The Role Of NGOs And INGOs In Community Development

NGO and INGO Activities

Question:

Discuss about the Community Development Theory and Practices.

The following essay is prepared to basically get a clear idea of the community development theory and practices. The essay has aimed to verify the role of the NGO’s and the INGO’s regarding the different aid programs that they undertake to facilitate the community as a whole. The NGO’s are the Nongovernmental organizations which are basically involved in different welfare activities that are aimed at benefiting the lower strata of the society. The activities may involve providing relief during times of distress, undertaking healthcare programs like polio vaccination, TB vaccination or engaging in relief operations and last but not the least in any sense organizing and mobilizing funds for the development of the community. The NGO’s have a clear role in coordination, collaboration and bridging the communication gap between the different individuals of the community (Bennett 2014).

Some of the main tasks of NGO’s, INGO’s and donors are;

1. Completition of the Charity-Mission- The non governmental bodies as mentioned helps a targeted sector of economy which includes healthcare, education, assisting different self help groups and many others as such. Large NGOs can also provide different loans which can be beneficial for the growth of the company.
2. Communication and Relationship- Development of the communities help to increase communication and relationship between the different people of the community. Communication helps to understand the connection to make fundraising or donation in the targeted areas. The NGOs also act as a mediator to solve any rural problems.
3. Voice to the government- The institutions provides a database of the problems of the villagers and the population of the other rural areas to the government in details. This helps in the proper communication between the government and the NGOs and helps to allocate and mobilize the development funds easily (Islam 2017).
4. Initiate New Technology- The following institutions can use the latest technologies to improve the conditions of the4 people who are in real need. The organizations can also appoint experts in their ranks who may be engaged in the training and development of the different natives.

The aid should be managed in a proper and efficient way to better achieve the greater development impact. In the year 2000 the leaders of the world made a series of historic commitments at the UN Millennium Summit (Bennett 2014). The leaders took the pledge of assisting each other and working together in a fixed structure to manage the dehumanizing conditions that people face in underdeveloped regions of the world. The member nations agreed to make the following program a reality by the year 2015 and the primary task of this developmental process was assigned to the developing countries while on the other hand the donor countries or the developed countries with a negligible amount of poverty and other problems were assigned to play a supportive role to develop the condition of the former countries. The main aim of such a project was to increase the aid effectiveness (Amin 2014).

Within the different sectors that an NGO it is quite possible to determine the different NGO activities. The main aim of the NGOs has been to fill the gaps that has been taking on the activities of the provisions in the community where government intervention has been very less or the provisions which does not seems to be a priority for the government. The organizations face a lot of difficulties in working in rural areas either because of the failure to mobilize the funds properly or the extreme conditions that exist in these areas. The main aim of the NGOs is to make sure that these areas receive a basic transformation to change the extreme condition of the lives of the population residing in these areas.

Foreign Aid and Community Development

There are some common problems that the NGOs faces while they try to ensure sustainability, this happens mainly because NGO actions are regional and in most of the cases are implemented on a local basis. Many such projects have earlier failed the test of times as because there has been absence of capacity development.

The supply side of the international aid community is pre dominated by a selected group of players globally. Some of them are the aids provided by the government of the developed countries, World Bank and the United Nations (Molenaers et al. 2015). The aid allocation decisions include different types of self interested motivations like opening up of international markets. The aid decisions by the government are clearly based on public opinions.  There are political dimensions to the implementation of aid through large scale bilateral and multilateral bureaucracies.  The rise of the NGOs has thus helped to address problems in the sector related to the traditional aid supply. In the beginning the individuals or some foundations directly donates the NGOs and address their preferences for specific aid projects like in times of distress or like donating money for a social cause (Seeberg et al. 2017). The NGOs must be accountable to the populations who are actively contributed resources and the people for whom the NGOs work for.  The smaller organizational structure of the NGO’s involves smaller costs of bureaucracy and increases the need of greater efficiency to use the funds that have been donated in a much better way.

In the developing countries foreign aid plays a major role in the developmental process of the country. As mentioned earlier the developed countries sends fund to the developing and underdeveloped countries to develop their infrastructure and use this funds for the development of the backward class of people facing extreme forms of poverty (Amin 2014).  The government of the latter countries or the underdeveloped or developing countries grants or allocates the fund to the different NGOs and INGOs to mobilize them for the welfare of the poor people. Generally foreign aid forms a vital portion of the funds that are mobilized by the NGOs of a country. A study conducted on such parameters has suggested that the use of different foreign aids has seen a great push in the last 10 years. A popular example can be taken out from a recent example. After the devastating earthquake of Nepal funds poured in from almost every country and every NGOs. The funds were mobilized to restructure the whole of Nepal and help the distressed people who practically lost everything after such a major disaster.

