Negative Attitudes to NGOs in Bangladesh

Published
by
Shawn
on February 27, 2011
in Featured, News, Personal, Poverty and Save the Children
. 26 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Earlier today, Shahnur Alom (a 25 year old Bangladeshi) wrote me this:

Fuck you Shawn, and fuck those chinky basterds you’ve come to help and molest during the night (that’s what aid workers do around the world in the name of charity). you dirty mother fucking Americans can fuck off from our land and suck some Jewish Israeli cocks.

To a Westerner, this guy is just a troll and a hater. However, to a Bangladeshi, this is an attitude which is sadly quite commonplace in Bangladesh. It’s attitudes like this which have made it difficult for NGOs to exist in Bangladesh, for aid workers to do work, and for potential donors to trust whom to give money to.

Anti-NGO attitudes are even worse if you're perceived as being a Christian NGO. Sadly, level of education does not change negative perceptions. The above comment was sent to me be a Bangladeshi whom I discovered had studied at the London School of Economics.

This is why I do things the way that I do. When I’m in Bangladesh, in virtually every village, I end up having to emphasize three things. And only by emphasizing these three things do I avoid sentiments and attitudes like those from people like Shahnur:

  • I have to emphasize that I am not an NGO. What I’m doing is as just a guy.
  • I have to emphasize that I have blood ties to Bangladesh.
  • I have to prove and emphasize that I respect Islam.

With a population of over 150 million people, Bangladesh is by no means a country of uniform consensus. But, prevalent negative attitudes and perceptions towards NGOs and aid workers is something I feel has been under-reported, insufficiently documented, and poorly-studied.

"Elite Perceptions on Poverty in Bangladesh" by Naomi Hossain is one of the few academic pieces that delve into Bangladeshi attitudes towards NGOs and poverty. However, it focuses primarily on Bangladesh elites. Many anti-NGO attitudes, I have discovered, are prevalent amongst all social classes in Bangladesh.

Granted, there has been one notable study on Bangladeshi elite perceptions on NGOs and poverty. And, on a rare occasion, a non-Bangladeshi aid blogger traveling in Bangladesh will encounter this and blog about it. But the majority of aid & development professionals and scholars don’t focus on this.

This is because, at least of late, there is a focus on quantitative data and a dismissal of anything else as “anecdotes”. But, as any anthropologist will tell you, not all knowledge and insight can be gained from a quantitative approach. Sometimes a small, individual, and ethnographic approach is needed.

A blogger interviews a director (pictured above) from "Alternative Movement for Resources and Freedom Society (AMRF)" in Dhaka. In this interview the AMRF director says that "Aid is an industry... and it's not the poor people who profit.", "NGO is the main impediment to development", "NGO jobs depend on perpetuating poverty," and "When I see an NGO with very good paperwork about all the amazing work they are doing, I know they are a fraud." Not even including the years I've been doing this project, I can attest these are VERY common beliefs in Bangladesh.

I don’t believe the solution to this is for NGOs to go away and for aid and development to be done just by individuals. But I do believe that NGOs and charities can benefit from independent individuals who work alongside NGOs as “bridge-makers”. I’ve already talked about how I try and do this.

In fact, everything I’ve done: from not incorporating, to not using donations to give myself a salary to stipend, to raising funds for overhead separately, to saying no to lucrative job offers with UN agencies and NGOs, and to leveraging technology to directly connect donors and villagers has been with this goal in mind.

These two village women have been trained by Save the Children to be village health workers. I, as an individual and not an NGO employee, collaborated with Save the Children to make sure these health workers have stipends. In addition to some paperwork, everything was captured on video and photos. Donors and villagers both know exactly where the money came from and exactly where it went. Save the Children also got double the administrative and overhead funds it requested thanks to donors who donated specifically for that (which was collected separately from donations designated to help the poor). By the end of 2011, these two women will have helped an estimated 300 to 400 kids - almost all of them Muslim. This was part of a larger project I did with Save the Children that will ultimately help over 10,000 children in Southern Bangladesh. Oh, and the specific donations helping these two village health workers came from the Jewish community in Haifa, Israel. If this causes cognitive dissonance for people like Shahnur Alom than everything is going according to plan.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1658550133 Michael Clark

    Shawn, Love the post. I was in Bangladesh last summer with the Grameen Bank for a month and a half and loved the country so I have actually been following ur activities now for a while since someone told me about you!

