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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Social networks, resources, and international NGOs in postwar Sierra Leone |
Author: | Bolten, Catherine E. |
Year: | 2014 |
Periodical: | African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review (ISSN 2156-7263) |
Volume: | 4 |
Issue: | 1 |
Pages: | 33-59 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Sierra Leone |
Subjects: | NGO social networks wages poverty |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/africonfpeacrevi.4.1.33 |
Abstract: | The wages paid to local employees by international NGOs and the grants given to community organizations are an understudied aspect of the effect of aid on war-affected countries. In this article, the author explores how wages and grants become part of social networks in Makeni, in northern Sierra Leone, and argues that cash infusions cause tension within networks and between payees and INGOs because organizations refuse to 'inflate' wages and grants, and yet recipients suffer extreme poverty and support vast social networks. INGOs do not want to pay more than the earnings of low-level civil servants, though popular perception is that they can and should. Community-based organizations (CBO's) also begin their activities by repaying debts and giving them limited life spans. These tensions contribute to mistrust in communities of INGO's and CBO's, and to perceptions of hoarding, which adversely affects the willingness of residents to cooperate and may hasten program failure. Bibliogr., notes, sum. [Journal abstract] |