The Discovering Resources Initiative

The Discovering Resources seminar is a new yearlong initiative that brings together community leaders and representatives of funding agencies in Haiti to discuss the challenges of finding and making good use of development assistance. Representatives from 25 different local and international organizations began meeting in May and will continue to meet for two days each month until June 2002.

It seems paradoxical. Throughout Haiti, hundreds of local grassroots groups and community organizations work to improve the lives of their people, often without the benefit of any outside funding or expertise. At the same time, dozens of international organizations and missions have money available to help Haitian communities in need. But these foreign funders often struggle to find local organizations they can support.

Why is it so difficult for the foreign funders and the Haitian community groups to connect? Finding each other is not difficult, but making a funding relationship work well for all involved often is.

The best funding agencies usually want to work through grassroots organizations that have broad community participation and that are in some way accountable to the people they serve. However, it is not always easy to distinguish these legitimate grassroots groups from organizations that opportunistically spring up and claim to be serving the people but really exist to serve the interests of only a few.

The best funding agencies also need to be able to account for how donated funds get used, all the way to the ultimate beneficiaries. Thus, they can usually only give funds to organizations that have the ability to provide project proposals, budgets, and financial reports, and conduct regular evaluations of the work being funded. But the skills needed to fulfill these many kinds of requirements are not common among Haiti’s grassroots organizations.

Local organizations also need to know how to manage a relationship with a foreign agency. Funding agencies may try to push an agenda that makes little sense for a community. At the same time, funding agencies may have legitimate concerns that the local organization must understand. These agencies may fear that giving money to a certain organization will extinguish the organization’s volunteer spirit or create divisions and jealousy within the community. Also, agencies may decline to fund a project that they believe may foster attitudes of dependence and helplessness in the community.

The great majority of participants in the Discovering Resources seminar are Haitian community leaders who will enjoy the opportunity to learn program development, grant writing, reporting, and evaluation skills. They will also be exposed to alternative approaches to leadership that will allow them to gather more local participation and avoid the pitfalls of receiving outside support. Representatives from funding agencies will get feedback from local leaders about what have been the most and least helpful practices of funders.

The effort is an initiative of Beyond Borders’ co-founder, John Engle, and friends of Beyond Borders, Laurie Richardson and Marx Aristide.