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Non-governmental organizations
Challenges
and
contribute
to
infrastructure projects
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Ahmed Tawfik Nassim
Monitoring &
evaluation consultant
Treasurer of FAODA |
I'm
writing about my experience in non-governmental organizational
learning, and in framework of supporting the exchange of
experiences between NGOs, although this experience that I
introduce it, is unsuccessful of my organization in implementing
certain activities involving infrastructure, which made me
hesitant in introducing this experience, as in general level, we
don't introduce to others that we failed to achieve any
activity, and also at the NGO projects level, rarely when I work
in monitoring and evaluation, I can see a project fails to
implement any activity, contrary, always project's team work
succeed in achieving all of the core activities of the project
proposal, and also implement other initiatives are more
impressive supports the success.
The experience that
I introduce is, we are as a team work in our Organization we
failed to implement certain infrastructure activities in two
Assembly's projects, these projects are reduce ground water
level in a poor village, and another project is the activities
related to its infrastructure as follows (building portals,
well-developed tourist market, and workstation for selecting
residues), the two projects are funded from two different
donors.
I made an analysis
of the failure's causes to complete these activities, and forced
the team to modify and get approval from donors to amend the
proposed activities, and converted from infrastructure
activities to other activities related to trainings, raising
awareness and capacity building. I and my colleagues conducted
severe substantive analysis of the reasons, we found two
important reasons:
The first reason:
these reasons not related to the activities planning of these
two projects, and its real requirement of to meet the
geographical scope of the projects, where needed still exists
already, first community suffers strongly until now of the
ground water level rise, and the other community still need
infrastructure activities, that have been referred to and which
was involved in planning. All these activities have been
obtaining Government of many governmental agencies led by local
units exist in these communities to implement these activities,
and this was one of the annexes in approvals of project
proposal.
Second thing: the
nature cooperation process between government agencies and NGOs
caused mean reason at this failure, which is why we as a team
work to get more focus on the nature of this relationship, and
implementing further researching and analysis of that, and we
got number of results:
• A Government's
approval with the presence of the contact person, because it can
share with you an effective support participatory planning
process in communities, and facilitates approval contained in
the annexes of project proposals, and suddenly moved to another
location and hiring another, you have set different sharp in
cooperation of governmental body but instead find decisions
contrary to what has already been approved by the same author.
• weak role of the
local people's Councils at local units, where they may
participate in the planning process and facilitate approval, if
there is a collaborator manager with projects, while its role is
weak if a certain entities not approved and only addressed or to
display on board.
• Non-logical
sequence in approvals, multiple government agencies and
conflicts of competence, for example, when there are connections
for drainage pipes, it needs to dig in sandy road or in a part
of asphalt road, then, you will surprise "as a member of team
Association implementing the project", the follows, while the
approval of the local unit and the local village Council and
Council of the city centre, during the participatory planning
process, during implementation you need following approvals
(roads approvals, railway's approvals if a campus railway,
irrigation approval, government IT approval), which raises an
important question, on what basis it has been approved by the
local government during the planning process, you may get
approval, and other refuse or associated consent is consent.
• That such
approvals need previews, meetings and committees totally
contrary to define development project, " the number of
activities to achieve specific objectives under specific
resources and time was agreed", where may end age for project
without the consent of one or the other.
• There are a
number of fees and expenses, gratuities, transportation, in
order to go previews don't have a financial allocation, and no
way classified in budgets of projects, where there are external
financing, has it seemed a challenging to obtain necessary
approvals for infrastructure projects.
• Some
responsibilities see that some donor's names for example (EU,
World Bank, etc.) will not finance limited budgets, so they get
a high estimate of approvals fees or they expect participation
in committees oversee projects and expect huge attendance
allowances for their participation in these committees.
• Some officials try
to charge the organization with a number of other activities to
support the objectives of the governmental body, and that's
activities outside the specific activities of the project, which
is rejected by the Organization and the subsequent refusal of
the granting organization representing approval.
I prefer to
introduce this experiment on the challenges facing NGOs in
contributing to the implementation of certain infrastructure
projects in communities, and in spite of these challenges, we
may find some organizations are implementing infrastructure
projects and succeed in completing all of its activities as a
result of conditions help these organizations, as example,
cooperation of government officials or of one of the prominent
figures within the governing body, or a complete agreement with
plans for governmental agencies or support an influential
figures of the project or for other reasons, but I see that the
NGOs must put this expertise through planning activities to
provide the infrastructure, so that approvals obtained by the
organizations during the final approvals and do not represent
any surprise the Organization has a list of other approvals and
have to amend its activities affect the objectives and target
outcomes for communities.
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