“.... You and your Wazungu are taking us for a ride!” she declared. “How has my life changed? We expected by now we would have something the women can depend on to make some money. But it has just been try this and try that.”
“You both get a pay slip every month and you ride in that nice car. You are the people who have benefitted the most because your faces are smooth and shiny,” she added.
We were dumbstruck. It was totally unexpected. Clearly Nkirote had been taking stock of the three years we had spent with her and her group. Perhaps she had been put to this task by the other group members. I remembered all the songs, dances and ululation performed when our donors and CEO came to see the projects. Villagers called them the nice Wazungu (Muchunku in local dialect) who had come to help improve everyone’s lives. Suddenly everything had turned sour, and tough questions were being asked by a someone who moments earlier had been an unassuming poverty-stricken country woman." Look up at https://karmacolonialism.org/who-are-the-actual-ngo-beneficiaries/ to know how James who raised donor funds and started a nutrition NGO in Kenya lives.
The conversation hasn't been very different whenever I have spoken to the targetted beneficiaries or even the local civil society organizations in India or in several countries in Africa. A highly placed UNHCR representative, a close friend, reckons 90% of the fund for their programmes goes into their own upkeeps. Meanwhile, neither there is any dearth of miseries in the world that need support nor there are any shortage of good hearts across the world that would love to help out their fellow human beings. The challange of turning the trickle into sustainable flow of funds to the needy lies in
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