Coordination and Mobilization of Funds

The NGOs as mentioned earlier holds the key to the success of different international development projects that are undertaken by the local Government (Brandl 2015). It is practically impossible for the government to reach out to every places that needs attention in the areas of concern. On the other hand it is of utmost importance of reaching out to the places to mobilize the funds for the development of the region (Steinwand 2015). The NGOs help the government in these times as they take all the responsibilities from the shoulders of the government and visits the places and the people which is completely or partially absent from the reach of the government. The NGOs not only visits the places they are involved in a detailed research of the place along with the collection of some vital information regarding the place and the population. The collection of this particular information helps to make understand the issues of the people living here, the infrastructural push that needs to be provided in the region and the problems that are associated in this particular region. The problems that are identified by the organizations are shared with the government and the government allocates the fund on the basis of the report. The organizations in turn mobilize the fund in the regions and try to eradicate the problems of the particular region. Therefore the NGO have the main responsibility to build a bridge between the needy and the distressed community and the government (Bebbington et al. 2013).

The government has formulated a number of different policies for controlling the aids received from the different sources. The policies are formulated taking into considerations a number of different factors that helps to maintain a uninterrupted flow of aids into the country for development purposes (Mawdsley et al. 2014). Once the government receives the funds from the foreign sources or donors they calls for a meeting to analyze and determine the amount of aids needed by people or a community or help needed in a particular region. After the determination of the funding structure the main task of the government is to allocate the proper amount of funds as the resources to the different organizations. Just after this the NGOs are there to mobilize the funds in a proper and efficient manner for the development of the area or the population.

Capacity Development has been attracting more and more attention in the background of ever changing aid structure.  NGOs have developed the abilities for themselves to have an impact of capacity development of state institutions (Fee and McGrath-Champ 2017). The recent transformation of the donor policies in the recent times has made it mandatory for the governments and the institutions to change their policies for being sustainable. Capacity development also faces serious grievances as it raises the question on who should be involved in what and their duties. Within the education sector, the knowledge of the NGOs in the realm of education. Such knowledge proves to be particularly valuable to meet the current challenges of the following sector.

Challenges Faced by NGOs

The aims and objectives of the nongovernmental organizations totally depends on the specific issues, areas and the mission on which they work. The NGOs perform lots of activities from involving themselves in relief operations, involving themselves in education sector or providing relief for the poverty stricken people in different areas or improving the living infrastructure of a particular community. The main aim of the organization is to make sure that the funds allocated by the government are utilized in an efficient manner. The main challenges of the different NGOs while the utilization of funds is;

1. Absence of Strategic Planning- The absence of strategic planning is a long standing because that causes hindrance to the operations of the different NGOs (Steinwand 2015). The lack of a cohesive strategic plan does not help the cause of the cause of the organization as because it lacks the purpose of achieving results in any specific missions.
2. Poor governance and networking- The absence of proper governance is very much common in modern day NGOs. It is very much important to have a proper governance as because such a governance model helps in the proper functioning of the operations in the NGO. Governance is very much essential for the foundational to transparency (Mawdsley et al. 2014). On the other hand networking is a major challenge for all these firms and there has been a reputation among the NGOs to have a disorganized networking structure. The inability of the organization to learn from experiences costs the organization in the long run as it hampers the sustainability of the organization. International Non Governmental organization around the NGOs must communicate with each other to achieve positive results in global projects. Most of the NGO’s do not maximize the use of the current technologies to communicate and facilitate management in a better and organized way.
3. Lack of Communication- As mentioned in the earlier point the lack of effective communication has been a vital backlog for the proper functioning of the NGOs and the proper aid restructuring. The aid that reaches out to the people can be only structured if there is a proper communication between the different stakeholders involved in the NGO project (Smillie et al. 2013). The effective communication structure helps the organization to make the best of the projects. Therefore communication must be kept intact from both sides to make sure that the developmental aid allocated to the company is successfully implemented. Effective communication must be established globally with every organization that are involved directly or indirectly with the developmental process.
4. Development Approaches- The development approaches are formulated by the government and the officials of the NGOs in a proper way that determines the best path for the success of the different developmental programs (Islam 2017). The main problems that the organization faces are to properly structurize the total system. The NGOs face hurdles when they try to provide the best services and empower people on different activities.

Conclusion

The following essay has identified the different elements related to the aids provided by the NGOs. After a through revision of the total essay the readers will be updated with different information regarding the works of NGOs and the fund allocation system of the organizations. The aims of the essay have been overall achieved in the essay as because all the necessary elements as well as the main points have been clearly discussed in the project. The capacity development program of NGOs has been clearly highlighted in this essay.

References

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