A constant refrain from critics in the United States is that Pakistan has not been using all of its aid effectively. US aid to Pakistan totaled nearly 4.5 billion dollars in the fiscal year 2010, but 800 million dollars of security assistance was frozen in August in response to Pakistan’s refusal to admit American military personnel and trainers who process the items that fall under the US performance checklist. After the bin Laden raid, there was even more suspicion about whether or not Pakistan truly deserves this aid for, after all, where was all the money going? Recently, a U.S. Senate committee voted to give conditional aid to Pakistan, based on Islamabad’s cooperation in fighting the militant Haqqani network, responsible for most of the attacks in Afghanistan.
For Pakistanis, the situation is going from bad to worse. Only 1.5 percent of the Gross Domestic Product goes into education. According to the Pakistan Education Task Force one in every ten children in the world not in primary school is Pakistani. The health care system is in shambles: Pakistan ranks 125th out of 169 countries in the 2010 Human Development Index. The floods that affected over 20 million people last year and that continue to devastate southern Pakistan this year have received a lackluster response from donors and aid agencies.
But Pakistan’s civil society has created alternative systems that have held up communities for decades. The Edhi Foundation, established in 1951, is the largest welfare organization in Pakistan and through the efforts of its founder Abdul Sattar Edhi, a man with little formal education, it initiated Pakistan’s first and most widespread ambulance service. The Citizens’ Foundation (TCF), formed in 1995 by a group of businessmen, is one of Pakistan’s largest non-profit school systems—educating 102,000 students and operating around 730 schools in the past year. Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Center, opened in 1994 and set up by Pakistan’s most famous cricket captain, has financially supported 75% of its patients since it began. And there are many others.
These organizations have been operating successfully on the generosity of local and foreign donors, expatriates and non-Pakistanis alike. However, in recent years instability in the country has affected their operations. For example, 60 TCF schools were affected after the floods in 2010 and donations have fallen since the recession. Regardless of these problems, the value of local philanthropy in Pakistan is 1.6 billion dollars, exceeding the yearly amounts promised in the Kerry Lugar Bill. Locally, people are willing to donate generously, yet abroad, according to Dr. Adil Najam, Vice Chancellor at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, in 2005 Pakistani Americans only gave 40 percent of their donations to local organizations due to lack of knowledge of where to give and mistrust over where their money would go. Clearly, support is needed and generous funds are available, but there is a deficit of knowledge abroad about where this money should go.
If aid is to be channeled into Pakistan, it must be sent to the right places where the need exists and where it can be effectively and efficiently utilized. In order to do that, trust must be established between donors and results must be observed and documented and shown in public forums for discussion.
This summer, I walked the bridge between an organization and its donors, creating material for Opportunity International, a microfinance initiative in Ghana. I attended a ten week long program with Students of the World (SOW) a non-profit media production company that creates promotional material for non-profits around the world. We spent one month working with Opportunity International, a microfinance initiative that serves farmers, small business owners and school proprietors. “We” were a group of seven students from universities around Boston with roles consisting of filmmakers, a graphic designer, photographer, producer, development coordinator and journalist. As journalist, I interviewed clients and updated our blog regularly.
Our program sent similar teams of students to Haiti, Uganda and the West Bank to work with different organizations. After a month, we all converged in Austin, Texas for postproduction. We created short video clips stating each organization’s commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative; these were screened this week at the Clinton Global Initiative Meeting in New York. We also made short videos for the organizations, for their websites and to be shown to possible donors.
Opportunity International, through its Banking on Education program, provides loans to private schools in rural areas that need money to improve their facilities. These schools are generally of high quality and serve low-income families. In Ghana, the private school sector is flourishing as more and more people choose to send their children to such schools, despite the free public sector education. This is largely due to the poor quality of education and lack of facilities in the government sector. Taking advantage of this, Opportunity International served 233 private schools in rural areas in 2010.
We interviewed women like Mercy Senyegah who was forced by threats from her husband’s creditors to leave her old village. She managed to start up a school that serves over 200 children. We met cocoa farmers like Amma Amponsah who lifted herself and her four children out of poverty and now owns two small houses as well as a farm that has increased its yield from 1 to 48 bags since she joined Opportunity.
There are many more stories to be told. On our return to the United States, my team and I found ample opportunities for screenings and discussions in our respective colleges and cities. In Pakistan there are perhaps many more stories that are worthy of such coverage. Partnering with established, well reputed organizations and telling their stories on an international platform is necessary to develop transparency and understanding about how money is being spent. It is not just about sending money to the right places, it is helping people understand where to send their money and why it is important to support these areas in the first place. Encouraging such endeavors serves two purposes.
First, we make development efforts more relatable for audiences and donors. We need to prove to American taxpayers that US-Pakistan relations are more than just pumping money into corrupt institutions and funding military programs. True, the government makes the decisions about where aid money goes but to reduce suspicion between two important allies, it is imperative to have greater participation by students and the civil society of the respective countries. Encouraging documentary filmmaking and sending young filmmakers and students from the United States to partner with Pakistani students is a way to do it.
Second, by showing more films about local Pakistani non-profits to audiences in the United States we can ensure that donations go to the right places and governments are pressured into supporting the right organizations. The Kerry Lugar Bill states: “The President is encouraged, as appropriate, to utilize Pakistani firms and community and local nongovernmental organizations in Pakistan, including through host country contracts, and to work with local leaders to provide assistance under this section.” The USA cannot determine on its own where the aid is to be allocated. Both governments must engage experts to pinpoint areas. Partnering local NGOs, with documentary filmmakers who present development efforts in an international sphere is an effective way to build awareness of where the funding should be going and thus influence both the Pakistani and US governments to support the right organizations.
After we finished editing and screened our first film about Opportunity International’s Banking on Education program, I realized the power of visual marketing to a donor audience. In the film, Mercy discusses her efforts to build a school, over a shot of her teaching a class. Capturing students’ reactions, recording all the sounds and presenting an authentic experience inside a Ghanaian classroom rang powerfully with viewers at our screening. In an environment where the media is inundated with negativity and an ever-popular focus on conflict zones it is highly unlikely that Pakistan could have any popular support for its development efforts. Visual tools can either impact the audience for the few minutes they are watching, or they can resonate with them long after the films are over. If our movies stick with audiences, and Opportunity International receives a boost in its donations then our work is done. We have influenced contributions by appealing to people’s generosity, we have also made them aware of what they are giving to. There are many Mercy Senyegahs in Pakistan who deserve to tell their stories. Focusing on the positives of aid relief through documentation doesn’t just promote a good cause-it changes mindsets.
And that is, after all, what US-Pakistan relations so desperately needs.
Nur Nasreen Ibrahim ’13 recently traveled to Ghana in June 2011 as a member of a filmmaking team with Students of the World, a non-profit media production company that works with university students to produce and leverage documentary media in order to garner support for innovative non-profits working around the world. She is a journalist for the Boston Team and has created promotional material for Opportunity International, a micro-finance initiative in Ghana.