The Strengths and Weaknesses of NGOs Research Assignment (Essay Sample)

The Strengths and Weaknesses of NGOs
Name
Institution
The Strengths and Weaknesses of NGOs
Introduction
A Non-governmental organization (NGO) is a citizen-based group which operates autonomously from the government, for the purposes of serving particular social or political purposes with no intention of making profits. These civil societies are usually organized at the community, national or international level (Smith, 2005). This work seeks to use experiences from Liberia, a country located in the global south, to explore the strengths and the weaknesses of NGOs as development agencies. Liberia is a country that is slowly recuperating from the effects of a civil war which claimed the lives of over 270, 000 people. This conflict also rendered hundreds of thousands homeless, thereby, making them either refugees or internally displaced persons. Moreover, property worth millions of dollars was destroyed including government buildings and institutions. Consequently, the war served to decline the economy of the country with studies showing that, presently, it is only an eighth of its value prior the war. Three quarters of the population in this country lives in severe poverty, with no sufficient health, education, food, water and sanitation services (Ellis, 2007). This pathetic state of affairs justifies the involvement of NGOs in this nation.
Main Arguments
Since the year 1990, the number of NGOs in Liberia has been on the rise owing to factors such as the civil war, influx of refugees from neighboring Sierra Leon, and the recent Ebola epidemic. Presently, Liberia has several NGOs in operation: ActionAid Ebola, USAID, Adventist Development and Relief Agency, Adventist Health International, Africare, Americares, American Jewish World Service, The American Red Cross, Amref Health Africa, Baptist World Alliance, Brac Ebola, Brothers Brother Foundation, Catholic Relief Services, and Concern Worldwide. Moreover, the following civil society bodies are based in this country: CDC Foundation, DirectRelief, International Medical Corps, International Rescue Committee, Global Giving, Global Children Hope, Global Health Ministries, MAP International, Medical Teams International, MedShare, Med Sans Frontiers/ Docteors Without Borders, Stop Hunger Now, Samaritan’s Purse, Salesian Missions, Plan, Net Hope, PCI Global, and Project C.U.R.E (Kamradt-Scott et al., 2015).
According to Feeny and de Silva (2012), since the year 2003, the international community, through NGOs, has awarded Liberia billions of dollars in aid. For instance, in the year 2011 alone, the country received $765 million in aid to assist in various development projects as reported by the OECD. This figure was actually 73% of its gross national income. Data from OECD also shows that the UN spends above $500 million annually on its peace keeping program in this country.
Liberia has derived a number of benefits from the civil society organizations operating there. Firstly, various NGOs have focused on improving the country’s education sector. The Global Partnership for Education (GPE) is a good example of organizations whose resources have played a pivotal role in boosting the education system in this country. GPE, established in the year 2002, is a multi-stakeholder partnership and financing platform whose main focus is galvanizing support for education in developing countries (Winthrop and Matsui, 2013). This platform targets the poorest as well as the most vulnerable children in these countries. GPE sources funds from developing nations, donors, civil society, teacher organizations, the private sector, philanthropists and international organizations. In Liberia, GPE continues to support the government to improve learning and equality by strengthening the education system. Moreover, GPE assists the government of Liberia to create good quality plans for the education sector. Once these plans are developed, GPE convinces donors to finance them and this helps to reduce the fragmentation of aid as well as the transaction costs which would be involved if these donors were to issue the aids independently (Menashy and Dryden-Peterson, 2015).
