You would think that humanitarian organisations are naturally willing to collaborate with each other for the benefit of the people they are trying to help. You would be wrong. Instead, they often act more like Alpha males. They stake out their territory and jealously guard it from potential competitors.
I saw this first-hand in Sri Lanka after the tsunami. I drove south from Colombo, the capital, past rubble where villages had once stood. Every few miles, in some cases less, a humanitarian organisation had put up a sign claiming the rubble where a village had once stood as their own. Back in Colombo representatives of humanitarian organisations were pacing the lobbies, talking on mobile phones, frantically trying to get a piece of the action. There was a lot of money available to help the victims of the tsunami. And to pump into the aid and development organisations.
This is not to denigrate the work of aid and development workers. Most of them are fine people committed to helping people. They often make huge personal sacrifices and work under appalling conditions. And they often get results.
But there is a dark side: the needs of an organisation versus the needs of the people they help.
One of the most important organisational needs is money. And the bigger the organisation, the more money is needed to keep it going. Since money is hard to come by, especially now, humanitarian organisations have to compete for it. This makes it very difficult for smaller organisations, some of whom do great work, to compete for funding. There are other factors that keep humanitarian organisations from collaborating. Some are based on methodology. Then there is the faith-based versus secular approach.
All of this is not to say that there is no collaboration going on. Just that it is rare. And the lack of collaboration means that millions of people around the world who are in need of support are ill-served.
During my four days in Addis Ababa, I spoke to representatives of several international and local humanitarian organisations, mostly country directors and executive directors. They all agreed that there was a need for their organisations to collaborate. Although they often come together under the auspices of UNICEF or some other organisation, such efforts rarely translate into tangible benefits for vulnerable communities. It is all talk and no action.
But then came the good news. Every organisation I spoke to agreed to a Keeping Children Safe proposal to jointly develop a regional child protection project. The overall goal is to protect children in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda from exploitation, violence, abuse and neglect. The project purpose is to strengthen the informal and formal child protection systems in each of the countries, and to link the two systems so that they complement and reinforce each other. This will require the active participation of non-governmental, governmental and private sector organisations at local, regional and international levels. Most importantly, it will require a bottom up approach whereby we build the capacity of local communities to analyse the problems surrounding child protection, develop solutions and implement them.
In four days Keeping Children Safe was able to get commitments from seven organisations to develop the project. In addition a major donor has expressed an interest in supporting the project. The next step is to write a concept paper and submit it to the donor for consideration.
In Ethiopia we have a wonderful opportunity to break out of our silos and work together for the benefit of millions of children. And most importantly, we have an opportunity to make a measurable difference in their lives.
Could East Africa lead the way? Stay tuned.
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