The Cover Photo Problem

One phrase that I continually see advertised by NGOs and non-profits working in the developing world is, “we send every dollar you donate to work overseas”. Charity:Water, an NGO that drills wells and gives people in the developing world access to clean water, has a “100% model”, advertising that 100% of the money you donate goes to cover their initiatives abroad. When the initial relief aid was sent to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, there were lots of complaints that only a small percentage of the money designated for Haiti was spent directly helping people, and that too much money was spent under the elusive guise of “administrative costs”. People don’t donate money to “administrative costs”; they donate money to make a difference, to make something happen. On the surface this seems like an admirable goal, but it can create more problems for a community’s long term development.

In order for any aid project to be successful, there must be an element of community development incorporated into the project. On Tuesday night I went to a well meeting at a new community well Pastor Pierre recently installed in the town of Perrisse. When Pastor Pierre installs a well, he doesn’t just dig a deep hole and call it a day, he develops a system within the community to care for the well. He requires every household that benefits from the well to pay 25 GDS (about 60 cents) every month for the maintenance of the well. Pastor Pierre also appoints a member of the community who locks the well up during certain hours of the day, avoiding over usage. We had a meeting with the community to go over all of these procedures and make sure everyone in the community was one the same page. This work on the part of Pastor Pierre creates a new expectation between Pastor Pierre, the donor, and the community, the recipient. The community, instead of seeing the well as a gift, assumes ownership of the well. The well isn’t just a nice thing they can take advantage of; it’s a resource they are charged with caring for and maintaining. As long as they pay for it, the well is there’s to use. The well transforms from a temporary advantage into a renewable community resource. I’ve spent days walking around the rural communities looking for working wells, and for every working well there is another well that has been neglected and no longer works. These wells fail because there is no one to take care for them. There is no one to “own” the well, so people just use it until it breaks and then go back to another water source they previously used. This is what a lot of NGOs do. They dig a hole, put in a well, and leave. There is no one who engages the community in on the project, so there is no oversight, and people just use the well until it breaks and then go back to gathering water from the rivers.

These problems, this lack of community engagement is more common than I would like it to be. Too many organizations pass things out but don’t work them into the community as a whole. At best these efforts provide a temporary solution to a much bigger problem. Many times however, these initiatives will actually hamper community development and harm a community in the long run. Only one person can only use a well at a time, and if there is no ownership over a certain well, then people from all around will come and fight over the well, decreasing its value. Part of the problem keeping organizations from not engaging in the community is that no one wants to donate to community development, they would rather donate to building a well.

When we think about development, we see pictures of people in pain, children going hungry and families struggling to drink clean water. We want to do something that will directly improve these people’s lives; we want to end the suffering. When we donate money we don’t want it pay someone at a desk, we want it to pay for a child’s clean water. Sometimes though, the best way to give those children clean water is to pay that guy at the desk to organize the community around the new well. Administrative costs, though they cover expenses that are pretty dull, they are necessary for any initiative to be successful. There is a lot of overhead involved in digging a well. If we just pay for wells, we’ll never give the Haitians the clean water they so desperately need, we’ll only give them a bunch of broken wells.

I call this problem the “cover photo problem”. A picture of a child getting water from a well makes for a great cover photo any NGO or non-profit’s a brochure, a picture of a guy sitting at a desk talking with the well manager makes for a really lame cover photo. Unfortunately, not every good development effort makes for a good photo op. In order for wells to really serve the community we have to pay for some administrative costs as well as installment costs. These costs may not feel great for the donor giving money, but it means the recipients will feel much better for a long time to come.