NGOs & Sustainability: if we weren't here, would this still happen?

By Braimah Musah & Alison Skiba 

Braimah  

I have always been passionate about helping the vulnerable and less privileged in society. It is this passion and desire that motivated me to join the International Service ICS programme. Through this programme, I am also going to be equipped with the skills and experience that will help me in my career – I hope one day to start my own NGO. This ambition came as a result of the discriminations faced by underprivileged groups in terms of access to opportunities, basic social amenities, and general participation in local governance system in my community. I felt that assisting these groups of people, especially in terms of capacity building skills is one of the ways of improving their lives in the long-run. I have to say that I did initially get frustrated when I was not put on the LIFE Project in Sandema, because I thought that the NFED programme was only about learning basic literacy and numeracy skills – I was not sure about this as I thought it might not directly help in achieving my goals.

How I felt before I realised how great my placement was going to be...

Working with NFED Savelugu, I have realised that our work is much more than just learning basic numeracy and literacy skills. In fact it is more than I could ever have wished for and I am very happy being on this project. So far I feel we have contributed a lot to our community by sharing our knowledge on NGOs. On the other hand, what I have learnt from our IGG, the Savelugu community, the International Service team and the partner organization (NFED) is something I will always remember and apply throughout my life.

Myself and the entire International Service team share the belief that training our IGGs in a sustainable way on how best to understand their needs so that they can improve their own livelihoods is far better than giving them fiscal cash.   Just like the saying, “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

Braimah happy to be delivering a community sensitisation on NGOs to his community

Alison 

 

This week, we delivered our first Awareness Raising session to our communities. Many of the groups we work with have been cheated or duped by people posing as NGOs in the past, promising the communities help and resources in return for some money, so this session was based on NGOs and how to recognise a good one.

Jonathan working alongside our community facilitator to deliver the session

For me, this session was the defining moment of the project so far; the moment that everything made sense.

From the beginning of our time here, the word sustainability has been constantly mentioned - in training, in the office, when planning our awareness raising sessions. We have continuously asked ourselves “if we were not here, would this still happen?”

Above the door in the office - we have to ask ourselves this every day!

Until now, it’s all been an abstract idea, a sign on the office wall. It always made sense but within this awareness raising session, I finally got to see sustainability in action.

My counterpart Jonathan and I were nervous about the session to begin with. We don’t speak the local language and the IGG we work with don’t speak English. However, we are very fortunate to work with a NFED supervisor and a facilitator from our community called Mohammed – the only graduate in the community.

As the session got underway, I began to feel like I wasn’t involved - Jonathan and I had taken a backseat in the delivery of the information. We were showing Mohammed our plans, giving him the resources we had made and he was doing the rest.

However, this is when I realised this was exactly what was meant by sustainable. We were training Mohammed to train the group, giving him the opportunity to develop his skills and knowledge in order to train the IGG on this issue. Suddenly, I realised that taking a backseat was helping this community far more than Jonathan and I simply providing the training ourselves.

Mohammed, our graduate facilitator, training the community while we take a backseat. Sustainability in action!

So, for now, we can finally answer the all-important question; Yes, if we were not here, this would still happen. If this project was to end tomorrow, our facilitators could still carry out the training. They will be able to teach people and share their knowledge on this topic and the others to come whether it is financial management, book keeping or how to form a cooperative.

Although we may never actually see these communities reap the benefits of the skills they have learned, it feels good knowing that when we leave, they will be able to implement the skills and knowledge we have shared with them to improve their livelihoods.

It is clear that, in the world of development, sustainability is an absolutely fundamental element and one which International Service have at the forefront of their projects.