A non-governmental organization (NGO) is a citizen-based association that operates

independently of government, usually to deliver resources or serve some social or political

purpose. The World Bank classifies NGOs as either operational NGOs, which are primarily

concerned with development projects, or advocacy NGOs, which are primarily concerned

with promoting a cause.

Service delivery is a component of business that defines the interaction between providers

and clients where the provider offers a service, whether that be information or a task, and the

client either finds value or loses value as a result.

Malnutrition refers to lack of proper nutrition, caused by not having enough to eat, not

eating enough of the right things, or being unable to use the food that one does eat.

I would agree that service delivery should be given the priority as the NGOs have

managed to score the following achievements

Non-government organisations provide nutrition-sensitive interventions included offering

guidance in post-harvest technologies, capacity-building for district staff in areas related to

food security, community asset creation, conducting of nutrition trainings and carrying out

community sensitization on nutrition and health.

NGOs are regarded as a force for good by virtually all nations in service delivery. They are

components of social movements within a civil society. As a whole, NGOs are considered as

the “third sector,” while the government and the private sector are the 1st and 2nd sector,

respectively.

NGOs relieve the suffering of those impacted by war, natural disaster, and disease, by

delivering vital health care services and sustainable development projects that focus on

training. They run nutrition and food security programmes in the most food-stressed areas,

helping devastated populations return to self-reliance for instance in the war-torn northern

Uganda.

NGOs act as leading independent organisation delivering basic needs to children and

advocating for their rights in Uganda working closely with partners in government, civil

society, development and corporate sectors to provide support to children through protection

from torture and collection the parentless children from the streets. Hence NGOs contribute

on child protection, child rights governance, education, health, HIV/AIDS, livelihoods,

nutrition thus service delivery deserve that much attention.

NGOs are involved in many different fields of activity including health, women, the

environment, children wellbeing, and training. Their work may be divided, according to

their expertise, into the following categories: informative, educational, operational

consultation, small projects, supportive, production and training.

NGOs have recognise that hunger has a profound effect on a diverse array of

developmental problems, from child mortality to educational attainment, and hence they

have worked relentlessly to ensure that all child nutritional needs thus they are sensitive

to under-nutrition and tackle it directly and indirectly.

Most NGOs are spanned around women and children rights, health and feeding the poor

people. Therefore they provide assistance to the most vulnerable people without any

distinction regarding origins, political affiliation, gender or belief.

NGOs are committed to providing aid in the event of conflict and natural disasters. This help

in service delivery for the population’s vital needs, including drinking water, food and

shelter, whilst supporting them to build their resilience over the long term. This decreases the

risk of undernutrition by improving food security and increasing access to water, sanitation

and hygiene.

Having service delivery to the poor as the principle objective, implement projects focusing on

improving health, nutrition, and access to safe water as well as promoting economic and

educational growth around the country. In Uganda USAID supports the provision of nutrition

services at health facilities, in addition to community education on nutrition and water,

hygiene and sanitation.

But to some extent NGOs have failed to achieve service delivery hence resulting into an

alarming number of children dying because of not being well-fed.

NGOs activities highly depend on the cultures and environments which they are working in.

Some NGOs face increasing competition from the private sector and certain member states.

Therefore, the role of the NGO in the developing world is not always as effective as

possible.

NGOs are weak at staff career development. So, other problem is about staffing issues and

covers recruitment, assignment and layoff as well as human resources development and

administration and finally everyday management of staff

NGOs face interference of local politicians and civic leaders as a major hindrance to their

work. Where NGOs are involved in sensitive issues, such as land disputes, local leaders can

threaten NGOs with de-registration. NGOs are not aware that the Board - and potentially the

Council - are there to protect them from such intimidation.

NGOs have been criticized as over-complicated and cumbersome. The legal structure

involves multiple and uncoordinated decision- making centers. The process of registering

and regulating NGOs often differs in practice from what is provided in the law, adding

unnecessary burdens to the administration of permits and financial grants as well as the

annual and periodic regulation of NGOs.

The most commonly identified challenging issues for NGOs include; Fundraising, limited

financial and management expertise, limited institutional capacity, low levels of self-

sustainability, isolation/lack of inter- organizational communication and/or coordination, lack

of understanding of the broader social or economic context difficulties of managing NGOs

with operations in several countries also raised concerns.

The absence of well-defined objectives and goals, vision, mission and even values is another

issue facing NGOs. Most of them are working emotionally and their objectives and goals

are not essentially realistic. For instance, the aim of certain NGOs is to eliminate the poverty

nationwide rather than setting an achievable/tangible goal of reducing poverty in the

territory of activity, hence leading to persistent malnutrition.

Differences in politics, religion, and culture hinder the NGOs from effective service delivery.

Therefore some NGOs exclude the needy people based on the various individual differences

hence they are concentrated in the urban communities and certain areas are left ragging

resulting into continued malnutrition.

Unfortunately, fostering and weak performance of few NGOs have corrupted the Image

of other NGO and it is difficult to persuade people to support NGOs by donation and

voluntarily activities.

Basing on the above sentiments I would prefer that NGOs shuold be helped to overcome

some of the challenges they face as they have capacity and potential of service delivery and

this can minimise the numbers of children dying of not well-fed.

References

Aksel I, Baran M (2006). “Organizational Problems of Non- Governmental

Organizations (NGOS),”the 3rd International NGO's Congress, December 9-10,

Brown D, Korten D (1989). "Understanding Voluntary Organizations: Guidelines for

Donors," Working Paper 258. Washington: World Bank, Country Economics Department.

Government of Uganda. (2011). Uganda Nutrition Action Plan 2011-2016. Kampala Uganda

Grobman GM (2008). "The Nonprofit Handbook: Everything You Need to Know to Start and

run Your Nonprofit Organization," W hite Hat Communications.

Klaus Klennert (2005). Achieving Food and Nutrition Security; Actions to Meet the Global

Challenge: A Training Course Reader. Internationale Weiterbildung und Entwicklung

gGmbH, Germany

Mostashari A (2005). "An Introduction to Non-Governmental Organizations

(NGO) Management," Iranian Studies Group, MIT.