    I am working through my university to raise money for Opportunity International, and one of the things we have been talking with them about is getting more donor-beneficiary communication – be it via youtube videos or any other type of media. Do you think more communication like that would help break the negative stereotypes? It all comes back to bringing the people being helped to the discussion table.

    Cheers,
    Michael Clark

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1658550133 Michael Clark

    Shawn, Love the post. I was in Bangladesh last summer with the Grameen Bank for a month and a half and loved the country so I have actually been following ur activities now for a while since someone told me about you!

    I am working through my university to raise money for Opportunity International, and one of the things we have been talking with them about is getting more donor-beneficiary communication – be it via youtube videos or any other type of media. Do you think more communication like that would help break the negative stereotypes? It all comes back to bringing the people being helped to the discussion table.

    Cheers,
    Michael Clark

  • http://uncultured.com Shawn Ahmed

    Hi Michael :)

    If donor/recipient communication was the sole solution, than any NGO with a child sponsorship program would be immune to the criticisms many Bangladeshis have against NGOs.

    But sadly this isn’t the case. Child sponsorship programs have very intense communication between donor and recipient. But the impact of the sponsor is somewhat ambiguous.

    I’m not saying that all child sponsorship programs should have 100% of the money benefit only one child. But it’s important that both parties know exactly what specific impact a donor’s dollars is having.

    Did their particular donation help fund the cost of building a well? Did it help fund the cost of building a school? If it didn’t – who did pay for those things? And where did the donations go?

    But even that is just one aspect. There is a cornucopia of factors. And, while implementing any one solution may help, the best way to address the criticisms is by tackling each and every one of them comprehensively.

    You can read more about this in this blog post:

    http://uncultured.com/2010/09/06/the-bideshi-deshi/

    Needless to say, I think part of the solution is for NGOs to leverage less celebrities who act as spokespeople and more regular people who can be bridge-makers and “free agents”.

    Best,

    - Shawn

  • Nickgreyden

    Hey Shawn

    Forgive the copy/paste, but I put this up on another site and didn’t want to retype it all.

    I really find this quite educational. I have learned a great deal through following Shawn and his project on proper aid and some do’s and dont’s of the aid scene. I positively blows my mind how some can mean well and do a complete smashup job of aid work. I have to admit, things in his blogs and now yours have made me a much more wary giver. That is not really a bad thing, because before Shawn I wasn’t a giver at all. (Nerdfightia: Making me more broke by the year!). I do have a problem, however, and I was hoping you or Shawn could help me with (I’ll be putting this on his blog as well).

    Now when finding out about an NGO or like organization, it is near impossible to get a run down on what they do and how they do it. If the ad runs on TV, you get a random phone worker who knows nothing about the organization, or worse a machine. Online searches revel very little. How much is spent in overhead? Do they have a specialization? How do they conduct business in foreign regions? (the whole T-shirt mess makes me want to ask this question). I chose to look on it as a point of pride that I have some small knowledge of important questions to ask. However I’m often greeted with dead air time on my cell or uninformative answers on webpages. The few times I do get answers, I feel almost like that they are insulted I’d ask such questions! As who am I and didn’t you see our commercial with children with flies on their faces and don’t you care!?

    Is there someone I should ask for when asking these questions? Is there some department in NGO’s for these questions I should be looking for? Or are NGO’s just not used to these questions and as such starting to fall behind and they have no one to answer them? I really kinda feel bad I’ve pulled out of some charity because they just couldn’t or wouldn’t answer some basic questions. It would be different if they told me they could not tell me that because but instead there is nothing…a big fat 0 which is what they got from me. Not because I”m vindictive, but because I don’t want to cause harm.

  • Erin Michelson

    Hi Shawn,

    I encountered a similar perspective when doing volunteer work with a nonprofit organization in Uganda a couple of years ago. The local nonprofit workers (medical clinic staff, school teachers, abuse counselors) as well as the wider community viewed the NGOs as being both “rich” and corrupt. The community saw the NGOs with the 4WD trucks and the air-conditioned rooms. And they were right, relatively speaking the NGOs / international aid workers were living in luxury.

