Giant_and_Dwarf-FIN

Giant and Dwarfwhich humanitarian aid is more apropos than development assistance. A special window,administered by the Slovak embassy in Nairobi, could be established using this assistancewithin a program to expand small grants.Objectively, Slovak ODA has no chance of playing a major role with any added value inSouth Sudan, but our potential contribution to development is easy to access and highlyurban Kenya-Tanzania-Uganda border triangle could be many times, and perhaps exponentiallyhigher, and for the same amount of money. Cold hard mathematics must be employedto provide the only rational and responsible answer: for the same money we would spendto provide quality healthcare or education for 1,000 children in South Sudan, we can protector better educate 5,000 children in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The contribution to stabledevelopment and to serve as a dampening effect on a possible escalation of ethnic andpolitical conflict in Kenya is incomparably more important than anything we could evenhypothetically achieve in South Sudan. Here we are talking about development effects ona completely different category and scale.The post-Communist countries of central Europe that have undergone the transformationof their societies over the past decade are now presented with a unique opportunityto use the experience they gathered within development assistance. In Slovakia’s case, thistransformation was turbulent and the politicians in power find it convenient to quicklyforget the fundamental role that many NGOs and other foundations supported by theWest played in the historic turnaround and success of Slovakia. Today we could leverage theexperience we gained to assist in development in Africa thanks to the support provided toour NGOs by these foreign donors, and private American foundations in particular. SlovakODA could also be more efficiently utilized, for instance by increasing effectiveness throughmulti-year grants: the effects of €30,000 for a three-year program are generally much largerthan the effects of a single year grant of the same amount. Tools such as “matching” and“challenge” 217 grants are another suitable way to stimulate actors including cities, schoolsand a wider range of civic organizations to contribute to development assistance, twinningcities and building the capacities of NGOs and foundations in East Africa.The key aspect is this: an institutional memory of what happened in civil society inSlovakia in the 1990s was never, and today most definitely is not, embodied in the stateapparatus, the political parties or the groups of oligarchs who hold key positions in thepublic sector. With rare exceptions, the state apparatus, including the Ministry of ForeignAffairs, has a very unclear idea of the tools and practices used by civic organizations andfoundations in Slovakia to mobilize and ultimately pave the way for transformational successin Slovakia only a few years ago, which is the very reason those who enjoy power todayare even in power in the first place.217 The principle behind these grants is the combination of “matching” contributions from grants withcontributions from people or companies. “Challenge” grants are announced by a foundation whenthey want to stimulate donations in a specific sector. Such grants are announced in a fashion similarto: “If you collect €2,000 to support projects in Kenya, we’ll add a matching amount to your €2,000”.The “technology” behind such grants has been tested and perfected in central Europe.262