Meet Dr. Kannan!
RSWR’s In-country Field Staff,
Dr. R. Kannan, RSWR’s staff person in Tamil
Nadu, India has been facilitating three levels of
training for non-governmental organizations
(NGO) since June, 2008. The three trainings are:
orientation to micro-credit and to RSWR; proposal
writing; capacity building. The capacity building
training is for newly funded projects only. His
article below is in response to the question, “What
difference has the capacity building seminars made to
the participants?”
“Before going into the details of the difference
made by the capacity building and proposal preparation/
program development seminars for the new
NGOs, we have to understand the background of
voluntary organizations and NGOs working here in
India. The voluntary organisations leaders, start the
organizations out of their interest and willingness to
work for their people. These leaders do not have any
training background, or professional background.
For those NGOs, there is a very limited opportunity
to attend trainings, and build their capacities. The
NGO leaders generally are not university educated
and have limited exposure in English, which blocks
them in understanding the inputs given in English.
Hence, they have to depend upon individuals
who know English to do their proposal writing,
organize trainings, and to do documentation of
their work.
The individuals who know English and assist
with the proposal writing, write according to their
knowledge and comprehension of the NGO’s needs
without taking into account the people’s real needs
or availability of the resources (human and material).
These proposals become more representative
of the writer’s ideas than of the NGO leader or of
the women. Although the projects are good and the
NGO’s motivation is good and the NGO’s commitment
to the people is good, the implementation
part of the NGO may fail miserably in the end as
the people were not involved in formulating the
project.
A proposal conceived without the participation
of the target people, NGO staff and leadership may
appear strong when presented to donors for funding,
and may, therefore, be approved. However, the
project will be futile due to the lack of the target
people’s participation and co-operation in designing
the project according to their own needs.
Though the Government of India and its state
governments have proposed many projects for the
past 60 and more years after Indian independence,
the outcome of the schemes has not been as expected.
Millions of rupees have been spent on the
projects without giving any thing to its people , as
the decision making came from the leaders and officials
without taking account of the people’s needs
and their interests in the proposed plans.
Any activity or project should focus on development
of a problem statement which clearly
understands the problems; prioritizes the problems
or needs; analyzes the problem or needs successfully,
and identifies methods and approaches to address
the problems and its root causes adequately. This
must entail having the people with the problems or
needs involved in this process from the very first day
of problem identification through problem solving
stages. They must be motivated to take part and be
involved in the process of decision making. Evolving
suitable strategies to bring about the people’s
participation in the process of decision making is
very essential. These basic principles must be followed
and practised by the NGOs who work with
the people.
Due to the NGO leader’s lack of professional
background and training they are often unaware
of the above principles so that their projects may
result in failure.
In order to bring the NGO’s true participation
and involvement in the process capacity building
training is necessary. These NGOs, which are new
and in the formative stages need assistance to be
capable of problem identification, prioritization,
and formulation of methods and strategies to address
the problems adequately, so that they can
help their people to become capable of solving the
problems on their own.
Lack of professionalism in NGOs, leads to poor
recognition of the legitimacy ofthe NGOs, with the
Government. This prevents Government support
for the projects of these new and underdeveloped
NGOs. In order to assist the NGO leadership and
their organizations develop into more professional,
well designed organizations these capacity building
seminars, address the needs of the participant
NGOs.
Out of the seminars, the following changes
have been felt by the participant NGOs as per their
feedback…
• The NGO developed clear understanding
about how development works.
• The NGOs learned new approaches, gained
confidence in themselves and courage to face
the challenges adequately.
• The participant NGO leaders learned the
importance of people participation, in the
problem identification, project planning,
implementation, and evaluation stages.
• The actual problem is being identified and
gets prioritized in project formulation. The
participant NGO and its team of staff, gain
deeper understanding of the problem, analyze
various solutions to the problems better, can
better identify and select suitable solutions to
the problem. These skills are not only gained
by the leadership but also by the staff team.
• The responsibility of the problem solving
gradually transferred to the shoulders of the
people by the NGO and their team members
to make people more self reliant.
• The NGO leadership and its team resolved
unnecessary fear and misunderstanding of
the project and its implementation. When people become partners and participants
in the project implementation,
the negative impacts and problems which
may arise due to misunderstandings with
the NGO personnel(without any intention)
during the implementation can be allayed.
• The fear, doubt and misunderstanding about
each other (the NGO and the people) is
removed; replaced by honesty, transparency,
mutual respect, and understanding. The
distance between these people is reduced.
• It helped the NGO leadership and its team
to plan for their exit, once the project gets
completed and enable the people to take the
thread from the hands of NGO and its staff
members.
• A clearer understanding about each and every
one’s role in the project, limitations, and
responsibilities will be gained.
• The seminar helped them to free themselves
from the people who exploit them in the
name of the project proposal writing.
• Now the participant NGOs have a clearer
understanding of how to formulate a project
proposal, and this helped them to avoid irrelevant
proposals.
• The projects are being prepared on the basis
of the actual needs and problems of the people,
having taken into account the details of
local resources and available human resources
essential to execute the project proposal.
• The participants learned to prepare time
frames for the project, establish the duration
for each activity, and to have clearer understanding
of planning of activities.
• The participants are confident of preparing
the projects in Tamil and then seek experts
help in designing the same in English to
submit to donors.
—Dr. R. Kannan