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Eve Hall: What are the real agendas of NGOs and charities?

NGOs jump in, boots and  all - whoosh!
Organisations like the Ford Foundation with all its financial muscle 
pushed the ideas of Nyerere-phobes like Ali Mazrui.

It's all very fine to speak about transparency and accountability as a way to monitor and control NGOs and all those things, but who looks at these organisations' agendas? It might not be an exaggeration to say that half the NGOs and philanthropic organisations that one sees working in the field are there to proselytize.

What kind of a mechanism would be needed to make transparent the aims of the evangelical organisations in say Latin America?

The behaviour of some of the "aid" organisations in the tsunami-hit countries was stomach turning, with teddy bears wearing "Jesus Saves" T-shirts being distributed to traumatised children.

Those organisations went in there boots and all. Whoosh.

What do you mean by transparency? Do you mean just the handling of money or watch dogs to observe and report what those people are actually there for?

How many organisations are ostensibly providing children with education for example, when they are really trying to to turn them into born agains?

Who monitors that? Or is that OK?

In the bad old days it wasn't the evangelicals it was the cold war warriors you had to look out for. Organisations like the Ford Foundation with all its financial muscle pushing the ideas of Nyerere-phobes like Ali Mazrui.

The thing is that foundations and aid organisations should be just as open about their real aims as about their bookkeeping. But that is such a naive thing to suggest.


By Eve Hall
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