Overseas Aid: Charities and Faith-based Organisations

Baroness Hodgson of Abinger Excerpts

Thursday 12th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)]

My Lords, on behalf of the whole House, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, and I congratulate him on his maiden speech. The noble Lord has a distinguished history of public service. As we heard, he rose through the ranks of the Labour Party and the GMB union, culminating in seven years as the Labour Party’s general secretary. He joins a number of other distinguished noble Lords on the Benches opposite who came from that office. During that time, I understand that he dramatically improved the party’s financial position, so perhaps he might make some important contributions in our debates on the economy. I understand that, among his hobbies, he enjoys snowboarding and playing the bagpipes. While I do not think he will have the opportunity to demonstrate his snowboarding skills here, I hope that maybe we will have a chance to hear him on the bagpipes, although probably not in the Chamber. He is also a black belt in karate, so I understand the Opposition Chief Whip is keen for him to join the Whips’ Office so he can put his talents to good use. I am sure I speak for the whole House when I say that I look forward to hearing from him in the coming years on his key interests in workers’ rights, social mobility, housing and homelessness.

I congratulate my noble friend Lady Stroud on so ably introducing this debate. I am particularly pleased that we are debating this topic because small charities and faith organisations play such an important role in helping to create a diverse and, therefore, more resilient and thriving aid sector. Before starting, I want to highlight my interests as listed in the register. Through my work as a co-chair on the APPG on Women, Peace and Security, I connect with many charities. I am also a trustee of the Chalker Foundation for Africa and a patron of Afghan Connection.

We should be proud that the UK was the first G7 country to achieve the UN target of spending 0.7% of GNI on aid. Faith-based and secular humanitarian organisations have a long history of responding to people in need. In recent years, the world has witnessed the phenomenal growth of civil society and the proliferation of charities and NGOs within that. While there are natural caveats about ensuring accountability, efficacy and transparency, this increase has meant more avenues through which the UK can deliver aid. However, all too often small charities are overlooked in spite of their valuable contribution to development. With DfID’s stated intention of delivering value for money, small charities generally have the added advantage of low overheads. They are often started by a person with a passion who may work all hours with almost no remuneration, often with the involvement of volunteers. In many cases, they tend to specialise because they have identified a gap that needs addressing. Although generally not having many resources, they are often innovative, light on their feet and flexible in their approach.

However, in spite of many such charities doing excellent work, they struggle to find funds. As any politician knows, fundraising is hard and time-consuming, in terms both of running events and trying to access grants. For most small charities, trying to attain government funding from DfID or the FCO has been almost impossible, yet the majority of development aid, with the figure sometimes put at 80% to 85%, comes from Governments.

While the MDGs halved the number of people globally living in extreme poverty, the SDGs have the ambitious goal of “leaving no one behind”. I am sure that the Minister will agree that a focus on women’s empowerment and girls’ education are the two linchpins in progress towards the majority of the global goals. To do this, work needs to be done at two levels. First, getting the constitution of a country right is important to ensure equality and equal opportunity. At government levels, work needs to be done on setting up healthcare and education systems. There needs to be security, law and order, land rights and institutions that can deliver for people.

Development aid is good at creating change at the national level. However, to really make change in a country, work needs to be done at grass-roots levels too. If not, it is hard for national laws and policies to reach people out in the country miles away from the capital and, all too often, inequality and customary law continue to preside. I have seen it on some of my visits overseas. I remember in Liberia asking women in a village why they were not bringing perpetrators of sexual violence to account. They told me that the elders would not let them visit the policeman in the next-door village, who would have given them access to the national legal system. They were made to come before the village elders—all men—who saw the situation very differently.

I have also seen how working at the grass roots can bring about enormous social change. I visited a village in Mali where a project on FGM had begun by persuading the elders that FGM was harmful to their women and girls. They had espoused this and had helped create change. It is small charities, these local, community-focused groups, which can really make a difference at the grass roots.

