Aid

Based on reflections undertaken with members of a partnership between an NGO and Adivasi (original dweller) communities in the Indian state of Orissa, this paper examines various linkages among NGOs (international, state, district, or local), and grassroots organisations in terms of their prospects for advancing Adivasi activism for social change.

Ever more NGOs are dedicated to the eradication of poverty, while various government bodies are also committed to the moral and material progress of the so-called `human family'. However, the record is bleak. The arms trade constitutes a crime against humanity against which NGOs can make little headway. On the contrary, single-issue campaigns, for example on landmines, may in fact distract them from the wider issues.

Following the Renamo/Frelimo conflict and the 1992 Rome Accord ending hostilities, the Christian Council of Mozambique undertook to remove arms from the civilian population by trading them for development tools. The weapons were given to artists associated with a collective in the capital, Maputo. The weapons were cut into pieces and converted to sculptures that subsequently focused international attention on the Tools for Arms project, or TAE (Transformação de Armas em Enxadas).

Scaling-up local innovations in natural resource management (NRM) involves learning that is centred around three themes: promoting local-level innovation, understanding why local innovations work in specific contexts, and reflecting on their relevance in other geographical and social contexts. Successful scalin- up depends in part upon the relationships among multiple stakeholders at different levels around this learning. The experiences of researchers supported by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) provide insights into four questions: What is scaling-up? Why scale-up?

Full-text sample article FREE from Taylor & Francis. This paper examines the excesses of the `audit culture' in relation to North-South development NGO partnerships. It argues that the focus on documentation needs to be reduced, and greater faith placed on personal interaction and judgement between Northern and Southern development NGO partners. In some circumstances, this is a strategy that can encourage more rigorous monitoring and accountability practices, which are able to move beyond a problematic focus on quantifiable targets.

In order to take up the challenge of responding to the thought-provoking insights found in The Selfish Altruist (Vaux 2001), the author brings together some of the threads in the book and combines them with her own psychological approaches to increasing self-awareness in order to put forward specific suggestions as to how personal development and self-awareness could be enhanced for both aid agency managers and frontline workers.

The British government has increasingly assumed the role of international arbiter and peacekeeper, both with and without a UN mandate. The hijacking of the moral high ground and recurrent assertion of global consensus - even in the presence of overwhelming opposition - reveals a disregard for the integrity of cultural diversity and opinion. Often `humanitarian' concerns have been used to justify military intervention, and the promise of aid is used to deflect dissent. Based on her experiences as an aid worker in post-conflict Kosovo, the author makes two central points.

Civil society is increasingly seen as a necessary element of sustainable human development. Some Northern NGOs hope to contribute to the development of civil society by partnering with Southern NGOs. Recent scholarship, however, shows that partnerships are frequently dominated by the Northern NGO, thus inhibiting the establishment of vibrant, locally owned and managed civil society organisations. This paper explores some of the practical reasons for this failure and suggests strategies for working within what Alan Fowler calls `authentic partnerships'.

Full-text sample article FREE from Taylor & Francis. The reconstruction of the health system in Afghanistan is in its early stages, and donors have proposed Performance-based Partnership Agreements (PPA) through which to subcontract the delivery of health services to private organisations, both for-profit and non-profit. Beyond ideological debates, this article sets out to explain the model underlying the PPA initiative and shed light on empirical data concerning the assumed benefits of such an approach.

The quality of NGO work is hugely dependent on the quality of critical thinking and analysis of poverty among all levels of staff. In particular, the quality of the work in the field - at partner and community levels - depends on an understanding of development processes and on strong facilitation skills, both of which rely on strong levels of critical thinking. While these are innately present in almost everyone, rote learning in education systems and patriarchal and top-down power structures often impede their development.