Bangladeshi non-government organisations (NGOs) will face shortfall in external funding once the country reaches the middle-income country status but, some development professionals say, they would still remain relevant to societal needs.
The development organisations, they insist, would need to explore local sources of funding by playing a role which is complementary to the government in offering people the fruits of development.
The suggestions came as two successful development professionals shared their experience and views of changes that are taking place in the sector, while addressing a webinar on December 22 (Tuesday).
“We’ll have to change our organisational and operational model to survive the changes around us… We will have to appeal to the local market; we will have to understand how we can play a complementary role to the government,” Ishtiaq Mannan, country chief of Save the Children, Iraq, said.
Recalling that governments and NGOs had a sort of antagonistic relationship in the 1970s, he pointed out that the pattern has changed and the NGOs are taking up more of a complementary role.
Sajeda Amin, a senior associate of the Population Council, New York, added that the development sector which was earlier focused on voluntarism and doing charity, has gained professionalism.
“It’s now about doing good to people maintaining a high professional standard… (However,)… the private sector is rapidly expanding and the governments in developing countries have spread social safety networks,” she said.
An alumnus of Princeton University, the US, Sajeda Amin observed that the NGOs these days have to focus on managing crises and disasters. “So, young development workers have to change their worldview to excel in this radically changing sector,” she recommended.
In this context, Ishtiaq Mannan mentioned that some of them did not have to apply for jobs seeing newspaper advertisements, thanks to their mentors and networks.
The webinar on “Works That Inspire”, organised by Desperately Seeking Development Experts’, was moderated by Warda Ashraf, a deputy manager at Save the Children Bangladesh.
Ishtiaq Mannan cautioned that the funding by organisations such as the World Bank would come down as Bangladesh grows economically. “But that will not erase necessity of the NGOs,” he said adding, “If we lose innovative agility, we will not be able to do what needs to be done.”
He also underlined the importance of a vibrant civil society for upholding the development issues of people but regretted that development organisations themselves often have to safeguard the civil society in absence of strong democratic institutions.
Dwelling on the NGOs’ contribution, Sajeda Amin asserted that they had started writing Bangladesh’s success story in the 1980s when others were talking about ‘basket case’. “We shed light on our population and other development projects that are, thankfully, producing results,” she argued.
