Parteners in rural poverty alleviation NGO cooperation

The poverty in the rural areas of the developing countries in the Asian and Pacific region need not to be emphasized by giving the number of the poor which runs in millions. The deprivation of basic needs such as food, clothes and the shelter to the millions of people in the rural areas is such a reality that actual number does not matter. While the poor in the rural areas suffer from inadequate income at the present time, they suffer more from the long-term structural disadvantage due to the lack of access to proper education, health care, and proper sanitation. In most of the countries there are more illiterates among the rural poor, there is more infant mortality than among the urban dwellers and a greater incidence of disease. In such a situation there is a need to collaborate governmental, non-governmental, and international organizations to alleviate poverty and decrease the sufferings of the millions. The practical way to facilitate such collaboration would be to interact among the concerned partners of development and establish a cooperative approach. To work towards that approach, the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), on behalf of the Interagency Committee on Integrated Rural Development for Asia and the Pacific, held the Regional Symposium on NGO Cooperation on Rural Poverty Alleviation in 1991, The Pioneer Development Foundation for Asia and the Pacific, Manila jointly sponsored the Symposium.

The purpose of the Symposium was to forge closer cooperation with non governmental organizations (NGOs) in order to pursue the common goal of poverty alleviation and to help the disadvantaged people, the bulk of whom were small and landless farmers, rural artisans, and rural households headed by women. ESCAP had organized a regional symposium in 1988 to initiate a more systematic dialogue with NGOS to create mutually beneficial operational linkages. The current Symposium was focused on the alleviation of rural poverty. The Symposium premarily dealth with three areas: review of the activities undertaken by the NGOs in Asian developing countries for the alleviation of rural poverty, discussion on ways and means of NGO support of technology transfer for poverty alleviation, and formulation of a plan to strengthen the cooperation between NGOS and the United Nations agencies. It was recognized that the NGOs played an important role in poverty alleviation, particularly in income-generating activities, credit programmes, literacy and consciousness-raising. More specifically, they could play an effective role in working with the poor at the grass roots level in areas involved in addressing the determinants of poverty creation and the testing of new ideas, methods, programmes, and strategies of poverty alleviation.