Mama Lucy has mentioned that there are a number of non-profits that are fraudulent -they are money making schemes. They travel to Tanzania, set up shop, take some photos, create brochures, apply for grants and solicit donations but don’t achieve impact.

She cited example after example to us, but I don’t think we go it until today. It seemed so strange to our way of thinking, almost incomprehensible.

When we were in town a couple of days ago, Amanda set off in search of a post office. Instead of the post office, she found a non-profit that billed itself as serving widows, disabled people and orphans. We stopped in. We were greeted by a receptionist and the organization’s accountant.

Mom and Chelsea joined us as they sat us down. We asked what they did, and instead they told us what they stood for. We tried asking a few different ways. Finally, we cut right to the chase:

Us: Do you provide a home for the people you serve?

Them: No, but we plan to, these plans are still very new.

Us: OK, could you give an example of how you help people?

Them: Well, just the other day we delivered some chickens to people with AIDS, in a hospital.

I’ll spare you the pain of the rest of the exchange, but it turns out that foreign visitors bought the chickens, and the people from the non-profit delivered them. That was the only example they could give us. We assumed the organization was young, but after asking we learned that they’d been around for at least 8 years. (on a side note. they have a wonderful office with posters supporting breastfeeding and the secretary was bebopping to some fine RnB tunes).

We were dumbfounded.

We didn’t have time to discuss that visit until today. Amanda and I talked about it on the flight to Zanzibar. She was just as doubtful as I was about that non-profit. We concluded that it was an example of the fraud Mama Lucy talked about.

After we found our hotel in Stone Town, we started walking around the area. We saw a group of 20-something year olds leaving the beach. They started walking right behind us. I asked them “where are you from?” (something I rarely do).

Turns out they were Americans volunteering with two orphanages in Moshi and had traveled to Zanzibar on vacation. They were leaving the next morning.  We asked them about the orphanages they were working with, and one guy piped up and said “well, I’m auditing the one I’m working with and I think they might be stealing money. Check with me on Tuesday and I’ll let you know.”

You guessed it, the orphanage he is working with is the one Amanda stumbled upon last week, the one that Amanda and I had just talked about a couple of hours earlier! It was surreal. He said “Yeah, I felt so bad that we weren’t doing anything that I just bought some chickens and asked them to deliver them to some sick people.”

Amanda and I exchanged significant glances.  Then we briefly told him about Mama Lucy’s work to contrast his experience, and we’re hoping to get together when we return to Moshi.

manka This entry was posted on Monday, December 4th, 2006 at 8:19 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.