Or do we have to manage everything yourself? Since the beginning of this year, we have been asking ourselves this question. What is behind it?
We have been supporting a children’s home in Nigeria for 18 months. However, we are not the project owner. The home is operated by a very large international organization.
The reason for our support is that the children in the home live in very poor conditions and are often sick. Therefore, with our cooperation partner Better Place Africa, we built a playground, made the home more welcoming, and provided donations in kind to improve the children’s living conditions.
At the beginning of 2025, our partner noticed that donations in kind were disappearing and that the equipment and food in the home were getting worse. Our contact with the national organization of the home’s operator in Abuja was ignored.
In January, the president of the HUMAN Foundation informed the global headquarters of the operating organization about the conditions. After repeated discussions, an investigation of the home was ordered. Unfortunately, some children had died in the meantime. A number of measures were decided: Employees were laid off, and improvements to food, medical care, and equipment in the home were promised.
Today, six months later, only a few of the promised measures have been implemented. Because we are concerned about the well-being of the children, we are not giving up. Unfortunately, our further inquiries and status reports have not been responded to. It is important to us to help the children, but the situation is difficult because:
- The responsibilities between the government and the international organization are not clearly defined.
- The international organization does not consider such projects to be its core mission.
- Our hands are generally tied. We could end up being banned from the premises.
We are now contacting the local press. We do not want to criticize large organizations in general. They are capable of carrying out large projects that we could never manage. However, it is clear that monitoring and review do not properly work, if the people in charge are not managed. We see this as one of our strengths, because we are closely involved in day-to-day operations with our own social workers we can rely on.
We believe that with these kinds of projects, “small” is actually better than “big” – for the benefit of the people we’re helping. That makes us a little proud.