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The task of moving the pig!



Why do donors fund projects that they know are going to produce the same results? No real impact. Same lessons learned theories. 

The donors like to give money to organizations that are established, have a reputation and can spend the money on time. The organizations bidding for and winning projects have a readymade budget and timeline to spend (in my last post I talked about how communication materials are mostly waste of money and resources). The people involved in the project have strict deadlines and they work hard to implement and meet the project deadlines. In a country like ours where anything can happen anytime excluding the natural disasters that cannot be avoided – well, the projects don’t get the opportunity to stick to the deadline and the budget gets underspent. 

What do the projects do with the underspent budget? It’s simple. The recipient organization asks for an extension and the donors happily oblige because no donor wants to take the money back. Most of the projects end up doing elaborate end line surveys and videos or sometimes produce mass materials such as key rings and posters or amass moveable assets for their local partners. Suppose last year, a project was awarded for 2 years from 2015 Jan to 2016 Dec. Since the earthquake in April and then the blockade until now is 8 months and counting of no real implementation at the field level. The project will end next year which means 1 year has been lost already with no real impact. 

Talking about impact. Most of the development projects fail because it comes tailor made by the donors and the projects are rigid in timeline with rigid implementing modules. What the donors and the implementing agencies don’t understand is that anytime a project has a timeline it will not yield results because the 2 year project gets wrapped up before the real issues start emerging. This leaves the implementers no choice but to provide an end report which of course has the same lessons learned points in bullets which they had suggested in their many past projects. 

So why are we allowed to report the same or similar lessons learned bullet points in our end reports? Why are we applauded for finding the lessons we need to learn which we knew already from our past project experience. Why are we allowed to flaunt the lessons learned in elaborate and expensive workshops? I am sure we have enough evidence to prove that a project with 24 or 27 months’ timeline doesn’t work – it’s like poking a pig sleeping in its waste and trying to make a new shed. Well, by the time a new shed has been constructed the project ends. Who is going to shift the pig to the new shed? The answer is simple: no one. Because the project has ended. A report is submitted later which states: lessons learned 1. Need more time to move the pig! (lol)

One of my past colleague said to me after she had come from a fundraising workshop in London, “I can’t believe we waste so much money in producing materials and conducting workshops when I have just seen individuals standing in public places raising funds – literally where people drop a pound or two.” 

When will the donors become creative in terms of funding projects that are innovative, where private organizations are involved to create jobs and actually show impact? When will they realize that showing impact doesn’t happen overnight? Do the math – how long did it take Nepal to eradicate polio and many more it will take to eradicate chicken pox? Poverty is a disease. A project will never succeed in eradicating poverty, yes it can improve the living standards but that will take ages too. A 2 year project that provides livelihood training isn’t going to improve the farmer’s livelihood. Natural disasters and manmade disasters will continue, a project cannot take responsibility for it, nor can the donors. But it is about time implementing agencies stop learning lessons and actually create projects that are dynamic, feasible and isn’t time bound. There may not be any donors who will fund immediately but if more and more implementing agencies actually learn lessons that will be a new kind of beginning for the development workers. 

And here I am with the task to diversify funding for my organization. In the mean time I am happy to work in an organization where the trustees have decided to fund and continue the work where the donors left – simply because it isn’t time to leave.

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