Rivoningo NGO Forum

A side benefit of getting so many drop-in centres together at training has always been the opportunity for them to network, and as such a parallel project my NGO and I have been working on is forming a networking organization for all of the drop-in centres in the Greater Giyani area. They started meeting in January on a quarterly basis, elected a management committee, and have tried to have a number of events for the OVCs. Only one of them, a huge soccer tournament, ever actually came to fruition, but the soccer tournament was a big success. The others floundered when centres and the forum balked at continuing to spend so much money transporting orphans to the events, which might mean as many as four taxi rides for the round trip for anywhere between 12-150 orphans per centre.

In March or April, I formulated a constitution with them so that we could apply for NPO (non-profit organization) status and thus be eligible for government funding and independent grants. We spent about four hours with representatives from every drop-in centre putting together what they wanted in their constitution, and at the time I was really proud of them. Instead of copying and pasting fromthe two generic constitutions making the rounds which every centre changes the name at the top of to adopt as their own (one of which, by the way, has a large number of errors), we put together something that was unique to this forum and reflective of its needs. I typed up the document under the assumption that the management committee would approve it at their next meeting.

After the next meeting, which I wasn't able to attend, I got the draft
back with a number of cryptic changes in the margins. Some of them were cogent but didn't make sense; some were legible but not cogent; and some were simply illegible. I asked my supervisor if she could decipher any of them, but in the end we gave up. Fast forward to today. There was another management committee meeting, and one item on the agenda was the constitution. It seems in the intervening months everyone has forgotten what changes they wanted made, and the draft with those corrections has disappeared. Still, it was agreed that changes had to be made, though they were non-specific as to which areas they had problems with. The only concrete suggestion made was that they should add more aims and objectives, but they didn't know what they wanted to add and deferred it.

Personally, I think the constitution is just lovely the way it is. It fills all of the requirements listed on the form and my supervisor checked it over for obvious flaws, too. However, the odds on whether or not it will be completed before I finish my service in seven months are even money.