    Obviously, I think international aid workers should be appropriately sensitive and respectful of the communities where they work. But I also think that the majority of NGOs are contributing valuable resources and are walking a difficult line between serving local community needs and dealing with the pressures of funding and organizational bureaucracies.

    I hate to see a divisive debate about “good” aid workers and “bad” aid workers. We’re all trying to achieve the same ends: alleviation of suffering and poverty. That said, I agree we could all be a little smarter about how we go about achieving these ends.

    Erin Michelson

  • http://twitter.com/illusClaire Claire

    You’re being pretty amazing, Shawn. Thanks for the knowledge.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1658550133 Michael Clark

    Shawn,

    Thanks for the link. I experienced some of the same problems when I was in Bangladesh because I was clearly a foreigner and travelling with a translator and bank staff I always got answers which would support the bank – and not jeopardise their relationship with the bank. I found it very frustrating but unfortunately due to my skin colour and only rudimentary understanding of the language I was not able to travel independently. I met a “bideshi-deshi” like you and he was able to travel independently to villages and talk to people not as a representative of the bank – and the answers he got were much more honest and frank. So even going to see the country first hand it was still hard to determine how to have the greatest impact. I am hoping to return to the region in the fall after I graduate and spend a whole year there which I hope will allow me to gain a better grasp of the realities there.

    Definitely agree that we need more regular people to be those bridge makers – which whom the recipients can be frank and honest with, and provide a higher level of accountability and transparency. It is one thing for charities to report themselves on the impact that their projects are having – it is another for an independent to do that. The problem is getting people to fill that role and then getting donors to trust that they are independent and honest…

    Cheers,
    Michael Clark

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1658550133 Michael Clark

    Shawn – is the eventual stage where aid recipients can be their own free agents and bridge makers and post their own videos, tweets and blog posts? A lot of them already have the mobile phones with cameras… language, internet access and actual transfer of donations would still be issues though

  • http://twitter.com/intldogooder How Matters

    From my vantage point, prevalent negative attitudes and perceptions towards local organizations and people BY aid workers is something that has been under-reported, insufficiently documented, and poorly-studied.

    A tweet caught my attention recently on a search that I follow:
    “I am so tired w/ dealing w/ ‘Grassroots’ organizations here in #haiti Unfortunately grassroots=no brains +no money”

    Statements like “grassroots=no brains” perpetuate the myth of low capacity about small organizations and local leaders. They are derogatory and patronizing at best. At worst, well…

    Read more at: http://www.how-matters.org/2011/01/28/grassroots-no-brains/

  • Ali Gohar

    Why such comments are coming from the field is a question mark for all working for charity organization.NGO worker go to the other countries bringing with them their own culture, style of living, working, have verbal respect the culture, traditions, religion but practically there action are different that is observed by the staff, neighbour, community and where they work. NGO mostly know little about the ground realities, needs, interest, of the gross community in majority cases they are totally different to the NGO’s staff culture traditions .NGO want immediate change according to their set agenda with out any alteration modification what ever the affect may be. They want to empower the people but to people they even took away the social work sprit from the people that was traditional or religious and make them dependent. As the NGO address the needs with out looking for the resources (traditional or religious social work practices with in the community) which the community have. NGO slogan and outfit is different even some name carries different images to the people on the ground is totally different the way their lavish living, spending, working. No sustainability in the program, when the funding finishes the project also with out completing the goal set by the community or NGO’s. The stereotype that exists in the people minds, as expressed by the person in the beginning is every where. How to change such thinking needs a lot of personal, structure, social, psychological change. Its a need to live with the community, share their joy and sorrow, wear and eat, drink as they do, live with them stay with them learn from them work for them with their support and help, involve them and handover to them as it is their own by trust building, and above all listen to them, act as they want not as you want, explore, learn from them and not impose of them. Change your sympathy to empathy, to further win the people mind and heart. There are good examples of many organization individuals who started work in Bangladesh and other Muslim countries and have a very good reputation till date.

