Overseas Aid: Charities and Faith-based Organisations

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Thursday 12th July 2018 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Stroud]

That this House takes note of the steps being taken by Her Majesty’s Government to engage with small charities and faith-based organisations in delivering United Kingdom aid overseas.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, as a forward thinking, generous and compassionate nation we have enshrined in law the commitment to spending 0.7% of our GNI on aid. This means that in 2017 the UK’s aid contribution was nearly £14 billion. What we do with this money has enormous potential to benefit people, create opportunity and build nations. However, we have to ensure that it delivers on that potential, benefiting recipients and doing right by the British taxpayer.

We know that to maximise impact we need to deliver aid that focuses on twin objectives—humanitarian need and the building of nations. In 2017, conflicts and disasters around the world left an estimated 201 million people in need of the last resort of international humanitarian assistance. These are the people that need our assistance purely out of the greatest need to survive and should be one of the primary focuses of aid.

We also know that long-term nation building is the foundation that underpins the ability of a country to develop. Countries need safety and security, a strong economy, effective governance, education and health systems and a stable environment. It is no coincidence that poverty is concentrated in high-risk settings. Eighty-seven per cent of people who are living in extreme poverty are in countries which are either fragile or environmentally vulnerable. Ensuring that we are working to stabilise these situations will allow people to flourish in the long term.

Small charities are an important part of a thriving aid landscape and have an enormous contribution to make. In the UK, 90% of voluntary sector organisations are small or medium-sized charities, delivering many valuable services in the community. Small international charities play a similar role and their impact is equally profound. Small charities are often more rooted in their communities and have a strong record of partnering with others. They have an intimate understanding of the needs and sensitivities of the communities that they work in. Small charities are able to innovate and do highly responsive work. They are often mobile and adaptable, and they can respond to the changing needs of their local communities. This also means that they are able to be among the first responders in a humanitarian crisis and can work in communities that are the hardest to reach.

In Syria, when larger aid organisations were unable to access Aleppo in 2016 and aid convoys were being blocked and even destroyed, small grass-roots organisations with close ties to the community were a lifeline for those who desperately needed aid. Charities like Hand in Hand for Syria were vital and they continued working with local people inside Syria when many other organisations considered the situation to be too unsafe, with a team even remaining in Aleppo when it was controlled by Assad loyalists.

Smaller charities are often highly specialist and can build skills and capabilities alongside local knowledge in complex areas. For example, the UK direct grant recipients include a project in Nepal, delivered by Anti-Slavery International, which started in February of this year, rehabilitating members of the Haliya community who have escaped slavery and labour exploitation. This is an excellent example of a charity using its specialist knowledge to support a community by partnering with a local organisation, the Nepal National Dalit Social Welfare Organisation, to offer its skills and expertise. Another example is the Fred Hollows Foundation, which is working in Pakistan to treat avoidable blindness. Workers use their expertise to train doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals to recognise, diagnose and treat eye problems in their own communities.

The recent revelations about the conduct of staff employed by some larger charitable organisations have shone a light on the aid sector and some of the attitudes within it. This, though, should not discourage us from generosity, but it has shown how crucial it is that our aid is delivered in a manner that is effective, accountable and able to serve the local community. We know that DfID research shows that smaller charities have a stronger record than larger ones of handling some of these safeguarding issues, and the department has even considered partnering larger charities with smaller ones to encourage peer support for safeguarding policies.

Smaller charities are also popular with the public. A 2013 study found that given the choice between donating to otherwise equal large or small charities, almost three-quarters of people chose to donate to small charities with their own money. DfID’s UK Aid Match scheme is an excellent initiative which allows British people a say in how our aid is spent and doubles the spending impact. The budget for this is relatively small when compared with our total spending, but could be expanded further to include more of the smaller charities. The 2016 Civil Society Partnership Review noted that smaller charities were finding it difficult to access DfID funding due to the extensive requirements of the application process, despite their advantages and their popularity. This led to the creation of the Small Charities Challenge Fund, which has great potential for unlocking funding for smaller charities to increase and scale up their excellent work.

It must be recognised, however, that what makes small charities advantageous is their mobility and ability to direct their attention where it is most needed. Obviously, funding based on evidence and accountability is essential, but the bureaucratic demands that these applications place on smaller charities, which often do not employ full-time administrative staff, can be prohibitive. If DfID is going to support the needs of these small charities and allow them to play their role to its full potential, the bureaucracy has to be minimised as much as possible. Can the Minister say what DfID is planning to do to reduce paperwork and reporting demands on smaller charities, so that more of their time can be devoted to doing their actual work?

