“Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value”

Som NGO’er må vi være opmærksomme på, om vi tager ud og skaber et behov for penge hos dem, vi prøver at hjælpe, eller om vi skaber værdier.   

Af Sameer Azizi, projektleder i Afghanistan for GlobalEduSport

Since my first day in Kabul I have realized that a lot of money has been spent in this country. But why do we still see poverty, lack of educational institutions, corruption, projects without useful developing results in the afghan society?

Today I once again faced the “expectation problem”. This is that local Afghans expect lots of materialistic benefits whenever you mention the words “NGO”, “foreigners”, “projects” etc. Many international NGO are facing conflicts with their local staff, members in a certain program or project, because local Afghans expectations are related to other NGO’s expenses. For instance if a INGO have been giving 20 USD for participating in a seminar, then local afghans expect that you at least give the “market price” - 20 USD for them to join your seminar.

But why have the local Afghans these expectations? Well, first of all I think all INGO agrees with me that the first NGO’s simple created these expectations in Afghanistan. Lots of money was used the first period of Rebuilding Afghanistan (2002-2005), this boomed the prices of everything in Afghanistan. It then leads to the fact that at least 50 USD for each month is needed to live very basic in Afghanistan. Parallel to this, has the materialistic way of living increased and within a short period the society was divided in at least 3 segments - 3% rich and wealthy people, 30 % people living “normally” and 67 % very primitively/poorly.

But why did the money which was supposed to rebuild the afghan society then destroy it?
I think the reason is that the success of a project lies on certain facts that you write in the last evaluation report. This report is giving to the donors so that the project manger or any other responsible for the project will show that they have done enough to call the project successful. So what is the easiest way to get good results? Money! How can you show that your project have changed the minds of 200 local afghans? Money! How can you show that your project have been benefiting the children of Afghanistan? Money!

How money? By giving salary for local Afghans to even participate in your workshops where they learn something! By paying their taxi bills to the workshops! By giving them clothes, balls, teaching materials and other materials unnecessarily!

I think that you as project manager or a responsible person for a developing project should reflect about how your project will make the local Afghans independent and free of foreign aids. So don’t give salary for joining a workshop, where they learn something - they should appreciate that you even give them workshops! Don’t pay the taxi bill, because when your project is over, how will they pay their transportation? Don’t fill them up with materials, because it’s a sickness they should avoid - not learn!

So my point is as I started by the quotation of Albert Einstein “Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value”. Success can be achieved very easy by “buying” good project results - but by having values as a responsible person throughout the project, the participants can learn it and create their own lives afterwards in an independent way.

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Dette indlæg blev udgivet den mandag, 10. marts 2008 kl. 12:54 og er gemt i Historier. Du kan følge alle svar til dette indlæg via RSS 2.0-feedet. Du kan skrive en kommentar, eller sende et trackback fra dit eget site.