how to enhance the accountability of donors??
Yes and since we have had an international community that has lost is charm in Nepal apparently for reasons like their too much involvement int he constitution writing process (by involving in some of the contentious issues of identity, ethnicity how can they rebuild the trust and work towards reconstruction and rehabilitation after the earthquake? Any inputs?
When you say “international community” - you mean other high level organizations (that are supposed to represent their populace), right? I am not informed on the (probably important) details on why what went wrong - but I’ll risk a general statement:
Most of the time the “average Jane/Joe” on the street has very little interest to meddle in far away countries internal matters (unless they were pushed by the media). However the high level organizations supposedly representing them strangely enough often develop strong notions about how things are to be managed in far away places. If these organizations are based in democratic countries, one should generally be able to bridle them a little by simply asking for proof that they are acting as faithful representatives of their constituents opinions…
Do you have links that work as a “primer one what went wrong the last time”?
Need of holistic approach maybe?
Interesting issue and wanted to be part of ongoing discussion. Much appreciation for the effort @meenabhatta.
Response to author’s question:
Q.1. First: how to keep the existing community spirit alive and mobilize it for the purpose of reconstruction activities;
A. 1. Creating environment of “TRUST”. Resort to the right based partnership approach with local community in reconstruction activities. Empowerment along with reconstruction.
Q.2. Second, how best can international community help to reconstruct Nepal and maintain community resiliency at the same time;
A.2. International community should;
-Focus on long term reconstruction approach and also focus on human resource aspect.
-Need assessment and must partnership with locals before finalizing plans.
-Financial assistance is an obvious area where international community is indispensable.
-Bring to Nepal best practices and knowledge, expertise etc.
-International community need to practice what they preach.
Q.3. Third and perhaps the most important one is can these groups of ‘island of civility’ be trusted enough to take up broader responsibilities in shaping Nepal’s political future and civil society?
A.3. It looks promising but it’s too early to decide. With right mentorship and development it is very much possible for the groups to be next face of Nepal’s politics and CSOs.
I would like to identify some of the issues that might be interesting in the ongoing debate of reconstruction. I am making my comments being based on issues raised broadly in public domain and which needs to be addressed if we are seeking more than Band-Aid approach in Nepal in relation to post disaster reconstruction.
#Question of Transparency/Accountability:
The government of Nepal does not have credible history of accountability, the question relating to accountability of government in fund mobilization has often been in question. During the post-quake phase, the accountability of government in terms fundraising and mobilization has be subjected to severe skepticism from world community.
In the current context not only government but transparency of financial aspect of NGOs and INGOs has been issue of discussion. Please refer to: http://myrepublica.com/t20/item/22748-commentary-ingos-show-us-your-numbers.html
We have also witnessed claims and counter claims from CSOs and the government relating to post quake relief activities. CSOs have also alleged government of not cooperating and even playing obstructive role in post-earthquake relief activities. Please refer to: http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/earthquake-relief-nepal-could-be-better-if-civil-society-s-hands-weren-t-tied
The broader concerns of reconstruction, Communitarian Approach and other opportunities can only be materialized being based on principle of accountability and transparency. Accountability and transparency of stakeholder involved.
#Post-Disaster need of Nepal is not an ad-hoc need
Nepal is and always have been prone to natural disaster including but not limited to earthquake, landslide, flooding etc. The post disaster reconstruction this time should include capacity building aspect of locals as well. Let’s construct the human side as well i.e. working towards generating specialized human resources {pool of specialized human resources} in disaster management, crisis management, search and rescue, academic, analyst, economist, scientist etc.
We need expert in these area with contextual knowledge. When we focus on re-construction, we need to focus on this side as well. So, when disaster hits us next time, at least we have specialized people who knows how to lead the volunteers and those who want to help. This will make the effort more effective.
We need post disaster specialist in various domain as Nepal is susceptible to natural disaster.
#Pre-emptive steps in maintenance and assessment
The reconstruction approach should (mutually) promote the idea of pre-emptive maintenance and assessment of buildings. Particular attention is desirable in case of cultural heritage. One of the very pervasive practice of government of Nepal is absence of regular monitoring and maintenance. This is applicable in case of cultural heritage, roads, bridges, government including (including embassies abroad).