  • http://uncultured.com Shawn Ahmed

    Salaam alaikum Mr. Gohar,

    I can’t thank you enough for leaving such a great comment. What you have talked about touches upon many of the specific things I’ve talked about repeatedly both on this blog and with my project as a whole.

    For example, in another blog post, I quote Save the Children Manager Dildar Mahmud (a Bangladeshi Muslim). He mentions that NGOs have an uphill battle in earning local trust simply because of the nature of driving around in SUVs and staff wearing button-up shirts (paid for by the salaries they earn from donations).

    I’ve also repeatedly talked about local forms of how Bangladeshis help Bangladeshi poor. A lot of it is influenced by culture, tradition, and Islam. Things like Zakat and how food and wealth is shared during Qurbani Eid are some examples. There is a much greater connection between donor & recipient, between tracking donations, letting donor and recipient know where each dollar came from and went to, and treating the “cost” as exogenous. It’s not a universal rule but, where it does it exist, it predates NGOs.

    I’ve tried my best to connect traditional forms of giving to the best elements of NGOs. I think building this bridge is important – especially in Muslim majority countries. Yet, there are hurdles to showing the importance in such an idea.

    Thank you again.

    - Shawn

  • http://rough.superjunction.com/ Dale

    This is not a new problem, or only found in developing countries, but one that non-profits must to continue to strive to overcome. In Western countries there is both a current and historical distrust for non-profits and charities but the answer is not to give up on the concept but rather instead, in my humble opinion, to build a stronger framework to support the work being done. Think about your own country Canada and what could have been done differently to have avoided the residential schools nightmare. Could a framework and governance today prevent such things from happening? Ask yourself, do you trust someone more because of the organization and authority with which they come to you as a stranger?

    I say create the conversation to build a better way of non-profits making change a reality with a framework of integrity to support them and the people they are assisting to build their own lives. No money can do that for you, its people using their brains to determine what structure, governance, processes, approach, etc will ultimately result in success for all that will make the difference.

  • http://uncultured.com Shawn Ahmed

    Hey Dale,

    As always, thank you for leaving a comment.

    I have a secret goal with every response I write you: I want to shake you out of your ethnocentrism :) Your question about how an organization has “authority” is a perfect example of this.

    Let me start by talking a bit about history. In your comment you mention “residential schools”. And that’s a perfect example. Because, long before there was the NGO, the Western world had charity done through churches.

    This can be traced back nearly 2,000 years. A large portion of charity was done through the Catholic Church. After the Protestant Reformation, a lot charity was still done by the church – but albeit more locally.

    With the transition from monarchial rule to democratic rule, a lot of charity also was done through democratically created social services. And, but a mere 100 years or so ago, the NGO and INGO was formed.

    Bangladesh does not have this history. It’s history was very different. 2,000 years ago there was no significant presence of the Catholic Church in Bangladesh. Ergo, no extensive Church charity network we have in our history.

    1,000 years ago – instead of Christianity – Bangladesh had Islam. Not just Islam, but Sunni Islam. Sunni Islam like many religions emphasized helping the poor. But unlike the Catholic Church, there was no distinct hierarchy.

    So whereas in the Western World religion reinforced the conception of structured and institutionalized giving – and the authority vested in it – Bangladesh was developing an Islamic form of giving which was decentralized.

    Your questions about the “authority” an organization holds and the trust it fosters is ethnocentric because it ignores Bangladesh’s history. The idea of charity being done by an NGO is only a hundred or so years old in Bangladesh.

    And even the idea of a government creating democratically built social services is a rather brand new concept. Bangladesh – as a democracy and not a colony managed by the British – has only existed since the 70s.

    So, I ask you once again to step back – stop focusing on how we as Westerners place so much authority to NGOs and non-profits and open your eyes to see why many Bangladeshis place little or not authority in them at all.

    We need to bridge this.

    And, in reference to “no money can do that for you” I assume you’re looping back to your talk about how I can’t apply for grants as just a guy and/or how it would be awkward to do charity work if I ever incorporated as a for-profit.

    Well, think about this. If I was not doing charity work – and all I did was make documentaries in Bangladesh, it would be very easy for me to get funding to pay for airfare, equipment, health insurance, and in-country transportation.

