AFTER 29 years of giving yeoman service as President of the St. Francis Community Developers, Alex Foster has plans of enlarging his territory from being the umbrella sheltering 59 community development groups, to the source empowering non-governmental organisations (NGOs) throughout the country’s ten administrative regions.The recipient of more than 12 international awards and accreditations from more than 200 donor agencies here and around the world, Foster has pledged to give his life, if that is what it takes, for Guyana to regain the support of donors those who have left over the years for a possible countrywide eradication of poverty.
Known for his overwhelming contributions to development in the Mahaica/Berbice and East Berbice/Corentyne regions, he was recently commended by President David Granger during a function at his hometown Rosehall to mark his organisation’s 29th anniversary among other celebratory activities.
“Over the decades, this NGO has demonstrated its commitment to the Region; has demonstrated its service to the population. We want to see more like yours; we want to see more NGOs working to enhance living conditions; to remove inequalities; and to overcome the problems,” President Granger said.
“St Francis Community Developers has become a model community organisation; it has earned, and enjoys, significant support as is evident here. The presence of its collaborating partners, which include international donor organisations, the diplomatic community, and local businesses and civil society groups, testifies to the high public esteem in which St. Francis Community Developers is held,” he added.

WHERE IT ALL STARTED
Speaking with the Guyana Chronicle on Friday, Foster said he had visited the Office of the Presidency prior to St. Francis’ anniversary celebrations with a proposal for funding the establishment of St. Francis as an office offering consultancy services for weaker community development NGOs.
“I had approached the President’s office for funding support to set up consultancy offices at St. Francis, so that we can be able to use our 29 years of experience to work full-time, and have a full-time staff specially dedicated towards the development of weaker groups,” Foster said.
At that meeting, he said, President Granger expressed an interest in poverty reduction at an extended level.
He quoted the President as saying, “I would like to reduce poverty; and for all to have the good life, everybody has to be on board.”
As the President explained, Foster said, he has his sights set on those international donor agencies that have pulled out of Guyana, and as such is therefore interested in empowering community development NGOs countrywide, lifting them to a standard that will see donor agencies again sitting up and taking interest in Guyana.
To his credit, the President refused to offer him funds for just Berbice, but gave him a better bargain, in that he proposed that Foster heads a countrywide NGO empowerment campaign, which his government has interest in funding instead.
Said Foster, “The President wants the international donor agencies that left to return to Guyana. If they are going to return to Guyana, all international donor agencies have set guidelines that have to be followed before community groups can be able to access their funding.”

MODUS OPERANDI
By way of explaining how they operate, Foster said many local community development NGOs usually begin with an individual who has a passion to see progress, or to help within his community. He then recruits persons with similar interests, but with no formal training or adequate knowledge of getting it done, and take it from there.
“Most of the community-based organisations,” he said, “will not be able to access funding from these organisations, because they have to get audited financial statements.
“And to get audited financial statements, one will have to keep proper records to be audited; they will have to get five-year strategic plans, whereas many groups barely survive on a day-to-day basis…”
Noting that it is high time NGOs expand beyond koker repairs and bus-shed building and create major project goals within a five-year span, thereby developing a track record donor agencies can trust, Foster said donor agencies have a tendency of weighing the capacity of an organisation to execute a project within a given financial budget, based on the ones they have managed previously.
“Other than the track records, they would like to know that you have staff that is capable of delivering the service,” he said.
But because most NGOs do not have the financial capacity to pay workers, they fail to attract the best quality of staff. “But what they do attract is passionate people who want to serve; who want to give back, but have their limitations when it comes to satisfying the requirement of the donor agency.”
And while donor agencies may host their meetings in upscale venues, most members of poor groups do not have the resources to do that, and find it difficult to even find transportation to be present sometimes.

KNOWING THE DIFFERENCE
Foster pointed out, too, that NGOs would do much better if those behind them have a clear understanding of the difference between community development and charitable work.
“Community development,” he explained, “is empowering people to help themselves. Charitable work, on the other hand, is when we want to feel good about our soul to get to Heaven, and we go out and feed a couple of people, and say a few prayers and we do little holy things.”
The new project he proposes initiating will empower grassroots groups in order to build their capacity to access funding from the international donor agencies, and create network opportunities with faithful and willing donors with interest in community development.
Some of those agencies, Foster said, have already expressed interest in collaborating with the President’s initiative.
“Food for the Poor Guyana,” he said, “is fully on board with us, that when we go to communities and work and we can identify the need and bring it to them, they will seek to support those groups.
“And we are signing up various international and private sector agencies who want to work with us, so that when we go to the communities, we can take them with us to share their background information so that groups could apply or access their services that they are offering.”

ONE-OF-A-KIND TRAINING

Foster also spoke about a plan by his NGO, St. Francis Developers, to establish a one-of-a-kind community developmental training complex, which will provide theoretical and practical preparation of potential community developers in Guyana and the wider Caribbean.
But in order for such a plan to be executed, Foster said he asked President Granger during the organisation’s anniversary celebrations last month for St. Francis to be issued a transport for the entire plot of land which it uses as its head office.
Said he: “We have asked for the land to be transported to St. Francis. To truly develop the land, and for donors to invest, we have to show that we have the land.
“For the development of St. Francis and the development of the community, we want to put 15 more buildings on the land in the next five years. The purpose of that is to create the first and only community developmental training complex in the entire world. I have travelled 43 countries, and what I do not notice is a complex or an institution that caters to the holistic and comprehensive development of grassroots residents or developers who want to make an impact on their community.”
And while international donors ask for various requirements from NGOs to meet criteria for funding, no one offers training; preparing the organisations to meet such criteria. And while one can be trained in development support communication and similar courses at the University of Guyana, not all NGO officials meet the criteria for university entry.
“All the international donors are asking us for fantastic requirements, but nobody is training us to meet those requirements, so that village can create a training environment,” Foster said, adding:
“To enter the University of Guyana, you have to get Math and English, and you have to meet certain entry requirements. The people who drive community development in Guyana and work at the local level do not have those requirements. So, what happens to them? They are the engine that is expected to grow their community without that training; so we want a responsive environment, where ordinary persons can come in and be trained.”
He said St. Francis has already begun talks with the Commonwealth Office to get the University of the West Indies (UWI) to accredit its certification whenever the village project begins, since it also targets the Caribbean market.
Community development, he says, is the most powerful engine behind general development, and he is inspired by the United States of America which he sees as the champion of Community Development.
“Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey,” he said, “are all community developers. Many persons are leaving fantastic jobs and getting involved in Community Development. In Haiti, community development attracted many international celebrities. It can happen here, but it will have to happen at a different level, due to the fact that our poverty is different.”
As opposed to the belief in some quarters that poverty stems from the lack of money, they at St. Francis believe that poverty is caused by the absence of hope, since those without hope and dreams have nothing to inspire them to carry on.
“St. Francis approves that community development can be a career option, and that is why we are setting up the village: To make community development a career opportunity,” he told the Guyana Chronicle.

By Shauna Jemmott