Catalog

NGOs: Partners with Perspectives
As participants, intermediaries, and advocates, NGOs are critical for development

Gordon Wilkinson

Gordon Wilkinson, Senior Social Development Specialist for Nongovernment Organizations (NGO) Coordination at the Asian Development Bank (ADB), provides insights on why ADB values NGOs as important partners in the development process.

ADB recognizes NGOs and other civil society organizations as important actors in the many processes of development. As direct participants in development, NGO activities most often center on involvement in development programs on the ground and in the delivery of development services. Many NGOs have the ability, means, and commitment to work with the poor and other excluded segments of society that are not adequately or equitably reached by many development programs and processes.

As intermediaries, NGOs can help build bridges and establish channels of communication and cooperation between people and communities on one side, and governments, development institutions, and funding agencies on the other. Intermediary NGOs often have experience in cooperative and participatory approaches, such as community mobilization.

As advocates, NGOs can help represent and articulate the views and concerns of groups and communities that otherwise may not be heard. NGOs can be catalysts for collective action among the poor and disadvantaged, and can help mobilize action in support of a bottom-up approach.

In recognizing NGOs as both actors in development as well as stakeholders, ADB seeks to work with NGOs to strengthen the effectiveness, sustainability, and quality of development services that are provided to the poor and disadvantaged in Asia and the Pacific. In working with NGOs, one objective is to integrate NGO experience, knowledge, and expertise into development approaches that reduce poverty and meet the region’s most pressing development needs. Another objective in NGO cooperation is capacity building to help strengthen the NGO role in development. ADB also provides assistance to governments to strengthen their capacity to work with NGOs.

ADB’s NGO cooperation is moving in two parallel streams. One is operational cooperation: recognizing the importance of NGOs as actors, stakeholders, and partners in on-the-ground development operations. The other is institutional cooperation: recognizing NGOs as an important external constituency and stakeholder group in identifying, developing, and implementing the policies, strategies, and processes that guide ADB operations.

In the context of ADB’s current directions in NGO cooperation and the rapidly expanding role of NGOs in social and economic processes and in development, President Chino constituted a high-level internal task force in May 2000 to review ADB’s overall institutional structures and processes for cooperation with NGOs. Task force findings reaffirmed the importance of effective cooperation with NGOs and emphasized the need for ADB to strengthen its structures and processes for NGO cooperation.

The task force identified a set of issues and challenges related to strengthening ADB-NGO cooperation, including developing a better understanding of the NGO sector and identifying ways in which effective cooperation can be achieved; establishing institutional arrangements within ADB that will support strengthened NGO cooperation; and providing the resources and developing the internal capacity for effective NGO cooperation. Recommendations toward meeting these issues and challenges were identified, and efforts are now under way to implement the recommendations.

While ADB began direct cooperation with NGOs only in the late 1980s, more than half of all new ADB projects now involve NGOs in some significant and substantive way. ADB has engaged NGOs through a variety of means, from NGOs serving in a formal advisory role in developing and implementing projects, to NGOs taking responsibility for implementing specific projects—and in some cases entire projects.

Beyond projects, with NGOs recognized as an external constituency and a stakeholder group with demonstrated experience and expertise in development issues and processes, ADB works to engage NGOs in discussing issues in its development agenda, and in developing policies, strategies, and processes that put the development agenda into operation. ADB’s policy supports consultation and dialogue with NGOs at the overall policy and strategy level, at the level of developing country assistance approaches, and at the project level.

Globally, civil society is demanding a greater voice and role in decision making, governance, and actions affecting people directly. With NGOs as representatives of civil society, ADB recognizes the expanding advocacy role of NGOs. This is a point highlighted in the institutional review of NGO cooperation that President Chino commissioned. The task force that undertook the review carefully considered directions in how civil society and its representative organizations are engaging with institutions like ADB. ADB is now actively developing and implementing appropriate institutional response mechanisms.

For more on ADB and NGOs, go to http://www.adb.org/NGOs

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