Page 58 - Sirmooree Digital Book

problems – not the least poverty. Indeed when giving hundreds of
millions of US$ away such organisations as the UN, the Global Fund
and the Gates Foundation have little choice in working with
government ministries and the larger INGOs, as smaller NGOs do not
have the capacity to cope with such enormous sums. However the KCF
has the luxury of selecting our funding partners (note we do not refer
to donors and beneficiaries as this suggests dependency) and in the
main we are able to work with small domestic NGOs where
transparency and accountability are easier to monitor and where you
can build up more enduring relationships.
Much is made by the media and the charity community of the
importance of ‘giving’ (and Bill Clinton wrote a whole book all about
it) but the importance is not so much in the giving but in the careful
application of funds. If you give thoughtlessly you may as well not
give at all.
Having said all this, there is an enormous amount of good being
achieved in the developing world by well focused NGOs. The
increasing wealth of the burgeoning middle class in most developing
countries certainly plays a key role in raising and applying funds
locally although most countries we work in still rely overwhelmingly
on funding from overseas. But so much can be achieved with modest
resources, a micro-credit programme that allows a family to buy
livestock or plant vegetables and increase their income might not ‘lift
them out of poverty’ but it will enable them to send their children to
school, pay for medicines and invest in other income generating
activities. The poor can also have crippling debts, as was the case of
a project we funded in Andhra Pradesh (AP). Following a reservoir de-
silting programme which increased yields by 25% when the silt was
applied to vegetable fields I naively enquired what the farmers would
spend this income on – only to be told that they would be paying off a
small part of debts accrued from loan sharks over 20 or so years of bad
harvests – the suicide rate in AP is the second highest in the World!
Evaluation is the only way to ascertain that a project is worth funding
in the first place and that the qualitative and quantitative difference
made through the project is likely to be sustainable. Pre-funding
evaluation reassures us that the implementing NGO has the capacity to
complete the project according to the agreed objectives. Frequent
communication is critical in funding projects in the developing world
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