I have mentioned funding. As already mentioned by my noble friend Lady Stroud, it is hard for a small organisation to fill in the complex and lengthy application forms that DfID demands. I question whether it is really necessary to ask them to do so in the same way that is asked of a much larger NGO, which will usually have dedicated staff. Evaluation is important, but the processes are arguably too onerous. If we ask small charities to do this, all their time will be spent on applications and evaluations rather than on delivery, which is after all what they are about and what we want.

I congratulate the Government on launching the Small Charities Challenge Fund, aimed at charities which have income between £25,000 and £250,000. This is an excellent start. However, at the moment, it is a tiny proportion of the aid money spent. Are there plans to expand this fund? There are also quite a number of charities that are slightly bigger than this—medium-sized charities—which will not be able to apply. Are there plans to help with funding those? For example, Afghan Connection will not be able to apply for this fund as it has a slightly larger income, yet it appears to be too small for most other DfID funds. It is delivering children’s education in remote parts of Afghanistan, often when invited in by the local elders—exactly the type of project that is in line with what the UK Government encourage.

I understand that the Small Charities Challenge Fund is open only to small British charities. Are there plans to help with the funding of small overseas NGOs, rather than them necessarily having to rely on UK-based partners? As mentioned earlier, often the local NGO on the ground is the most effective, while it is often impossible for British NGOs to get into conflict-affected and fragile states. UK Aid Match is also an excellent scheme by which DfID matches the funds that a small charity raises. This has the added benefit of giving people a say about where they want DfID’s money to be spent.

The fact that DfID gives grants for only one year can be problematic. In some cases, especially where overseas posts have had to bid for funding, the money may arrive several months late. The charity may thus have a shorter time to spend it. It therefore has only a small window in which it can concentrate on the actual project and not worry about whether it will be able to continue after the year-end. Perhaps my noble friend the Minister might think about giving small charities longer-term funding over, for example, three years. Being effective on the ground means building relationships, and change can be effected much more easily where trust has had time to build up.

It is, of course, essential that small charities get appropriate funding; getting too little or too much can have a detrimental effect. Historically, DfID has always preferred to give larger grants as they are less manpower-intensive, but maybe other models can be followed. For example, in Iraq I met Hanaa Edwar, who won the Sean MacBride Peace Prize. She told me that she had acted as a funding platform by applying for funding and then distributing it to small NGOs. That adds one more step to the transparency chain, but has DfID considered a model such as this in fragile and conflict-affected countries?

Faith-based organisations can play a critical role, as we have also heard. I saw this in Iraq, where the Catholic Church was offering respite to Christian IDPs and refugees as they were not safe in the UN camps. Part of the raison d’être of Christian NGOs such as Tearfund, World Vision and Christian Aid is that they work through local partners because they believe that, for the most part, engaging in humanitarian and development work through local churches adds value. Tearfund succinctly sums it up in its recent report on this issue by highlighting the unique role that local churches and faith groups can play in fighting poverty. It is because they are integral in their communities, inspirational to their congregations and influential through their networks. It is not just Christian organisations; those such as Islamic Aid can often reach into countries and places where western organisations are unable to go.

When a disaster strikes, response times can make all the difference in saving people’s lives. Faith organisations are often among the first responders on the scene and provide the place where people go when they have lost everything. In the long run, capacity-building through churches and local faith organisations should be commended as one of the ways to build community resilience and as a means of helping to work towards the global goals. I am glad that the UK Government are now more welcoming to applications from these organisations.

There is one more area that I would quickly like to touch on: organisations dedicated to advocacy and lobbying need more support. Too often in the past, well-meaning people coming from outside have tried to impose change in developing and post-conflict countries. However, change really happens only when it is owned and driven by the people of that country themselves. Building change means building movements and campaigns, yet funding is nearly always directed to the easily measured project work. Too often in fragile countries, those who could have been instrumental in effecting societal change have had to dedicate themselves to delivering projects because they cannot afford to work for nothing.

I heartily and sincerely congratulate Her Majesty’s Government on their approach to international development and direction of travel, but I hope that we can develop our work with smaller and faith-based charities. I hope my noble friend will agree that we need to work with big and small NGOs of all kinds if we are to reach the goal of the SDGs and really leave no one behind. I leave your Lordships with the thoughts of the US anthropologist Margaret Mead, who once said:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has”.