GOVERNMENT DONORS
Governments and large multilateral institutions have always played a fundamental role in developmental work. Today, a shift is taking place and there is an increasing focus on self-help solutions.
How we work with you
Governments are accountable to their voters, and need to be able to show that money has been well spent on solutions that work, are efficient, and operate with a high degree of transparency. Hand in Hand creates partnerships that deliver maximum efficiency for every dollar spent, and that provide transparent and clear feedback.
Our approach is based on three cornerstones:
1. Clear values
We never compromise our basic pro-poor instinct, and we always act in a way that provides hope, dignity, and choice for the poor. We deliver that by adhering to four core values.
We provide a fishing rod rather than a fish – Aid has traditionally been dominated by a donor-centric view of “doing good” by simply giving things. We believe aid has to be taken to a new level, and has to provide tools for self-help. The whole aim of aid is to make the poor independent of it in the long run, so empowering people to live their lives on their own terms. One such tool is microcredit; others include intensive training in literacy, numeracy, finance, entrepreneurship and marketing. In addition, we encourage social mobility and the organisation of women into self-help groups, where sisterhood and support is created for each individual through a methodical process. The self-help approach stops treating the poor as a group, and treats them as individuals who have individual dreams and aspirations, just like everybody else. Our goal is to support people in realising their dreams.
We are holistic – We believe in seeing the whole individual, and providing support for creating a decent livelihood. We also support education of children, health screening and awareness, and environmental work in the areas of water and waste. We help our self-help group women start entrepreneurial Citizens’ Centres, where IT services are provided for small fees. In our village programme, we combine all these five core areas, to take the villages to a new level within two years.
We provide a business approach in the aid world – Traditional thinking was that a good heart and a good plan were enough for aid work. We believe in taking it to a new level of accountability, transparency and goal setting. Our partners want to know exactly how their money is delivering impact, and we constantly strive to measure and quantify. We are cost-effective, and just like effective companies, we do not run big fancy headquarters, but make maximum use of our main resources.
We think global and act local – Our approach has been developed and driven by the needs of the poor, from the micro level, with ideas tested on smaller groups of people, and then rolled out on a larger scale.
2. Creating value for our partners
Strong partnerships are always based on creating value for both partners. Hand in Hand is working actively on developing ideas and programmes that fit the needs of our governmental and multilateral agency partners, without compromising our core values. Because of the wide range of programmes and the large group of people we support, we can provide a wide variety of solutions.
3. Accountability and transparency
When we create joint plans with partners, we sign up to concrete deliverables. How many women will be trained in entrepreneurship? How many businesses will be created? How many children will be brought back into schools? What effects will this have? How will we work with local government? How many Citizens’ Centres will be implemented? How will we create a local biogas plant? We usually report every three or six months on the deliverables.
