#puttingdownthoughts About Community Based Organisations

#puttingdownthoughts

My first job involved formation of some Community Based Organisations. The project, under which it was being done, stopped abruptly as the funding dried up. The concerned agencies stopped working, the staff, myself including, moved to some other organisations and the registered CBOs remained there blank, without any plan or activity. I remember the person from the office of the registrar of the co-operative societies was telling me once in his authoritative tone, “I am registering them only because they (applications) are coming along with a letter from a government department. If they don’t show any activity in the coming three years he was going to deregister them.”

I was doing my job by bringing in my passion and with a strong belief that it was changing the life of the farmers in a great way. As I spent more time doing my job, I realised that that was not going to sustain for long. A few years later, the person from the registrar office was proved right. Majority of these co-operatives did not withstand the test of the time and had went out of existence. I am sure, if any one of them is still alive, it must be somewhere in the obscurity, probably hijacked by the corrupt people in the system.

Since the end of my first job, I have spent almost 20 years in the nonprofit sector working in different roles. The problem of lack of self sustainability of the CBO does not seems to be solved yet. I think that it is the problem of the design of the social projects and the designs are controlled by very few. Especially in the field of livelihoods, it all starts with certain intervention to improve the yield or production etc and community based organisations come in as a logical end with the purpose of sustaining that change post project. Once those projects end there are either of the two things happening all across the country. The parent NGOs who promoted these Community Based Organisations are either still doing the job of babysitting these CBOs thereby having a firm clasp on their activities. If the NGO parents are not capable enough, their CBO babies end up with a premature death.

There are many co-operatives and producer companies which have been established not through any NGO efforts but by self-motivated individuals. The leaders of these organisations take timely actions and remain afloat through all thick and thin. This becomes possible only because of high levels of their own motivation and purpose drivenness. The typical problem arising because of social project designs could easily be solved by changing them. It just needs the early action for building that purpose driven ness and motivation amongst the leaders of these CBOs. It needs specific time bound planning for nurturing their CBO babies into adults and doing a complete withdrawal of support.

The question is not whether it can be done or not, but whether the NGOs and their donors have real and strong intention towards it.