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November 25, 2012 9:34 pm

From the ground upBy Orla Ryan

For ‘grassroots’ charities working with vulnerable young people, smallcash injections can later deliver big gains

t was the skinny young children clustered at the sides of Dakar’s clogged roads that forcedCiré Kane into action. The gangs of barefoot boys in tattered clothes – some as young as five,

many no more than 12 – are a common sight in Senegal’s cities, holding out plastic bowls andclamouring for small change and food from passers-by.

“It’s hard to not try to do something to help them when you see them all the time on the streetsbegging,” says Mr Kane, explaining what motivated him back in 2001 to start helping thevulnerable young people he saw all around him.

Many of these children are talibés, a word derived from Arabic meaning “disciple”, fromKoranic boarding schools. Of the hundreds of thousands sent from rural areas and fromneighbouring countries to these religious schools in Senegalese cities, as many as 50,000 areforced to beg by their teachers. Many are poorly fed and have been badly beaten; some carry outsmall jobs to earn the cash they are ordered to hand over.

©Rosie Hallam

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Letter from the Editor

The staff of the Financial Timeshave chosen The Global Fundfor Children, a pioneeringcharity helping some of theworld’s poorest and mostvulnerable children, for our2012 seasonal appeal.

Thanks to the generosity of ourreaders, the FT’s seasonalappeals have raised more than£9m for good causes since2005. We aim to do even betterthis year.

To continue reading, click here

“There is no group of young people suffering more than the talibés, and street kids in general.So it was impossible for us to not do something to support them,” says Mr Kane.

Along with some friends, Mr Kane – a graduate who had grown disillusioned with bigdevelopment projects – took pens and paper into government schools after hours to work withtalibés, children in conflict with the law and those who had dropped out of school. Soon, theybegan to go to the Islamic schools to talk about taboo subjects such as sexually transmitteddiseases and substance abuse – dangers to which the talibés and others are exposed. For a year,they worked as volunteers, with no funding and no office.

Then, in 2002, they received their first support – a $4,000 grant from The Global Fund forChildren. The organisation invests in “grassroots” non-profit groups that spring up locally andwork with vulnerable young people and is the Financial Times’ partner in this year’s seasonalappeal.

Mr Kane and his friends used the cash to revive a children’s centrethat had fallen into disuse. Their operations grew, as didmanagement support and grants – not just the $130,000 given bythe GFC over seven years but also backing from donors such asthe International Youth Foundation and the MasterCardFoundation.

Over the years, Mr Kane decided his group, called Synapse, wouldbe of more use helping graduates and budding entrepreneurs findwork. Youth unemployment runs at high levels in an economyforecast to grow at about 4 per cent in 2012, far below the ratesregistered in more buoyant economies in the region, such asGhana. Every week, 200 young people come through the doors ofSynapse’s multi-storey office block to make free use of thegleaming meeting rooms, training and support from 13 full-timestaff.

Few donors support groups just starting out, says Mr Kane, but the GFC took a risk on him –and it paid off. Now, nearly two-thirds of those who have completed the organisation’s Passportto Employment course that prepares graduates for the world of work have jobs.

Injecting small bundles of cash and management expertise into a nascent organisation can leadto significant development gains later on, says Kristin Lindsey, GFC chief executive. Eight of thecharity’s programme officers travel the world scouting for non-profit groups with annualbudgets of less than $200,000.

“We are looking for groups other funders aren’t looking for, undervalued but with potential,”

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Donate now

To learn more about the GlobalFund for Children and to makea donation,click here

she says. “Finding groups that need capital and demonstrate strength, what they need isinfusion of resources – [it] is very like venture capital.”

Money is only a small part of the help that the GFC provides. “It is not just providing financialresources; [it is] giving access to learning and networks and everything that organisation needsto thrive.”

They are searching for the next Grameen, she says in a reference to the pioneering Bangladeshimicrofinance group that provides banking services for the rural poor.

The idea for the GFC stemmed from a visit by Maya Ajmera, its American founder, in 1990 toOrissa, one of India’s poorest states. Then a 22-year-old graduate, she saw barefoot children intattered clothes attending classes on a railway platform. The teachers told her it cost just $400 ayear to educate about 40 pupils. Struck by how much could be done with such a small sum, sheasked herself: “How do you get capital to such organisations and how can we help them scale uptheir work?”

Ms Ajmera founded the GFC four years later. More than 8mchildren have since been reached by its partners, 1m in the pastyear alone. Since 1997, it has awarded grants worth almost $26mto 500 groups in 78 countries. In 2011-12, it gave more than $4mto about 300 organisations. The GFC aims to end theserelationships after five to seven years, with the groups it hasbacked able to attract funding from those who would have shiedaway when they were getting started. About 92 per cent, includingSynapse, which stopped receiving funding three years ago, are stillgoing strong, says Ms Lindsey.

