Association for the Development of Pakistan

[Mubarik Imam]

In today's conference call we agreed to spend about a month finding more EQ projects for our re-development fund. Given the sensitivity around the funding we'd like to ensure that the projects fulfill the following criteria:
1) Reputable NGO
2) Critical/Sustainable
3) Responsiveness of NGO to monitor project and interact with ADP

As a result it might make sense to reach out to the following for project referrals:
1) NGOs ADP has been involved with in the past
2) ADP volunteer network
3) EQ volunteers (who signed up then but have lost momentum since)

Please let me know if you think that the criteria should be modified or if we should be reaching out to other people so we can start sending out carefully targetted e-mails to solicit viable projects.

Any references on organizations/individuals working in the EQ would be great.

[Khurram Jamali]

Earlier today, I talked to a close contact, who is a doctor in the army, who was recently sent to work in army MASH camps in Kashmir.

He said that the problem in the earthquake affected area was two-fold.

Firstly, the Pakistani-based NGOs are not doing much workat all, now that international attention has been diverted elsewhere; most of them are more interested in fleecing international orgs to make some money for themselves.

The second problem he stated was an unwillingness on the part of locals to make an effort for themselves. People living in tents who DID receive donations for building a house ended up wasting the money on other thinsg, although he did not specify what things.

What was interesting was that he thought our money would be much better spent building either a hospital or a school rather than anything else as he said that infrastructure development is what is required more than anything.

In light of this, I think limiting our serach for projects to the list provided by Mubarik (NGOs ADP has worked with, EQ volunteers and ADP volunteers) is a great idea, and making sure we fulfill our standard criteria is also critical.

I would like to potentially add site visits, even if it costs us a little bit to get adp volunteers from Lahore/Islamabad, to the area, to the list of things that we MUST be able to fulfill, especially if the NGO we decide to fund is on the smaller side.

best,

Khurram

[Usman Khan]

thanks for the info khurram ... we'll keep this in mind for future EQ projects we consider