Non-government organisations collecting charity need a certificate to achieve public trust. Chairperson, Pakistan Centre of Philanthropy Shahnaz Wazir Ali brought up the subject during a round table discussion arranged by the Pakistan Council for Social Sciences, here on Friday.
A German scholar Hans Frey at the Quaid-i-Azam University introduced Pakistani scholar Adil Najam's recent book 'Portrait of a Giving Economy'. Najam, a Pakistani scholar, now teaches at the Fletcher School of Diplomacy, Tufts University in the United States. The latest book by Najam is a sequel to 'Philanthropy a study of Pakistan Diaspora.
In the book Najam talks about the challenges in scarcity of baselines and basic literature and the long and dark shadows of 9/11 cast upon 500,000 Pakistanis living in the United States who contribute nearly $1 billion in charity for needy Pakistanis back home as well as poor of their own community living in the US.
The Pakistani expatriates were ready to do more to help their compatriots if only they could trust organisations to spend the money for real charitable cause. They could trust a few organisations such as Citizens Society, Edhi, Dil, Shawkat Khanum Hospital, the reviewing the book, Hans Frey stated that he found no fault in the methodology of the survey conducted by Najam except that it did not reflect the opinion of more Pakistanis living in the United States. Frey added it would have been such a big undertaking for about investigators who handled the survey. He also discussed lack of cohesion in the Diaspora their propensity to project differences rather than unity.
Shahnaz Wazir Ali's Centre had researched a number of criteria about sources of funds, outreach as well as NGO's output; she said a survey about these things must be done to establish an international level certificate like the ISO 1002.
Gul Adnan, an official of the Centre, argued it was essential to identify the trends to establish perceptions and preferences of charity among Pakistanis both inside the country as well as abroad.
A senior retired civil servant, Dr Qureshi said that significant philanthropic trends is found among Pakistanis who spend about Rs 70 billion annually on charity and in giving alms. Nevertheless, the sad fact is that the real needy persons do not know where to get help. At this stage Kashmala continued her argument about compiling the list of authentic organisations that perform such task.
A scientist, Dr Anwar Nasim talked about the necessity of searching for genuine organisations to establish sincere trust with the public since most people were most willing to help. 'We should not depend only on NGO's - for a good cause every body must act as a 'non-government individuals.'
A sad fact that became known in the discussion was that no authentic data was available about individual help rendered by overwhelming numbers of citizens who helped their fellow citizens during the devastating October 8 earthquake, two years ago. 'We asked the government for the data but they have none. Obviously they paid no attention to documenting their contribution,' Shahnaz Wazir Ali remarked.
It is in this background that the President of the Social Sciences Council, Dr Inayatullah, spoke of the need for the revival of Social Sciences Association in Pakistan.
The Council was compiling data on the number of teachers in political sciences departments (there are only six of them) in Pakistani Universities, their qualification and their previous departments.