FYI – I am making fun of myself. Feel free to defend me against me.
I work at a big development organization. I am quitting and starting an NGO. I will have a some high flying noble purpose for this NGO such as “eradication of the causes of poverty for the poor with a focus on women and children and the old and the disaster affected and the homeless and the sad and the poor”, which will shorten into the name ECPPFWCODAHSP, and super short it to PODS. I will set up an office in the front rooms of my parents house. We will have fancy shmancy board out front declaring our esteemed name and our mission. We will then create a board of directors and have directors from every relevant field that impacts development. To start with the people on the Board of Directors will include a retired high level bureaucrat (my dad), a serving bureaucrat (my brother), a women’s representative (my mother), a doctor (my cousin), an accountant (my second cousin’s wife’s brother’s son’s wife’s 3rd cousin once removed’s uncle) and a development expert (me).
We will get together and meet once a week to determine how we want to achieve our objectives and develop a proposal to get funding. After six months of filling numerous white boards with flow charts and diagrams and GREAT ideas, we finally pick the GREATEST idea. We then spend another six months writing a GREAT proposal for funding with lots of pretty tables and colourful diagrams and graphs. To supplement this super duper idea we pick a poverty filled slum with many women and children and old people and the sad and the poor, where we can implement our PROJECT. Our criteria for picking this site is that it is just close enough to the city so that we can easily travel there but far enough that no funder will want to go there and see what we are actually doing. We take some photos of this close yet far village to add impact to our proposal. Once our PROJECT proposal is ready we decide to put it forward for funding.
I use my contacts in the development world to show our proposal to all the big (and small) development funding organizations. We get two year funding for out great project. And what is this great project you ask? This project is for the “eradication of the poverty for the poor through the development of sustainable livelihood schemes that allow the poor to be self sustaining and enable them to remove themselves from the poverty.” We will call this project EPPTBSLSAPSSERTP for short, and BAT for super short.
The first thing we do with our funding is to hire a consultant to design a logo for our project and NGO. We then get business cards and stationery printed with our project name and logo and our NGO name and logo and the funder name and logo. We then buy lots of furniture and equipment for the office and hire a secretary. We then hire consultants to develop an implementation plan for the project. We then hire consultants to implement the implementation plan. The consultants are slow to start up so then we hire a project manager to manage the consultants to implement the implementation plan. The project manager’s wife’s cousin’s third wife’s daughter’s dog dies and the program manager quits and the project comes to a complete halt. (well actually the dog was an excuse. The project manager had a fight with one of the consultants and the consultant was the daughter in law of a politician so we had to fire the project manager or the politician’s driver’s gaurd would do something nasty to us like through dog poo through our window).
We then hire another project manager and work starts. The project manager then hires a consultant to make field visits and prepare weekly progress reports complete with pictures and diagrams and graphs and even wonderful testimonials from the villagers saying things like “aap idhar kya kar rahay hain?” “aap thasweerain kyon lay rahay hain?” (this was actually said in hindko but since my hindko doesn’t really exist this is being translated to urdu). Since no one in the development world can actually read the native language they think the villagers are singing high praises of them. We start sending regular progress reports to the development world with a really fancy front page and a GREAT executive summary and fill the rest of the report with the same thing being repeated with different illustrations and flow charts and graphs. Since the most important thing in a progress report is the colour charts, they are all impressed with our wonderful progress. (We bought a colour printer especially for this purpose).
The project is now winding up and we hire a consultant to do an evaluation of the project. The evaluation comes back and says that to be sustainable and achieve real results on the ground the project life needs to be extended by one year and additional funding will be needed. We put this proposal to the funding agency in a really fancy powerpoint presentation, cos lets face it power point presentations really show that you know what you are doing. Sadly the funders decline to fund any further since their own focus has changed. So we decide to wrap up the project and utilize the remaining funding by holding dissemination workshops in the hope of enlightening others to take up this cause. We invite all the fashion aunties and the politicians and the bureaucrats and journalists and host a big lunch in Serena.
With all the money used up we decide to become a volunteer organization. We gather all the fashion aunties from the neighbourhood and put them to work (i.e. attending all sorts of functions like boutique launches, fashion shows, art exhibitions and plays to raise awareness of our cause). After a while we run out of money to pay the secretary. With no one to make the phone calls and organize the social errr work calendar of the volunteers, we decide to wind up shop.
I need to earn some money now so I decide to use my valued development experience and become a high paid consultant for a big development organization. Wait, isn’t this where I started from??
