COMMUNITY-BASED organisations (CBOs) play a very critical role in augmenting government efforts to improve livelihoods, a visiting United States of America official has said.
In an interview with NewsDay recently, the US Centre for Non-Profits and Philanthropy Director William Brown commended local non-profit organisations for their “dedication” to transform livelihoods with “limited resources”.
Brown was in Zimbabwe to conduct a series of workshops with local civil society organisations on how they can build and maintain their sustainability.
“Non-governmental organisations can supplement the limitations that either businesses, or government fail to provide for everybody,” Brown said.
“Non-profit organisations can fill in that gap. Non-profit organisations can also provide specialized kinds of services or care or inclination toward particular populations or particular groups.”
He added: “So if it’s a faith disposition and you want to be able to send your kid to a particular faith-based school, it may not be the responsibility of the government to provide that kind of education. But the government doesn’t have a responsibility to try and sustain everybody’s special interests.
“But those special interests can be captured and supported by the work of a community-based organisation, because it’s from that community.”
Brown highlighted that the shortage of manpower was one major challenge which was threatening the operation of CBOs across the globe.
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“Human resources are typically the next most difficult problem (after the lack of funding challenge), on running non-profit organisations especially if they begin to rely on volunteers,” Brown said.
“Volunteers come in, and they are short-term, or they are part-time, and they will stay for a while, and then they will leave. So having good people to do the work is a chronic problem that they run into. And it constrains the amount of projects that they are able to get into.”
Government has attracted criticism after the introduction of the Private Voluntary Organisation Bill which was criticised for ostensibly stifling the country’s NGOs.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa has since referred the Bill back to Parliament after legislators in the previous session handed the document for assertion.
