CONTENTS - HTML PDF - 2.3 MB Evaluation of Netherlands-funded NGOs in Bangladesh Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Policy and Operations Evaluation Department (IOB) Main findings Introduction The Netherlands support to Bangladeshi NGOs is mainly geared to the pursuance of poverty alleviation, first in rural but of late also in urban areas. In Netherlands policy documents for Bangladesh, the support to NGOs has alternately been described as rural credit supply (1989-92), or integrated rural development (1992-95). However, considering the target groups of Bangladeshi NGOs: rural and urban poor and particularly women among them, the common denominator of the Netherlands-funded NGO activities has been poverty alleviation. The evaluation concentrates on credit, training and related services of Bangladeshi NGOs, conducted with support from the Co-Financing Agencies (CFAs) Novib, ICCO and Cebemo (now Bilance), or from the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Dhaka. It does not cover some other major activities of NGOs, notably emergency relief, health and education. Poverty alleviation is an important objective of the overall Netherlands´ development cooperation programme with Bangladesh. Since Independence in 1971, some Dfl. 247 million was spent on assistance to NGOs. This is around 9 per cent of the total Government of Netherlands Country Programme in the period 1972-96. NGOs receiving assistance have implemented programmes mainly targeting the following issues: - poverty alleviation; - conscientization and mobilisation of local groups; - development of local and regional organisations of the poor to defend their rights and interests. In recent years, the Embassy in Dhaka has also substantially assisted NGO programmes, particularly in the fields of education, health, women´s activities and income generation. The study expanded from its original exclusive concentration on CFA-assisted programmes to take account of this development. Evaluation of Netherlands-assisted programmes of NGOs Fifteen fieldwork-based assessments were undertaken of NGOactivities receiving Netherlands´ assistance. These were supported by desk studies and interviews with key stakeholders. Policy relevance The NGO programmes are expected to promote progress towards: structural poverty alleviation, promotion of women in development, strengthening the rights of the individual and environmentally sustainable development. Structural poverty alleviation implies a sustainable improvement in the position of poor individuals and groups. The activities undertaken by all NGOs studied are targeting structural poverty alleviation and are therefore relevant to this goal. All of the NGOs studied are also promoting the interests of women through their programmes. In the fifteen NGOs studied, between 50 per cent and 100 per cent of direct beneficiaries are women. The NGOs studied also tackle the policy goal of strengthening the rights of the individual, through such activities as conscientization, legal rights training, improving awareness of and access to Government services, literacy and non-formal education and emphasising the need for the poor to participate in democratic processes. Most programmes are intended to be environmentally neutral or positive. Areas in which benefits are specifically targeted include: sustainable land use, roadside tree planting and maintenance, and lobbying on environmental issues. Effectiveness Credit (and savings) programmes are the major activity targeting poverty alleviation. Two streams of activity have emerged. On the one hand, there are programmes which supply regular and reasonably high amounts of credit to the ´moderately poor´ on a semi-commercial basis. These achieve high repayment efficiency and help move these beneficiaries out of poverty. Such operations do not reach the so-called ´hard core poor´ who have insufficient productive investment opportunities to generate the loan repayments. On the other hand, there are NGOs which supply small, or large but irregular, amounts of credit. These achieve varying repayment rates and are not sustainably alleviating poverty, but are rather providing a ´safety net´. Training has had a mixed impact on poverty among its clients. Skills-based training associated with credit is seen by most of the poor as the combination necessary to offer the potential for economic improvement. Training in the broad fields of empowerment and health and nutrition can play a positive role, but are less valued by the clients than skills training. An area into which few NGOs have ventured, but which is commonly cited as the real need of many of the poor, is the creation of non-farm employment opportunities. Tribal communities in particular cited this as having far more potential value than credit. With regard to gender impacts, women are the major direct recipients of credit. It appears that in some rural areas, little of the credit is actually used by women, but that in others they may use as much as half of it themselves. However, even where women have little direct role in the use of the credit, they find a substantial advantage in participating in the programme, because their respect in the household