Where does the donation money goes ?

Couple of years ago, Rakesh Wadhwa had tried to answer this question through his column on The Himalayan Times. I really miss his columns now a days.

There was an example on his column, how UN staff reacted when the management was trying to cut down on cost by not providing ice water during office meetings. A hot discussion got lingered so long; that the another staff member started to calculate the cost of electricity running in the building, while they were discussing to pressure management to roll back the decision.

Long time back, when I was still in school, a flood swept some villages in its way down; and the news made the headlines. But, remember it was at the time when only one channel was on air in Nepali sky and just couple of dailies. Still the impact of the news was so much so that the donation drive was carried out from all walk of life to help the flood victims.

Some of my friends, from Bal Mandir used to go to Padma Kanya School at Dilli Bazar and this school also had took part in fundraising drive at that time.

Pattern to raise fund was like this: these school used to go on the streets blowing on mike about their arrival and then reason to collect fund and then the people in the house threw money from their rooms, which at times from as tall as 5 story building. Some of them came on the street to hand over the money but some just threw from their room. They collected the money on bedsheets and buckets and anything that could hold money. Most of the denominations of bills were small ones yet, as a matter of fact, people did gave money for this cause. They were very generous in their givings also. Personally I honestly do not know how much the school collected and calculated. But they sure must have given it back to the one, who where in the main in-charge of it; and then it must have gone to the flood victim at last.

Later on, girls who were studying in the school shared their story with us. How they hid the money inside of their upper undergarments and under their belly, which their school belt protected from falling and then some of the girls hid the money under their lower undergarments too.

At this point, I need to clear this out  here, that it was not just the girls from the Bal Mandir, who dole out that donation money; it was their classmates who grew up in family, too did the same thing as some of the girls from Bal Mandir did.

How many can come up with exact money, how much of those fund got misused or leaked in the process of collection, before it really found its final destination ?

Many years back, I was watching one special talk show on Nepal Television. It was an interaction programs with some top donor agency. One of the man who represented all the donor agency was giving his statistic on the show. How many loss during all this year flood and natural calamities had caused and how much money donor agency had given for the same reason. The help money for the natural disaster outcrossed all the damaged during all that period. This only reminded me one more conversation I had heard many years ago.

I do remember a line from Bernhard Rutz, a kind hearted swiss man; who said years before when I was still in college, “if you give a 100 dollar to an organisation here for a charity the needy will get exactly 9 dollar out of it.” Bernhard has devoted his life, to provide better life to the underprivileged children; who has been working in Nepal for more than 20 years now.  He was talking to a social worker here at a posh hotel in Kathmandu. Then, I was the one of two in his project. His zero tolerance on corruption for his work to run his foundation and education projects including others, has earned him so much respect and reputation in his immediate circle that, today his foundation is helping close to hundred people in a year. Now his foundation also help run a small children’s home here in Nepal.