I work at a big development organization. I am quitting and starting an NGO. I will have a some high flying noble purpose for this NGO such as “eradication of the causes of poverty for the poor with a focus on women and children and the old and the disaster affected and the homeless and the sad and the poor”, which will shorten into the name ECPPFWCODAHSP, and super short it to PODS. I will set up an office in the front rooms of my parents house. We will have fancy shmancy board out front declaring our esteemed name and our mission. We will then create a board of directors and have directors from every relevant field that impacts development. To start with the people on the Board of Directors will include a retired high level bureaucrat (my dad), a serving bureaucrat (my brother), a women’s representative (my mother), a doctor (my cousin), an accountant (my second cousin’s wife’s brother’s son’s wife’s 3rd cousin once removed’s uncle) and a development expert (me).
We will get together and meet once a week to determine how we want to achieve our objectives and develop a proposal to get funding. After six months of filling numerous white boards with flow charts and diagrams and GREAT ideas, we finally pick the GREATEST idea. We then spend another six months writing a GREAT proposal for funding with lots of pretty tables and colourful diagrams and graphs. To supplement this super duper idea we pick a poverty filled slum with many women and children and old people and the sad and the poor, where we can implement our PROJECT. Our criteria for picking this site is that it is just close enough to the city so that we can easily travel there but far enough that no funder will want to go there and see what we are actually doing. We take some photos of this close yet far village to add impact to our proposal. Once our PROJECT proposal is ready we decide to put it forward for funding.
I use my contacts in the development world to show our proposal to all the big (and small) development funding organizations. We get two year funding for out great project. And what is this great project you ask? This project is for the “eradication of the poverty for the poor through the development of sustainable livelihood schemes that allow the poor to be self sustaining and enable them to remove themselves from the poverty.” We will call this project EPPTBSLSAPSSERTP for short, and BAT for super short.
The first thing we do with our funding is to hire a consultant to design a logo for our project and NGO. We then get business cards and stationery printed with our project name and logo and our NGO name and logo and the funder name and logo. We then buy lots of furniture and equipment for the office and hire a secretary. We then hire consultants to develop an implementation plan for the project. We then hire consultants to implement the implementation plan. The consultants are slow to start up so then we hire a project manager to manage the consultants to implement the implementation plan. The project manager’s wife’s cousin’s third wife’s daughter’s dog dies and the program manager quits and the project comes to a complete halt. (well actually the dog was an excuse. The project manager had a fight with one of the consultants and the consultant was the daughter in law of a politician so we had to fire the project manager or the politician’s driver’s gaurd would do something nasty to us like through dog poo through our window).
We then hire another project manager and work starts. The project manager then hires a consultant to make field visits and prepare weekly progress reports complete with pictures and diagrams and graphs and even wonderful testimonials from the villagers saying things like “aap idhar kya kar rahay hain?” “aap thasweerain kyon lay rahay hain?” (this was actually said in hindko but since my hindko doesn’t really exist this is being translated to urdu). Since no one in the development world can actually read the native language they think the villagers are singing high praises of them. We start sending regular progress reports to the development world with a really fancy front page and a GREAT executive summary and fill the rest of the report with the same thing being repeated with different illustrations and flow charts and graphs. Since the most important thing in a progress report is the colour charts, they are all impressed with our wonderful progress. (We bought a colour printer especially for this purpose).
The project is now winding up and we hire a consultant to do an evaluation of the project. The evaluation comes back and says that to be sustainable and achieve real results on the ground the project life needs to be extended by one year and additional funding will be needed. We put this proposal to the funding agency in a really fancy powerpoint presentation, cos lets face it power point presentations really show that you know what you are doing. Sadly the funders decline to fund any further since their own focus has changed. So we decide to wrap up the project and utilize the remaining funding by holding dissemination workshops in the hope of enlightening others to take up this cause. We invite all the fashion aunties and the politicians and the bureaucrats and journalists and host a big lunch in Serena.
With all the money used up we decide to become a volunteer organization. We gather all the fashion aunties from the neighbourhood and put them to work (i.e. attending all sorts of functions like boutique launches, fashion shows, art exhibitions and plays to raise awareness of our cause). After a while we run out of money to pay the secretary. With no one to make the phone calls and organize the social errr work calendar of the volunteers, we decide to wind up shop.
I need to earn some money now so I decide to use my valued development experience and become a high paid consultant for a big development organization. Wait, isn’t this where I started from??
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