Challenges and Future Directions for Asian NGOs

Abstract

As practitioners, advocates and theoreticians of the non-governmental sector we must address the criticism that in what we do or say, we not only avoid several fundamental questions, but we also betray either a lack of awareness of these questions, or an unquestioning belief that our credentials are self-evident. We take great pains to understand and clarify what we mean by ‘development’. We have been largely responsible for introducing and analyzing such new concepts as ‘participation’, ‘empowerment’, and ‘conscientization’. But have we been as conscientious and critical in trying to know ourselves — to probe the who, what, why, when and how of NGOs — before we can talk with confidence and strength of what is to be done now or whither we should go in the future? In short, have we neglected our own conscientization process?