Financial Times

World Bank offers grants to small NGOs
The World Bank last week announced the third year of its Small Grants programme for 2006 under the theme of youth involvement and development.
The programme is in contrast to the usual World Bank operations where the bank deals with all government organisations. “These grants are directly provided to small NGOs. This year’s theme is youth,” said World Bank Country Director Peter Harrold speaking at the launch of this year’s awards.

“The $5,000 grants have gone a long way to help leave lessons for tomorrow’s social development,” said Chandra Jayaratne from Sarvodaya presenting the final report of the organisation’s project “the voice of the community leaders”.
It was a project launched under the Small Grants programme last year focusing on listening to Tsunami affected communities and assessing the impact the aid and the rebuilding efforts had on the community.

Further, Mr. Jayaratne said that there is a new social class which has been created by the government imposed 100-metre line and that there is a lot of enmity that developed among the groups because of this division. This year, however, the project proposals received by the World Bank numbered only 47 compared to the 187 received last year when the theme was social accountability.

This year’s grants have been given to six local organisations to carry out projects mainly focusing on youth skills development and addressing specific problems facing Sri Lanka’s youth.

The six are: the Sri Lanka Youth Parliament, Colombo; the Sri Lanka Environmental Journalists Forum, Kotte; Sri Lanka Peace Development Society, Haliela; Derana Community Development Foundation, Waskaduwa; Organisation for Environment & Children’s Rights Preservation, Parakaduwa; and Total Development Association, Hambantota.

The general opinion of project leaders who received the grant this year to carry out their programmes in the community was that today’s youth lacked a proper “target” or “aim” in their lives. “They try to use the existing opportunities but never pursue a target,” said P. W. Wanniarachchi, project leader of Total Development Association, Hambantota.

The projects chosen under the programme focus on career skills, development capacity building and youth leadership in various avenues.

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