. . .

And these groups can have a real impact on the lives of young people globally. The GFC hasseveral projects on the Caribbean island of Haiti, one of the world’s poorest nations, which wasdevastated by a 2010 earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands and displaced many more.

A few times a week Pantaleon Joline, 33, brings her adopted daughter Santia Michelle toPazapa, a centre for disabled children partly funded by the GFC, in the city of Jacmel. Two yearsago, she found Santia, then seven months old, abandoned in a hospital. She has Down’ssyndrome and hydrocephalus, which causes swelling in the brain. It is impossible not to likeher, says Ms Joline, because she is always smiling. But disability is stigmatised in Haiti: Santia’sparents had left her for others to care for. Pazapa, whose name means “step by step” in Haitiancreole, was the only place she could go. Thanks to the centre’s support Santia is makingprogress. She can now sit up straight.

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The GFC model goes some way to answering common criticisms of non-governmentalorganisations and the multibillion-dollar aid industry, sometimes synonymous in public mindswith woolly thinking and waste.

Many development projects succeed but “cost a lot of money, and a lot fail”, says Ms Ajmera. “Iwould rather lose $8,000 on an investment than $50m.” A grant of a few thousand dollars is asmall risk but one that can reap big rewards. Working with grassroots groups also speaks tofears that solutions imported from the west rarely succeed. Such groups “are close tocommunities, they have much more legitimacy, they are more strongly driven by communitiesthey work in”, says Gideon Rabinowitz of the Overseas Development Institute, a think-tank inthe UK. “[Foreign NGOs] don’t always have the ability to really, truly understand the needs ofthe community.”

But the seductive rhetoric of locally generated projects creates its own conundrums. “You candeify grassroots orgs, and assume that because we use the word ‘grassroots’ they reach the mostvulnerable,” says Michael Jennings of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.“They will often be staffed by members of a local elite, people with greater income and maybemore educated.” He fears this could create a distance from the people they are seeking to serve.

For Mr Kane, any suggestion that he is not sufficiently “grassroots” rankles. “I don’t come froma rich family,” he says. “I come from a family where connection to the community is very strong.My father and mother taught me that if you have something you should share it.”

The mere act of donation – sometimes necessitating the hiring of staff to keep accounts andsubmit the reports required by international organisations – can overwhelm a small charity.“There are [grassroots] NGOs that become really popular,” said Ms Ajmera. “If you get toomuch capital, it can cause you to crash.”

The transformation of an embryonic entity into a fully fledged NGO can also endanger theoriginal small-scale, local spirit. “Often they are temporary, personalised, individualorganisations. How do you address that without just turning them into another NGO?” says MrJennings.

This does not have to happen, says Ms Lindsey. “The core of what you do can stay the same overtime.”

. . .

For small NGOs, the search for support can become a cynical merry-go-round that frustrateseven the most committed activists. Few donors truly consider the strengths of groups withwhich they work, says Susan Sabaa, executive director at Ghana’s Child Research and Resource

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Centre (CRRECENT), which promotes child rights and development, and is a candidate for GFCfunding. “It looks to me [like] they are interested in dumping their money – ‘we want ABC done’– and then they come for their report,” she says. “If you don’t look at the strengths of who youare working with, you may not even get results.”

At a school for trafficked children, near the fishing town of Winneba in Ghana’s Central region,the results are there for all to see. Georgina, a shy 12-year-old, sits in the playground in her blueand yellow uniform telling her story. Two years ago, she whispers, her mother took her out ofschool and sent her to work in domestic service for relatives in the eastern Volta region,hundreds of miles from home. Her father, who is separated from her mother, gave whatinformation he could to an organisation called Challenging Heights, which found her andbrought her back.

She is one of hundreds of children the group, whose first donor was the GFC, has rescued fromdomestic servitude or slavery in the fishing industry. “I was very happy when I came,” saysGeorgina. “I knew I would be able to go back to school.” Without that initial help from the GFC,says James Kofi Annan, a former child slave who founded Challenging Heights in 2003, theorganisation would not have become a leading locally run anti-trafficking group.

The projects the FT visited in Senegal, Haiti and Ghana are small – some scrappy, othersambitious. The future of development could yet belong to them, argues Ms Ajmera. “If you aregoing to have emerging economies, free-market economies, civil society is extremely importantand I don’t believe outsiders can build civil society,” she says.

“There is a place for all of these [aid] groups,” she adds. “[But] over time, in 50 to 60 years, thelocal organisations would overtake large development groups.”

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