MSF WITHDRAWAL FROM #LAS-ANOOD & IMMEDIATE SOLUTION THROUGH LOCALIZATION LENCSES

 

The Brain drain affecting National NGOs.

Let’s jiggle our minds and look into the endless circle of brain drain affecting the local institutions and National NGOs in particular. First lest break it down the word brain-drain “Its literally the migration of the smart minds from any institution to another or cross country.

Looking into the vast unemployment rate in our country Somalia considered to be around 75 % with yearly new graduates from local universities adding weight to the already stretched in country employment capacity. Local institutions and organization especially the National NGO often is the primary bridging gap of employment accessibility to INGO/UN bodies. Any job opportunity in any INGO/UN calls for a lengthy requirement of previous experience with the most between 3 – 5 years. Let’s ask ourselves where do these experience pre-requisite years pop up since new graduate got mostly zero experience in their resumes.

Talking from NNGO stand, NNGO is quite open minded and believes in potential which give a leeway to new graduate to join and build their experience over the years, Its quite challenging to be mentoring and building the capacity of the fresh graduates but the beauty part of it is the outcome; turning these young, fresh, hardworking grads into very competent and experience colleagues. As the years go by, majority of the most bright minds in local institutions / NNGOs leaves and joins into the wider arena of INGO/UNs in pursue of career building and better benefits.

What drives away these bright minds.

I am quite familiar on both sides of the coin and worked in INGO vs NNGOs. So lets break it down, There is a whole complexity which forces bright minds be lost to the bigger actors and these includes but not limited to better pay which we all desire and as human, Sense of job security in NNGOs there is always the uncertainty that your job isn’t secured like in the real sense every contract comes to an end but the assumptions that if you working for INGO/UN and contract not ending is what makes the difference.

Workload; this is a whole another area of concern as there is a systemically design model of denial by the bigger actors to ensure that local institutions don’t stand firm  in the  longer term but rather invest in what I called soft capacity building or these days rephrased as “Localization”, The work load in most of the national is overwhelming high as they are personnel  wise stretched yet a staff might end up doing additional workload often named (Any Other Assigned Duty) and this is attributed to the fact that majority of the national NGOs don’t have all standard sectors due to financial limitations.  Let’s put into emphasize and compare two scenarios (1) Working in INGO you have a very clearly defined JD and certain role to perform yet in these same sectors there is an adequately designed staffing structure and you might be doing your part of the wider collective duties not overwhelming you with additional works  and (2) working in a local environment where there are wider range of work that you need to cover and with overwhelmingly pressing timelines in most cases in meeting deadlines, For instance a certain NNGO you are working for / work doesn’t have a dedicated M&E and Learning Unit yet an assessment needs to be done and you are brought on board besides your primary roles; This can be very frustrating at times. So, which one would you go for scenario 1 right? That is what I thought!

Benefits: This is the key leverage for most of local staff opting to join INGOs because frankly speaking its such tempting and a tool to attract local talent from local NGOs / institutions, who doesn’t want better pay, Health insurance, Bonus, Leave and exposure to wider learning space? Thus, the question that comes to you mind is why can’t NNGO provide all these leverages! Some key strategically established NNGOs have these benefits in place though not compatible to what is been offered in INGO counterparts while majority of local NGOs don’t even have the policies to leverage these benefits let alone financial capacity to cover this cost.

Promotion: In any work environment, the ideal target of any employee is to get promotion to the next step in his/her line of career and this a big different in comparing INGOs vs NNGOs. I am not insinuating that in NNGOs there aren’t promotion as there are some few NNGOs that pushes and promotes  their staff and update them in better position but it hardly comes with a significant increase in pay as NNGOs are generally tight financial wise while in INGOs there are numerous opportunities to prosper and have a promising career with promotion to some extend step up to International staff though they are very few in number but that itself is a significant progress within the INGOs for the Somali nationals, at least some thing to be proud off.

The endless circle of brain drain among the NNGOs will remain a nightmare for the local institutions / NNGOs and it can only be fixed when there is a reasonably acceptable leverages within the NNGOs structures to retain their bright minds in place so it transforms the whole notion of NNGOs being a bridge into INGOs/UNs.  In recent years; NNGOs became an intermediate University for fresh grads to meet expected experience to counter the scrutinized job entry into INGOs/UNs.

On personal note, it gives me a great pleasure when I meet colleagues I trained over the years transition into INGOs/UNs and yet we meet occasionally and hang out, crack some jokes along the way.

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P.S: Did you directly join INGOs/UNs as fresh grad or you worked in NNGOs. (Yes/No) Leave your comment.