Liberia became a member of GPE in the year 2007, after which, the education sector plan was initiated. This plan covers the period 2010-2020 and aims at giving the citizens of this country a shot at opportunity in terms of access to a quality, appropriate, and relevant education. GPE has awarded Liberia a total of $40 million to implement this education sector plan. The GPE program in this country generally aims at improving the management capacity as well as accountability for the construction of schools, as well as the procurement and distribution of teaching and learning resources (Winthrop and Matsui, 2013). Through this program, the education sector has achieved several constructive results. Firstly, a total of 303 classrooms have been build and furnished. Secondly, 60 housing units have been constructed for use by teachers. Thirdly, through the plan, the ministry of education has come up with standardized guidelines for the construction of schools. Moreover, the plan has enabled the ministry of education to procure a total of 1 million textbooks for classes 5 to 9, which also have accompanying teacher’s guides (Menashy and Dryden-Peterson, 2015).
Additionally, grades 1 to 4 have benefited from 1.4 million supplementary reading books while school grants have been issued to 2, 579 schools. Further, through the funds provided by this group, the education sector in this country has been enabled to construct schools in rural areas including primary and early childhood schools. Certainly therefore, NGOs have played a pivotal role in strengthening the education sector of Liberia and this emphasizes the importance of the donor community to this global south country (Winthrop and Matsui, 2013). Through improving curriculum delivery in schools, these NGOs ensure that this country is able to get competent professionals who can be utilized in various sectors of the economy to assist with development. Also, by financing the education sector, the NGOs ensure that the resources which the government would have allocated to this sector are used in other sectors of the economy where they can spur development.
The United States, through the USAID, has supported Liberia greatly in getting back to its feet after the Ebola epidemic. In the year 2009, USAID awarded the health sector of this country grants which accounted for 22% of the total health budget this year. Liberia considers the United States as the most preferred ally in its journey to recovery following the epidemic which devastated lives hugely. The USAID has given Liberia a total of $62 million to finance a four-year program aimed at providing health services at over 100 government clinics (Gostin et al., 2014).
USAID is also assisting Liberia in the field of education. According to the Liberia Monitoring and Evaluation Program (2014), this body partners with the University of Liberia as well as the Cuttington University in the creation of Centers of Excellence, whose focus is that of expanding access, enhancing quality and improving the relevance of higher education programs in the fields of engineering and agriculture. Certainly, these fields are key to development and are therefore anticipated to enable Liberia to solve most of the post-war challenges it is currently experiencing. USAID has also started a Center of Excellence in Health and Life Sciences through creating a partnership between the University of Liberia and the Indiana University. The focus of this Center of Excellence is to assist the University of Liberia in acquiring teaching and learning resources for the fields of medicine, nursing, life sciences, midwifery, and public health (Liberia Monitoring and Evaluation Program, 2014). Certainly, by enhancing the ability of the University of Liberia to offer quality training in health care, USAID is assisting the country in combating various epidemics in the future. This is bound to ensure that this country does not experience health disasters which claim the lives of those who are supposed to participate in building the economy. As such, by ensuring the good health of its citizens, Liberia will have the human resources required for development.
During the Ebola outbreak, USAID provided logistical support to Liberia’s Ministry of Education to help it train school personnel in the prevention of Ebola as well as in the creation of awareness. Moreover, USAID helped this country in monitoring and implementing an elaborate Ebola response program. If NGOs such as USAID had not responded to the Ebola outbreak in this country, certainly, more devastation would have been caused and this would have destroyed the country’s economy even further. This move therefore demonstrates the role played by NGOs in helping Liberia develop (Liberia Monitoring and Evaluation Program, 2014).
NGOs work towards giving poor countries such as Liberia a large sum of capital in aid in order to spur economic growth. Such aid is awarded as donor countries believe that, poor third world countries are incapable of eradicating poverty on their own since their citizens are not well empowered to earn and make investments. Unfortunately, evidence indicates that, the aid given to Liberia has been ineffective in eradicating poverty and has actually occasioned more challenges in this country. Firstly, the aid given to Liberia by donor organizations has made the country over reliant on foreign assistance (Bräutigam and Knack, 2004; Moreira, 2005). This aid has served to create an impression that, donor communities are wealthy and are therefore supposed to give assistance to this country as it is poor. As a result, instead of focusing on the creation of open and ...