    Hell, if I was just going around making music videos, I probably could secure funding to hire a small crew to travel with me. So why is it such a shame to ask for grants for health insurance, airfare, lodging, food just because I’m doing more substantive than passive documentaries?

    But that’s a discussion for another chain of comments.

  • http://uncultured.com Shawn Ahmed

    Hey Dale,

    As always, thank you for leaving a comment.

    I have a secret goal with every response I write you: I want to shake you out of your ethnocentrism :) Your question about how an organization has “authority” is a perfect example of this.

    Let me start by talking a bit about history. In your comment you mention “residential schools”. And that’s a perfect example. Because, long before there was the NGO, the Western world had charity done through churches.

    This can be traced back nearly 2,000 years. A large portion of charity was done through the Catholic Church. After the Protestant Reformation, a lot charity was still done by the church – but albeit more locally.

    With the transition from monarchial rule to democratic rule, a lot of charity also was done through democratically created social services. And, but a mere 100 years or so ago, the NGO and INGO was formed.

    Bangladesh does not have this history. It’s history was very different. 2,000 years ago there was no significant presence of the Catholic Church in Bangladesh. Ergo, no extensive Church charity network we have in our history.

    1,000 years ago – instead of Christianity – Bangladesh had Islam. Not just Islam, but Sunni Islam. Sunni Islam like many religions emphasized helping the poor. But unlike the Catholic Church, there was no distinct hierarchy.

    So whereas in the Western World religion reinforced the conception of structured and institutionalized giving – and the authority vested in it – Bangladesh was developing an Islamic form of giving which was decentralized.

    Your questions about the “authority” an organization holds and the trust it fosters is ethnocentric because it ignores Bangladesh’s history. The idea of charity being done by an NGO is only a hundred or so years old in Bangladesh.

    And even the idea of a government creating democratically built social services is a rather brand new concept. Bangladesh – as a democracy and not a colony managed by the British – has only existed since the 70s.

    So, I ask you once again to step back – stop focusing on how we as Westerners place so much authority to NGOs and non-profits and open your eyes to see why many Bangladeshis place little or not authority in them at all.

    We need to bridge this.

    And, in reference to “no money can do that for you” I assume you’re looping back to your talk about how I can’t apply for grants as just a guy and/or how it would be awkward to do charity work if I ever incorporated as a for-profit.

    Well, think about this. If I was not doing charity work – and all I did was make documentaries in Bangladesh, it would be very easy for me to get funding to pay for airfare, equipment, health insurance, and in-country transportation.

    Hell, if I was just going around making music videos, I probably could secure funding to hire a small crew to travel with me. So why is it such a shame to ask for grants for health insurance, airfare, lodging, food just because I’m doing more substantive than passive documentaries?

    But that’s a discussion for another chain of comments.

  • http://rough.superjunction.com/ Dale

    Hey Shawn, thanks for the reply. By “no money can do that for you” I was speaking to the issue of the need for an investment of human ingenuity into the problem of the NGO profile and recipes for success.

    Also, I made an error in using residential schools as an example because of the time period but how about if instead I used the example of the united way? I have met some people in real life and on the net who have real big issues and hate for the united way. Try a search for united way sucks and you see the tip of the iceberg. My point, is that NGOs, non-profits, charities are all the “right” structure for the work but they need help by people if they are going to succeed. Help continually (there is no constant state of success in this arena) reshaping themselves to suite the global climate for what they are offering.

    I will end my ranting in your comments with a question. A genuine question to which I would like to know your thoughts. Considering that we are the wealthy of the world with all the fancy gizmos, healthy and safe, with the ability to realize dreams….. How do you provide support to someone in poverty without any trace of judgment being felt by them?

    I believe it is that judgment felt that sparks animosity which filters the lens through which they view the help. That filter spreads and then actions of the rich become the examples of how they do not share and the wrong actions of one in a thousand become the standard by which others are first assumed to also behave.

    We need a framework for the actions of the people (never perfect) such that they can deliver on their mission (of their org) with as little hate being left behind as possible and instead hope for the future continued relationship building. How do we instead have the framework nurture those things that Sachs talk about as working to get to that first step on the ladder?

