Can Ngos Make A Difference

Can non-governmental organisations contribute to more socially just, alternative forms of development? Or are they destined to work at the margins of dominant development models determined by others? Addressing this question, this book brings together leading international voices from academia, NGOs and the social movements. It provides a comprehensive update to the NGO literature and a range of critical new directions to thinking and acting around the challenge of development alternatives. The book's originality comes from the wide-range of new case-study material it presents, the conceptual approaches it offers for thinking about development alternatives, and the practical suggestions for NGOs. At the heart of this book is the argument that NGOs can and must re-engage with the project of seeking alternative development futures for the world's poorest and more marginal. This will require clearer analysis of the contemporary problems of uneven development, and a clear understanding of the types of alliances NGOs need to construct with other actors in civil society if they are to mount a credible challenge to disempowering processes of economic, social and political development.

As Western aid budgets are slashed and government involvement with aid programmes reduced, NGOs in the voluntary sector are finding themselves taking an ever-increasing share of development work overseas. As they do so, they are forced to grow and to assume new responsibilities, taking more important and wide-ranging decisions - in many cases, without having had the chance to step back and review the options before them and the best ways of maximizing the impact they make. This collection of essays explores the strategies available to NGOs to enhance their development work, reviewing the ways that options can be understood, appropriate programmes and likely problems.

The book, as its title suggests, deals with management related policy-issues of NGOs. NGOs today have a great importance and carry huge responsibilities in the global society. Their role in sustainable development of society is crucial. Today good governance needs support of NGOs. Different NGOs have different mission and their management challenges need different kind of approach. Another issues of significance attached with functioning of NGOs is related to finances. Donors are funding agencies are liberal in their approach but policies need to focus on the fact that funds are channeled in the direction and their utilisation brings in the benefits to those for whom they are mentioned. All these issues from the nucleus of this work. The book is aimed at being useful to NGOs, policy-planners, social activist and others concerned with social work.

Religions are increasingly being regarded as relevant partners in international development cooperation due to their special attributes. However, to date there has been little research into what the special attributes of religious development agencies actually are or how such organisations employ them. What resources do religious NGOs draw on in development cooperation? How do such NGOs differ from other development agencies? Does their engagement make a considerable difference to collaborative development work? Using empirical case studies and theoretical analysis, the contributions in this book address these questions. In doing so, they examine different religions and their collaborative development work in various regions of the world, and chart the most recent changes in religions. With contributions by Jeffrey Haynes, Katherine Marshall, Andreas Heuser, Jens Koehrsen, Dena Freeman, Richard Friedli, Wilhelm Gräb, Ulrich Dehn, Marie Juul Petersen, Claudia Hoffmann, Sinah Theres Kloß, Yonatan N. Gez, Katrin Langewiesche, Suwarto Adi, Ido Benvenisti, Christine Schliesser, Leif H. Seibert, Philipp Öhlmann, Marie-Luise Frost, Adi Maya.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are high profile actors in the field of international development, both as providers of services to vulnerable individuals and communities and as campaigning policy advocates. This book provides a critical introduction to the wide-ranging topic of NGOs and development. Written by two authors with more than twenty years experience of research and practice in the field, the book combines a critical overview of the main research literature with a set of up-to-date theoretical and practical insights drawn from experience in Asia, Europe, Africa and elsewhere. It highlights the importance of NGOs in development, but it also engages fully with the criticisms that the increased profile of NGOs in development now attracts. Non-Governmental Organizations and Development begins with a discussion of the wide diversity of NGOs and their roles, and locates their recent rise to prominence within broader histories of struggle as well as within the ideological context of neo-liberalism. It then moves on to analyze how interest in NGOs has both reflected and informed wider theoretical trends and debates within development studies, before analyzing NGOs and their practices, using a broad range of short case studies of successful and unsuccessful interventions. David Lewis and Nazneen Kanji then moves on to describe the ways in which NGOs are increasingly important in relation to ideas and debates about ‘civil society’, globalization and the changing ideas and practices of international aid. The book argues that NGOs are now central to development theory and practice and are likely to remain important actors in development in the years to come. In order to appreciate the issues raised by their increasing diversity and complexity, the authors conclude that it is necessary to deploy a historically and theoretically informed perspective. This critical overview will be useful to students of development studies at undergraduate and masters levels, as well as to more general readers and practitioners. The format of the book includes figures, photographs and case studies as well as reader material in the form of summary points and questions. Despite the growing importance of the topic, no single short, up-to-date book exists that sets out the main issues in the form of a clearly written, academically-informed text: until now.

As the fastest growing segment of civil society, as well as featuring prominently in the global political arena, NGOs are under fire for being 'unaccountable'. But who do NGOs actually represent? Who should they be accountable to and how? This book provides the first comprehensive examination of the issues and politics of NGO accountability across all sectors and internationally. It offers an assessment of the key technical tools available including legal accountability, certification and donor-based accountability regimes, and questions whether these are appropriate and viable options or attempts to 'roll-back' NGOs to a more one-dimensional function as organizers of national and global charity. Input and case studies are provided from NGOs such as ActionAid, and from every part of the globe including China, Indonesia and Uganda. In the spirit of moving towards greater accountability the book looks in detail at innovations that have developed from within NGOs and offers new approaches and flexible frameworks that enable accountability to become a reality for all parties worldwide.

Since the book was first published, NGOs have continued to rise in prominence, but our concerns have been little redressed. The new Preface and Afterword to this IPE Classic provide an up to date review of the debates on NGOs and the development sector that consolidate on this argument and look briefly at some of the reactions it has received.