As part of the diverse landscape of UK aid, the impact of faith-based charities is also an important consideration. It should be remembered that worldwide, more than eight in 10 people identify with a religious group. Faith for a huge number of people is a key marker of identity and belonging. Faith-based charities are not a niche sector, given that almost half of all UK overseas charities are in fact faith-based. They also make up a significant number of the organisations working in human rights and in poverty reduction. According to New Philanthropy Capital, there are almost 50,000 faith-based charities in England and Wales. This number is growing. Almost 10% more new charities with a faith ethos were registered with the Charity Commission in the last 10 years than non faith-based charities. In the past, DfID has been hesitant to engage with faith-based charities and two years ago funded only two, but now this number has reached almost 30—a reflection of an important change in attitude and the beginning of a recognition of the role that they could play.

Often when states become weak, people increasingly identify with and rely upon traditional community structures and religious identities. When state institutions are weak, or have even collapsed, local faith leaders and religious institutions can fill the gap. Faith-based organisations often exist in the most remote parts of countries and can reach communities the state finds hard to. Organisations such as churches and mosques can play key roles in their community and are often trusted. The World Bank’s Voices of the Poor study found that faith groups are often seen as more embedded in and committed to local communities.

There is great potential to use and partner with these existing structures to deliver aid. In Malawi, for example, around 85% of the population is Christian, with a strong and thriving network of churches. The charity USPG is using that network’s already significant community centre to support women’s education, to educate their communities about effective management of the environment and to provide training in vocational skills. Faith-based organisations make a distinctive contribution to the delivery of social services in a way that is often more culturally sensitive and aligned with that community. It has been shown that faith-based organisations can draw on existing networks and motivations to play a vital role in grass-root mobilisation.

Faith-based organisations are also often prepared to play a key role in particularly difficult circumstances. Their contribution to the fight against HIV and AIDS in Africa has been substantial, such as in Zambia and Lesotho, where the faith-based health organisations on the ground make up a significant proportion of provision. The promotion of effective HIV prevention by faith groups such as the Islamic Medical Association of Uganda in the early 2000s is credited as having a significant impact on reducing the spread of the disease in communities targeted.

During the Ebola crisis in Liberia and Sierra Leone, a combined response by Muslim and Christian leaders working together was transformational. Faith leaders worked together, using the Koran and the Bible, to educate people about preventing the disease, providing biblical backing to the importance of quarantining patients. Crucially, they also worked to change traditional burial practices sensitively to ensure that burials were safe and that the treatment of bodies did not contribute to the spread of disease.

As in both these cases, engagement with faith groups can help to change and to shape attitudes in culturally sensitive ways when a culture change is needed. They can help to mobilise communities around contentious topics, such as ensuring that women who have been the victims of sexual violence in conflict are not ostracised by their communities. Faith community involvement in brokering dialogue around conflict resolution and reconciliation can also have a strong impact.

DfID has a number of long-term relationships with large faith-based charities, such as Christian Aid, Islamic Relief and World Vision, which have been successful. However, the launch of the UK Aid Connect scheme is one of the ways the Government are ensuring that they harness the potential of many other faith groups. By inviting proposals to this fund, it would be possible to address key development challenges, including global intolerance, extremism and poverty. As the Government roll this out, I call upon my noble friend the Minister to lay out more of the strategy for engaging with a new wave of small, faith-based organisations in the delivery of aid.

Some 50% of people polled on international aid spending in the UK were concerned about aid not being spent well. This is clearly an issue that matters to the public. We have enormous potential to have a positive impact through our aid spending. Faith-based organisations and small charities are two of the ways we can nimbly mobilise this potential. We have the information about what it takes to create prosperous societies and we have the evidence on how aid can be effective. What steps are the Government taking to engage with small charities and faith-based organisations in delivering UK aid overseas? I beg to move.

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[Baroness Stroud]

My Lords, this has been a most interesting debate. I thank all noble Lords for their contributions. I again warmly congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, on his maiden speech. Not only do I look forward to the bagpipes, along with others, but I welcome his overture to take forward the issue of homelessness, which is a passion close to my heart as well. I particularly agreed with his point about funding rounds closing without small charities being even aware that they were open in the first place, and with the comments of my noble friend Lady Hodgson and of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, about the complexity of the application process, so I was delighted by the Minister’s response about it being too long and too onerous and the action that DfID has taken to address those issues.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, for her commitment to ensure that government funding is used appropriately by small faith-based charities and achieves the objectives for which the money is given. I also thank her for the sensitive manner in which she made her comments.

I thank the Minister hugely for his reply, and I am absolutely delighted that he used the debate to make his announcement. I am pleased to hear about the commencement of the first four projects and that the next round is now open. I thank each noble Lord who contributed to this debate for the consensus across the House that small charities and faith-based organisations have a huge amount to contribute to international aid and development.

Motion agreed.