the opportunities to share information that technology brings is only one half of the equation. We will only fully reap all these rewards if citizens, civil society and businesses use this information to monitor progress, hold those making decisions to account and, where needed, encourage change. Transparency is vital but so, too, is the active engagement and participation of citizens.

It is vitally important, too, that we work at both a national and local level to help provide the skills and tools to use this data and the opportunities it brings to make a positive impact on lives and communities. This means developing the tools and partnerships that make this new era of active citizen engagement a reality. It is something our organisation, Omidyar Network, which encourages the use of technology and markets to foster social change, is already supporting in many countries.

We are already seeing examples of what can be achieved and the difference it can make. In the UK, for instance, Omidyar Network supports the work of mySociety, which uses the power of the web to help people become more powerful in civic and democratic life with websites such as theyworkforyou.com and fixmystreet.com.

But this is only the beginning. The ability to encourage honest and responsive governments and to allow citizens and communities to shape rather than simply accept the services they receive holds great potential. We have seen a revolution in the way businesses and consumers interact. If we can harness the same power to improve standards of governance, we can help create jobs, strengthen societies and transform the quality of life of millions of people.

 

By Stephen King.

Stephen King is a partner at Omidyar Network, a philanthropic investment firm started by eBay Founder Pierre Omidyar.