is greatly enhanced by being the route to credit. One weak point encountered in many of the NGOs receiving Netherlands´ assistance is in their internal gender-related policies and practices. Few have succeeded in recruiting substantial numbers of female staff and even fewer have a reasonable proportion of female managers. However, it appears that many NGOs are now taking this issue seriously and a number have formulated and begun to implement gender policies. Social Empowerment achieved by the programmes is not as dramatic as originally hoped for by the NGOs. Even though NGOs provide a wide range of services and activities covering much of the country and with millions of participants, these have not led to any major change in the social order. Fundamental factors of rural society, notably the unequal distribution of power and the prevalence of landlessness have not changed. However, participation in group meetings and activities promotes a heightened degree of self-confidence among the poor over time. Women in particular gain a degree of acceptance of their right to move about and even to visit offices of NGOs or Government to access services. The NGOs have therefore reduced the degree of isolation imposed on women. This is a notable achievement. The greatly increased participation of women in the recent national elections has been cited by NGOs as partly a side-effect of this gradual entry of women into public life. With regard to environmentally sustainable development, most of the programmes of NGOs are positive or neutral. Rural credit and training are mainly used for small-scale economic activities such as trading or farming. Others have substantial programmes of roadside tree planting and maintenance. Several NGOs are active lobbyists for develop-ment and adoption of sustainable land use policies in Bangladesh. Many NGOs are active lobbyists against specific large-scale water resource management projects, notably some of those under the Flood Action Plan, which they see as socially and environmentally damaging. Efficiency of the NGO programmes Factors contributing towards efficiency include the following: - specialised programmes (concentrating on a small range of activities) are easier to run efficiently than are holistic programmes (which try to tackle a broad range of dimensions of poverty); - nevertheless, even very large holistic programmes are being run efficiently by some NGOs; - programmes of small NGOs often suffer from insufficient funding and/or from lack of access to best management practice through training; - programmes in which partial management responsibility (excluding financial manage-ment) is given to member groups are being run efficiently by several NGOs studied; - programmes in which full hand over, including financial management, to member groups is practised have so far not been able to achieve efficiency. Sustainability The issue of sustainability has two dimensions. The sustainability of the NGOs can itself be considered a key issue. This clearly relates to whether or not donors will continue to support them, since most are highly dependent on international funding. At the next level, the practice of ´phasing-out´ NGO support to member groups is practised by some NGOs in the hope that the village organisations and their higher-level federations (where formed) will themselves eventually be able to survive without their ´parent´ NGO. It can be seen that some NGOs are well on the way to achieving financial self-sufficiency for their credit operations. Credit provision can become self-sustaining, but substantial skills-training programmes cannot be funded out of service charges. And yet, in the minds of many poor villagers, it is the combination of resources and skills which presents the possibility of self-improvement and not simply access to money. Other programmes, most notably in the area of non-formal primary education, continue to require huge donor inputs and will never be in any other position. The concentration of many NGOs and their donor partners, on the need to raise social consciousness and change the structure and values of society, also seems highly unlikely to be sustainable without substantial and long-term external support. Evaluation of assistance channels to NGOs Co-financing agencies Co-financing agencies from many countries have channelled large sums of money to the Bangladeshi NGO sector since the country gained Independence. This has enabled the sector to grow more quickly and on a much larger scale than in most other developing countries. The relationships between Dutch CFAs and Bangladeshi NGOs are perceived on both sides to be partnerships, often based on ´like-mindedness´ related to religious and/or historical ties. For the partners, these relationships go far beyond the provision of financial resources, although the long-term support of ´core programmes´ has been a major benefit to them. Dialogues on broad principles such as development strategies, joint lobby ventures, empowerment of the poor and human rights are thought to benefit both sides of the partnership. As well as this somewhat intangible ´added value´ of CFAs, there are tangible gains to NGOs through the CFAs´ political