BUILDING BACK BETTER: RESILIENCE IN COMMUNITY-DRIVEN ORGANIZATIONS AMIDST COVID 19

Elohim Development Association is a community driven organization found in Bombo, Uganda. Bombo is home to the largest military barrack in Uganda and the Nubian Community who are unique in culture. These two factors largely influence the standards of living and culture of Bombo. Duncan Akihiga founded Elohim Development Association to take care of the many children left destitute in the rapidly growing slum in Bombo. Over time, he was able to develop a vocational training center for youths, a re-entry program for girls who dropped out of school and a home to 53 children who were left homeless and destitute. With community and donor support, Duncan was able to grow Elohim into a great center that was critical to creating change in the lives of the youth of Bombo.

With the rest of the world, Elohim Development Centre was hit by the adverse effects of COVID-19. While the lock down provided an opportunity for the staff and children to bond with each other, it also provided space for many vices to take root. A chat with Duncan revealed that the most depressing aspect was the girls they `lost`. Most of the school-going girls cannot be traced-especially those whose education was supported from their respective homes. 2 of the girls have gotten married through early marriages. Most devastating is interference by parents in the quest to get justice for the girls and get them back to school.

At the police station, some parents testify that their girls are actually above 18 and claim to have `lost` their birth certificates. Many times, this happens when the family of the girl has received dowry or when the parents fear that a guilty verdict would send them to jail. As such the girl is in a quagmire- to protect her parents and remain married or to face stigma and send her parents to jail. The situation is dire. This is just but one of the many difficult situations community driven organizations face in their quest for justice for girls. Elohim had 15 candidates set to sit their national secondary exams. Only 5 have come back to the center after the lock down was lifted meaning 10 will not do their national exams and are deemed to have dropped out.

 When COVID-19 hit, all programs came to a halt as they could no longer be supported. All focus turned to feeding the Orphaned & Vulnerable Children and sustaining the center. Costs like food, water and garbage disposal went through the roof and it was no longer sustainable to buy water. Money had been paid to schools as tuition on scholarships when COVID hit, this money seemed to have been a lost expenditure as schools did not facilitate a refund and the school year timelines were no longer clear.

One thing that hampered urgent interventions was the lack of flexibility from donors and funders who immediately suspended their programs and funding in the wait-and-see period. Recurrent costs like the food, water, safe house provision were not catered for as they are usually deemed unsustainable and unmeasurable. Unfortunately, this is the situation for Elohim and many Community Driven Organizations. This situation was exacerbated by the fact that government regulations demanded that high population centers have all residents tested at their own cost and retested after a specified amount of time.  This was at a time when COVID-19 testing was still quite high at 120USD per person/ child.

Elohim had a difficult choice to make, spend their remaining resources on testing to keep the home open or close down and have the children go back to the streets. Duncan, their director chose to keep the doors open. Hoping for well-wishers to feed the children. Luckily for him, AMPLIFY GIRLS offered COVID Relief Fund that was to be utilized in an unrestricted manner.

In examining the negative impacts of COVID-19 on community driven organizations, we realize that it takes a huge toll on the founders who are forced to make difficult decisions that they did not envision at the time of their establishment at the expense of their mental health. The stigma that came with COVID led to children in the home discriminating against each other on the basis of suspicion and gossip. The children also began to indulge in sexual acts during their extensive free times which led to an urgent appeal for SRHR trainers and volunteers to conduct continuous training. After a few months, weighed down by the weight of it all, Duncan had to make the difficult choice to appeal to his aging mother to take in some of the children to prevent further erosion of behavior and to alleviate stigma.

Despite the stringent adherence to COVID-19 guidelines, Elohim`s accountant and a research volunteer were infected with COVID. The accountant survived but the volunteer passed on. This unfortunate incident increased the operation costs significantly as the government was even more strict on having everyone tested and insisted that all vocational training rooms had to reduce their capacity by half thereby mandating Elohim to build more rooms to accommodate their number upon resuming normal learning. For Elohim, building back better means starting a fresh as is for many community driven organizations.

It is important for the donor and philanthropy community to understand that scale in traditional development has to change. Community Driven Organizations are front line and first respondents to women and girls in the community but somehow, they still get less than 10 % of total funds disbursed every year. In the year 2018, less than 1% of the $150 billion in official development assistance reached local actors. Global actors continue to come together to commit to implementing localization like in the establishment of the Grand Bargain[1]. The resolutions of such global commitments have still not been felt at the grassroots level. There have been suppositions that community driven organizations do not have capacity to administer the funds they seek.

This could not be further from the truth. This a guise advanced by the development sector to justify the big budgets that go into high level advocacy forgetting the grassroots. The notion of sustainability is also another bunch of hogwash. As much as governments provide the laws to enable protection of women and girls and re-entry back to school, it is community driven organizations that have to urgently provide safe houses in a matter of life and death, they have to provide holistic care in the form of counseling, an safe environment to study, access to SRHR and uniforms for the girl to be able to perform well in school as opposed to just attending school.

We must urgently appeal to actors of localization and the donors’ sector to restructure the development scale to shift Community Driven Organizations to the center as opposed to the bottom of the pyramid. Elohim`s story is triggering, but it is the story of many community driven organizations across the region. We must change this narrative, collectively. Join AMPLIFY GIRLS in advocating for a shift in funder conversations. We need to put our collective efforts together to demonstrate the impact of CDOs & recognize their leadership role in development and mobilize funding for their work for the betterment of our women and girls.

[1] The Grand Bargain, launched during the WHS in Istanbul in May 2016, is a unique agreement between some of the largest donors and humanitarian organizations who have committed to get more means into the hands of people in need and to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the humanitarian action