  • http://rough.superjunction.com/ Dale

    Hey Shawn, thanks for the reply. By “no money can do that for you” I was speaking to the issue of the need for an investment of human ingenuity into the problem of the NGO profile and recipes for success.

    Also, I made an error in using residential schools as an example because of the time period but how about if instead I used the example of the united way? I have met some people in real life and on the net who have real big issues and hate for the united way. Try a search for united way sucks and you see the tip of the iceberg. My point, is that NGOs, non-profits, charities are all the “right” structure for the work but they need help by people if they are going to succeed. Help continually (there is no constant state of success in this arena) reshaping themselves to suite the global climate for what they are offering.

    I will end my ranting in your comments with a question. A genuine question to which I would like to know your thoughts. Considering that we are the wealthy of the world with all the fancy gizmos, healthy and safe, with the ability to realize dreams….. How do you provide support to someone in poverty without any trace of judgment being felt by them?

    I believe it is that judgment felt that sparks animosity which filters the lens through which they view the help. That filter spreads and then actions of the rich become the examples of how they do not share and the wrong actions of one in a thousand become the standard by which others are first assumed to also behave.

    We need a framework for the actions of the people (never perfect) such that they can deliver on their mission (of their org) with as little hate being left behind as possible and instead hope for the future continued relationship building. How do we instead have the framework nurture those things that Sachs talk about as working to get to that first step on the ladder?

  • http://uncultured.com Shawn Ahmed

    Hey Dale – you are always welcome to “rant” in the comments. It’s discussions like these which, in my opinion, are better and more informative than the post itself!

    Once again, I’d like to respond to your comment with a challenge. Saying that the NGO is the “right” structure to help the poor is a normative statement – not a fact.

    It’s like if someone left a comment saying that the Catholic Church is the “right” structure in which to worship God. From a fact-of-the-matter viewpoint though, it’s an opinion.

    I’d like to answer your question with a question of my own. If you think the NGO is the “right” structure to help the poor and the poor don’t see it as the “right” structure, what do we do?

    Do we force them to accept it? At gunpoint? Do we push them to the point of desperation until they have no choice? What do we do to make them see that our way is right?

    Or is that the best thing to do at all?

    The way I see it. Things are divided into two extremes. I’ve had aid workers working for Big INGOs saying that the realm of aid and development belongs exclusively to them and anyone else is a hack, idiot, or a tosser (actual words used against me).

    I also have people from Bangladesh who think that NGOs are nothing but evil institutions that “eat the cash” meant for the poor so that aid workers can live lavish lifestyles. And, as you can see in the above post, they want them to “get the f&@k” off their land.

    Who is right? The fact of the matter is – both parties need to give a little.

    People like yourself need to accept that there is a valid, legitimate, and respectable non-structured form to help the poor. Villages, in turn, need to know that there are some benefits and advantages to doing things through an NGO.

    And there needs to be a bridge between the two. But you keep hammering that the NGO is the true “right” way. And I keep trying to show we can’t afford to be ethnocentric. If Western definitions of what is the “right” way to do things are the only ones that is correct – than what was the point of ending colonialism?

  • http://rough.superjunction.com/ Dale

    Dude, I don’t disagree with your POV on NGOs in the field, although I struggle with it because its still human beings and its all in the perception of the difference. As others have pointed out its easy to shoot you down, its not so easy to do what you have done whether it changes, ends or continues.

    More to my question (How do you provide support to someone in poverty without any trace of judgment being felt by them? ) I proposed how does anyone doing this work do so in such a way that they are more effective without the baggage of people before them having done things “wrong”? Does someone just have to lie about being from an NGO and immerse themselves in the culture and gain the trust of the people before they start sharing their help? What I am hearing from your perspective of success in the field doesn’t seem to equate to an issue with an NGO but rather how some NGO “people” decided to approach their work in the field in much the same way that NGOs struggle here in our country.

    It’s not about the structure of the organization (profit or not) it’s about the approach the people take. So how should it be done? and prove to me that the approach you think works is somehow linked to the funding, organization or anything?

    I stayed silent reading your blog for weeks but chose not to with the last posts with comments about funding, six figure salaries and for-profit organizations I am sensing some exasperation with the financial realities and on the path before you. Am I wrong?