lobbying in the Netherlands, mobilising public opinion to support assistance to Bangladesh, fostering institutions necessary to reinforce ´civil society´, enlarging cooperative networks and extending the range of international donors accessible to the NGOs. CFAs have assisted in the development of donor consortia, which have helped several larger NGOs to scale-up their operations in an efficient manner, through the reduction of duplication of administrative and financial reporting. The three CFAs have distinct constituencies in the Netherlands, as well as complementary networks of European and world-wide CFA and NGO contacts, and each has strong historical links with a number of key partners in Bangladesh. Through their networks, CFAs provide Bangladeshi NGOs with linkages to NGOs op-erating elsewhere in the Asian region, or even further afield, so that experiences and effective approaches can be shared. CFAs make important contributions through facilitating the training of NGO senior staff, by providing consultancy services to NGOs, by assisting NGOs to mount or to attend relevant international workshops, by facilitating the (nowlargely historical) indigenisation process of NGOs, by helping partners to develop such resources as Vision, Mission and Strategy statements and by organising partners´ meetings in Bangladesh. Procedures to make the NGOs financially accountable have been vigorously pursued by the CFAs. Progress reports, internal assessments, monitoring and evaluation studies are also produced and critically assessed. However, there are very few high-quality studies of the impacts of NGO operations, or authoritative evaluations of specific programmes. The urge to economise on administrative and overhead costs appears to be influencing the CFAs to channel aid increasingly to large programmes and organisations. This will not necessarily promote the most effective use of resources, since the evaluation shows that small NGOs can be effective and innovative, and sometimes reach remote areas, which are not always serviced by larger NGOs. Small NGOs feel that they have less access to the support and services of the CFAs then do big NGOs, even though they need these more. In addition, they are rarely offered the same long time frame of assistance that larger bodies receive. Overall, the CFAs have made a major positive contribution to the development of NGOs in Bangladesh. Several of these NGOs are known as world-wide leaders in this sector and their concepts and practices have been adopted by others within the country and internationally. However, the CFAs have so far missed the opportunity to maximise their contribution, by acting largely independently of one another. In recent years, some progress has been made in this respect. Nevertheless, the degree of cooperation between the CFAs on specific issues of common interest, such as credit management, overlapping membership of NGOs and the future of federated systems, could be further strengthened to the benefit of all parties. The Royal Netherlands Embassy In recognition of the quality and effectiveness of their programmes, some Bangladeshi NGOs are now receiving funds direct from the Ministry through the Embassy. The major example is the BRAC Non-Formal Primary Education Programme, which is funded directly through the Embassy. There are also large-scale programmes in the health sector. Another modality of direct funding is the involvement of some NGOs in the implementation of specific components of bilateral projects. The water sector is the major one in which this has occurred with Netherlands-Assisted Projects in Bangladesh. This type of cooperation is not always successful, largely because NGOs often have to accept project designs in which they have had no planning role. In certain instances, there may also be a perceived conflict of interest between the poor target group and the manner in which a project is being implemented. The Embassy also has an Embassy Small Fund and a Women´s Fund at its disposal. These are used flexibly, notably to support women´s projects and activities in the water sector. The posting of additional sector specialists has intensified the communication between the Embassy and the NGOs, and the Embassy is increasingly taking the initiative to involve NGOs in the implementation of bilateral programmes. To date, NGOs have a mixed reaction to this increasing involvement. Some note that, although Embassy staff are locally-based, they often appear to have such substantial workloads that they are unable to visit the field for any meaningful period of time. Furthermore, they observe that Embassy specialists have a rapid turnover (mostly within 3 to 5 years) and that relatively little experience and knowledge is passed from one incumbent to the next. The NGOs therefore often encounter a discontinuous and sometimes contradictory relationship with Embassy specialists, which they compare unfavourably with the long term, mutually supportive and cumulative relationship established with their CFA partners. However, some smaller NGOs indicated that they have been offered more assistance in such areas as training and accountancy from the Embassy than is available to them from CFAs.