So the reconstruction aspect should also alarm government and general public about need and benefits of timely assessment, maintenance and observation of buildings, Sites etc.
#Nepalese youth and social media
The period of earthquake and days aftermath showed us how intriguingly Nepalese youth are involved and active in social media including twitter, Facebook, etc. We should actively use this platform to inform the users regarding the reconstruction and issues associated with it.
This live in age where information is power and social media is platform for sharing information. The reconstruction program must use social media to share stories, update information and generate public opinion.
The “crowd funding” using Facebook as promotional platform and trend on twitter #GoHomeIndianMedia shows how much powerful social media can be in creating and sharing opinion.
Social media mobilization must be part of reconstruction as information platform.
#Need of Co-ordination and synchronization of effort.
The support and helping hands extended to Nepal was unprecedented, however one might argue that it lacked co-ordination and efforts were not synchronized in appropriate manner. There has been news reports of disaster site with overabundance of relief material and some places being unseen and unheard of.
The mobilization of resources, need assessment, equitable distribution relief has issue of concern and this must be seen as important variable in reconstruction process.
youth leadership and glimpse of hope
During the post-earthquake phase Nepalese youth has shown immense hope with the leadership and volunteering spirit. There has been various notable group of individual, youth led organization that have demonstrated that the next generation of youth more than capable of leadership. With appropriate mentoring and appreciation this youth who are helping Nepal to rise can lead the country.
We need to focus on next generation leaders and need to start mentoring them.
Will come back with more input.
Regards,
Barun
@barun_ghimire thank you for joining us and sharing your valuable inputs. And yes, as you said, it is high time for us to start mentoring the new group of public sphere that emerged after the earthquake so that such voluntarily sprung youth base just don’t dwindle away…
Some more thoughts??
After the massive earthquake that grappled our nation the next challenge that lies ahead is the reconstruction. The ongoing need assessment has pointed out the requirement of Rs 666 billion for the recovery drive. For this entire reconstruction process the government has also revised the budget ceiling of foreign aid and is in a spree of convincing donors to assist for reconstruction. See.
The government of Nepal has recently decided to set up a reconstruction body to rebuild the damaged infrastructures. For that a donor’s meet is being held on 25th June 2015 before the actual reconstruction process is rolled out. In this meet, donors and the government bodies are coming to a face to face dialogue after probably more than a decade. The government intends to use the platform to explain the world how it plans to rebuild the country and for the donors who have been doling out funds worth billions in the name of post-disaster management the meeting will certainly be an opportunity to restate their long-running concerns.
There is no doubt that any post-disaster effort to restore affected communities needs to employ a broad inclusive approach but what we also need is a holistic technical guidance, for not just bringing together the different sectors but also for addressing the process and the physical products of reconstruction activities – the ‘software’ along with the ‘hardware.’ The challenge for us is now the implementation part – see.
Amidst all this, larger issues and concerns lie ahead of us and these needs some serious attention:
Trust builds up gradually
I think Meena asks exactly the right questions. Without trust, community-driven initiatives will not be supported by INGOs or government and will not play a significant role in reconstructions, even though they could do many tasks more efficiently. And currently, there is no such trust.
So how does trust develop? When I buy things online, I have to pay before I get anything, so obviously I need to trust the seller and look for a trustable seller. If there are not enough signs of trustability (like prior experiences by others), I would start with a small “test” order and if that goes well, do the real order.
And like such interpersonal trust, trust between organizations can build up from past collaborations. These collaborations would start small like a “test”, then gradually become larger, until finally the (I)NGO donor organizations each have some initiatives led by alternative leaders to whom they can entrust substantial amounts of resources. This trust building would need some “success assessment” done by the donor organizations, but especially the guts to start trusting these “crazy” uninstitutionalized grassroots activities to get things done. The first round of trust might only be enough for 1 Lakh NPR … but for a start, that would be just fine.
Once the large organizations have to start coordinating lots of small grants, @Alberto’s point about the coordination costs becomes valid though. Maybe this trustbuilding (4 rounds with grants from 1000 USD to 100 000 USD) could be outsourced to an organization specializing in connecting communities with institutions … 
Randomized trial
I am out of my depth here. I do not really have much to say about building institutions in general, though I have dome some highly specific institution design in the past. A small contribution: it would be incredibly forward thinking if alternative leaders were given freedom to operate on a few villages, so that different approaches to relief could be prototyped. Even better would be to mount a randomized trial assessment on it. Take 10 villages, with broadly similar characteristics and randomly assign 5 of them to structured NGO and the other 5 to alternative leaders (whatever that means). Then go back in two years and compare the two groups. I know, it’s just a fantasy.
