Choosing Beneficiaries

Something I’ve thought about quite a bit since I arrived in Nyagatare is the methods NGOs and government organizations use to choose beneficiaries for their projects. Some projects – such as building wells, libraries, or health centers – are communal in nature and can benefit everyone in a certain area. But, other projects, such as providing scholarships, forming cooperatives, and granting loans, can only benefit a finite number of people, which raises the question – how do (and how should) organizations choose the beneficiaries for their projects?

Projects I’ve observed here in Rwanda choose their beneficiaries based on any number of factors. Some organizations choose people who were beneficiaries of their previous projects. Other times, projects target a particular group, such as orphans or people living with HIV (or a subset of a group) and benefit all members of that group in a certain area. For example, perhaps an organization will decide that the beneficiaries of a project will be all the female orphans in primary school in a particular community, or all the teenagers living with HIV in a particular community.

In these examples, an organization basically comes up with some criteria – which may or may not measure how much a person needs aid or how much they will benefit from it – to whittle a larger population down to a feasible number of beneficiaries. However, in some cases, not even that much thought is put into choosing beneficiaries. I’m fairly certain than beneficiaries are sometimes chosen literally at random – whoever an NGO worker runs into and can persuade to sign their name on a piece of paper becomes a beneficiary. Regardless of the criteria, in many cases, nobody from the NGO actually knows the people in the population or tries to determine who needs the aid the most or who will use it the most effectively.

And that’s what makes me wonder: would it be better if beneficiaries were chosen by people who actually knew them? If beneficiaries were chosen not based on whether they fit random demographic criteria, but instead on their aptitude, work ethic, and commitment to bettering their community, as well as the extent to which they could benefit from assistance? (As a disclaimer, I’m not saying NGOs should only provide assistance to the most intelligent, proactive members of a population – that could even create additional problems by exacerbating inequality.)

I really started thinking about this when one of my good friends here commented on how much his English has improved from spending time with me. While I’m thrilled to be helping him, I initially felt a little guilty that he’s benefiting from me being here more than other people are, based on the random event that we happened to become friends. Then I realized that the fact we’re friends isn’t really all that random. We’re friends largely because he’s a kind and genuine person who doesn’t harass me or ask me for things. After hearing about his difficult past, realizing that he works incredibly hard, and seeing how much he wants to help other people, it occurred to me that he is exactly the type of person I want to help – and the type of person who will effectively use whatever type of aid he receives.

So, it seems that choosing beneficiaries based on criteria like these could reward people who are hard-working and give assistance to people who would use it well. They should be selected by people who know them and the community, not by people who have chosen a demographic at random, and certainly not by NGO workers who are only concerned with meeting a target number of beneficiaries.