Gov’t ‘moving to give Third Sector second chance’

By Ryan Gilkes 

The Third Sector – non-governmental organisations (NGOs) including community groups, voluntary organisations, faith and equalities groups, charities, social enterprises, co-operatives, and community interest organisations – is critical to development, the minister for the third sector, Colin Jordan, has said.

Speaking this week at a workshop on governance and leadership for high-performing boards in organisations, he told participants: “Government recognises, as it seeks to take care of an entire country, that it does not have the resources to reach where you can reach. So we have to use some of the resources we have, to put behind you and your organisations, so that your organisations can reach where we can’t reach.  

“It makes sense, even from a purely financial perspective. If you can achieve the objectives by putting resources behind organisations then it makes sense … even businesses. However, this goes beyond business because we were talking about the impact on people.” 

The workshop was the seventh in the past two to three years and was aimed at strengthening third-sector organisations. Past sessions covered proposal writing, accounting and bookkeeping.

On the funding of third-sector organisations, the minister noted that the government was acutely aware that money was needed to ensure that such bodies could function, as much of the work they did could not simply be a labour of love for what they do or people.

“Even in the Bible, there is a verse [Ecclesiastes 10:19] that says money answereth all things,” the minister declared. “You need resources beyond capacity building.  Government has reserved five per cent of the renewable energy pie for third-sector organisations.  It is much more complicated than just making that statement because there are many, many third-sector organisations and many organisations that will need assistance financially.

“That said we’ve started the conversation regarding how we can make that commitment or reality for third-sector organisations. We are still in the process of working through how we can make that happen. There has to be some kind of mechanism, some kind of framework within which they can be that participation and then the distribution of funding.  But that is a work in progress.”

He revealed part of the government’s commitment to further developing the third sector is to create a framework with the legislative framework that allows for the centralisation of organisations so that in the event they approach donors there is some measure of credibility.

“That framework came out of some extensive work conducted by the Caribbean Policy Development Centre (CPDC), which is the regional umbrella organisation for third-sector organisations,” Jordan said. “They’ve done some work with respect to creating a white paper which they have presented to us which calls for some degree of legislation. When people hear legislation, [they] immediately start to tremble and I don’t understand why because you know, we often say [for example]  that the laws against speeding should only scare you if you are speeding.  

“But to allay any fears that you may have, the third sector legislation is intended not to stifle, it is intended not to tell you what you’re supposed to do because government is not getting involved with that. It is really to create an orderly system that allows for your work to be integrated into the national effort because all of you are operating in the country. And so we need to be focused on what we’re doing. We need to build credibility, and we want, from government’s perspective, to establish any structures that are necessary to allow us to engage properly with you.” (RG)