It is a long shot for many reasons, one of which is capacity. Grassroots communities are extremely smart and productive, but they tend to be small, and alternative leaders tend to be few and overwhelmed. Supposing government and other institutional actors threw the door wide open, how many alternative leaders would be ready to step in?
mutually rewarding benefits
True that @Alberto. Grassroot communities tend to be small and less formalised and for that matter collaboration with other partners take time and effort and skills in communication and negotiation which they might lack. If even many alternate leaders and grassroots communities would want to collaborate the challenge would be how not to obscure the visibility and identity of such organizations. Sharing one’s assets with others involves risk (human resource in this case) and vulnerability. Collaborating with a larger organization involves a power imbalance that can be dangerous, especially if the larger organization doesn’t fully respect the smaller one. So, may be devising ‘mutually rewarding benefits’ could be one of the way to build trust among the grassroot communities and other agencies and also to enhance partnership?
More of a coordination costs issue
As you say, @meenabhatta, collaboration takes time. Collaboration with formal institutions takes a lot of it, because you are dealing with people who are paid to coordinate, so (1) can afford to take time and (2) have trouble appreciating the constraints of non-institutional actors in this sense. In a Western civic participation context, the typical situation is: let’s have an open meeting with citizens! It will be Wednesday at 10 am. Now, ordinary people are working on weekdays during business hours, and they simply cannot come. These decisions are rarely debated; they are simply made on the basis of the calendars of public decision makers. And yet, they cast a long shadow on the whole process, because essentially they mean: this process is only for professionals. This cannot but reduce diversity, which in some cases will be OK but in others will have very negative consequences.
One of my fights is for all civic engagement to be done outside business hours (though this does tax the civil servants) or, even better, with asynchronous methods. It is one of the reasons I like “online and open” so much; people decide when and if to participate, so they will typically engage when they have time, are feeling relaxed and creative and committed. The beauty is that nobody needs to keep track of who cares about what, or when people have time: individual decisions result in an optimal outcome.
Maybe we – Edgeryders – should be designing and manning a dialogue space that works for people who are not paid to take the time to this coordination work?
@meenabhatta I guess “The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster” by Jonathan M. Katz can be very interesting read considering this ongoing debate and questions.
the book
I have the book in epub format. If you are interested I can email you the book.
epub
Alright @barun_ghimire, I will find the way to transform it to PDF. My email is estebantejedor@yahoo.es
Thanks!
Oops copyright issue
@esteban, thanks for the offer to help with this. Unfortunately we can’t let you link the PDF here since it’s probably a copyrighted work and this is a public space … we would like to operate this website without interference with law enforcement for some time still 
Hope you understand. What you do outside of this public space is of course your own business. In many countries, copying any book for friends and family is legal, for example.
I understand
Ah! Alright then.
So if anyone would like to have it, please let me know 
Here are some other options
If you look on google scholar your will find a couple of works that have cited the book in their work:
Quite a few of them are freely, and legally, available for download. Often they will make you see the original book in a new light as well. And if it is on research gate it is relatively easy to get in touch with the expert authors without disturbing them too much.
Alternatively just go to google books and let their lawyers deal with the copyright issues for the time being.
There is also some more material I linked to in and under: https://edgeryders.eu/en/comment/17265#comment-17265
@barun_ghimire thank you for letting us know about this literature. will try to get my hand on it. You could share that with me , the PDF version.
@Alberto it might be cool to have engagements of people through online mediums, but apparently we here in Nepal still do not have a strong online population so that might be a challenging task. Maybe people need to have a separate orientation on the benefits of getting online. Yeah a challenging task as i said!!!
Lots of leaders sounds like a great idea
Heaven knows there is no shortage of issues to lead on. 
I think this conversation is very useful today during the covid19 crisis. Paging @MariaEuler @hires and @nadia.
We now see how a global crisis can work out so differently depending on the local responses.
I am curious if over time we will see a net impact of community work and solidarity on the responses and especially recovery.