– Madam Clara Osei-Boateng, a Governance, Social Development and Labour Market Expert, Department for International Development, has called on Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), to reduce operational costs outlined in proposals for external donor funding.
This would warrant the probability of being funded considering the significant decline in the rate at which they supported CSOs amid the economic challenges arising from COVID-19 and other factors.
She made the call on Tuesday at a CSOs Forum organised by the Star Ghana Foundation to reflect on the conceptual and development issues of CSOs and their sustainability challenge, in Accra.
“As Donor Agencies, we have restrictions, so, sometimes, if CSOs submit proposals and we see honourariums, transportation, food, and accommodation among others, for it to organise training for a group of people, sometimes we are challenged to successfully make our head offices understand the need to fund such a project.
“This is because, sometimes when we organise programmes ourselves as a donor agency, participants purchase their meals or drinks themselves and buy their own fuel,” she said.
Madam Osei-Boateng said other things that were considered before funding a CSO were organisational culture, relationship to donors, capacities, level of accountability and programming, as the Donors were also mandated to ascertain “deliverables” or what their funds were used to “buy”.
Mr Ibrahim-Tanko Amidu, the Executive Director, Star Ghana Foundation, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, said CSOs had areas of common interests such as how to enhance their accountability to the citizenry, strengthen their capacity to be more effective, and ensure they were legitimate to comply with the regulatory requirements.
“We have to come together to assess the health of the civil society sector, sustain the CSOs, ensure they are more effective, legitimate and accountable,” he added.
Mr Amidu bemoaned the discrimination on the part of ruling governments where they only supported CSOs that were sympathisers to their parties.
Professor Akosua Keseboa Darkwah, an Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Ghana, entreated CSOs to take a cue from the Aborigines’ Rights Protection Society, which campaigned to prevent the wholesale expropriation of African lands by European entrepreneurs or officials and against the exclusion of qualified Africans from the colonial administration, when it was formed in 1897, without external funding.
She asked CSOs to have firm values and consider promoting intergenerational sustainability and move beyond making a CSO a nuclear family business that could not be sustained if the main caretaker passed on.
They were also to move beyond implementing projects to creating more advocacy programmes to sustain the organisations, she said.
To gain recognition among the public, Mr Mensah Thompson, the Executive Director, Alliance for Social Equity and Public Accountability, asked CSOs to make the public understand the essence and need for their existence.
The knowledge gap among the public on the operations and impacts made by CSOs, he said, created a lot of uncertainties among them and the government over their usefulness and the need to support them.
“How many business men in this country support CSOs? It’s because they don’t understand what we do. We have a wide gap to fill to make them know the pivotal role we play in the lives of the vulnerable,” he added.
On the part of Mr Samuel Zan Akolgo, the Executive Secretary, CARITAS Ghana, sustaining CSOs started with a change of mindset and attitude to adapt to changing systems of technology.
He explained that technology was an instrument with a potential for social organisation and transformation and hence, advised CSOs to make good use of it to their gains.
Mr Dela Ashiabor, Director, Non-Profit Organisation Secretariat, Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, speaking on the proposed “Trust Bill on Non-Governmental Organisation” and currently, the Draft Non-Profit Organisation Bill, said the Bill did not aim at closing the CSOs space.
It was rather to enable them to have a national platform to engage sectors or groupings of the economy to assess pertinent issues of concern.
With the more than 10,590 Non-Governmental Organisations in operations in the country, Mr Ashiabor underscored the relevance of the sector, saying it could not be overlooked.
“The Bill is relevant because it brings confidence in citizens and donors and makes them transparent,” he said and expressed optimism that the Ministry brought it to the CSOs for review and inputting in the next few months.
Source: Ghana News Agency
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