In Cleveland it is the dead of night when I pick up the telephone to call Aroma Goon at her home in Bangladesh. There, it is morning. My hyper-sensitive speaker phone picks up everything…the rooster in Aroma’s backyard, buses, a child’s announcement of my call in Bengali; all of these Eastern presences pop back into my world after my six-year absence from India. Aroma’s affectionate greeting, the kind we would normally offer a long-lost friend, warms me.

During the ensuing three-hour conversation, I discover what my colleagues might have meant when they said, "You’ll enjoy L.C." Aroma begins by speaking of PRIP Trust’s difficult birth as an LNGO; thereafter, our conversational canvas keeps expanding as Aroma, now sadly, now angrily, now joyously, always candidly, juxtaposes the front and backstage—both powdered nose and underbelly—of the development world.

Signing the trust deed was the first ‘moment.’ I had not been able to attend my ailing father, who was dying of cancer in India. Although I love him very much, I wasn't able to see him (her voice cracks). I was doing my Masters in the U.S .and had to be going back and forth. I couldn’t attend to my daughter, who was only seven at the time. I had no home life, nothing. For two years and a half, I had to go through so much….we had no weekends. So many cumbersome and complicated processes to go through.

There were times we thought it would never happen because many people, for example, the bigger NGOs did not want us to happen. The donors said they did not feel confident because we were moving from being expatriate to becoming Bangladeshi. And the organization was moving from being led by a man to being led by a Bangladeshi woman. I come from a minority community here; I was born in a Hindu family and a highly political family at that. Because the donors are used to dealing with expatriates, they assumed I wouldn’t be able to handle it. They didn’t realize that, if people are good, it doesn’t matter what country they come from or whether they are man or woman.

I had a real understanding that when I become part of a Bangladeshi organization, I would be facing a lot of challenges. That was one of my reasons for choosing the most powerful trustees in Bangladesh. Also, since PRIP moves among NGOs, government, the corporate sector, and other members of civil society, I wanted the board to have a character that was acceptable to all.

The moment we signed the document, we cried…signing the document was like having my second child. It was a one-of-a-kind event in Bangladesh; normally when an INGO comes here, it remains an INGO. But PRIP Trust had transformed itself from an INGO into a Bangladeshi organization.

Another ‘moment’ was when we moved into our new building; it was like a child having a new toy. Pact had said, "No, Aroma, you cannot move; there are no funds." I said, "Look here, people have to have a good atmosphere, their own rooms; unless we do quality work, the donors will not be convinced. Please allow me to move in my own direction. I have to navigate…I’ll see how to manage. My staff loved it and felt very energetic. It worked. Moving from the old atmosphere, and the old things, into new things gave them a different kind of aspiration. Now they had a sense of ownership, not of Pact but of PRIP Trust.

The third ‘moment’ was when I got a call from Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) in Canada. Our funding from USAID had finished in June. CIDA told us they were ready but needed one more donor to contribute. I said to them, "You have some obligation at this stage; we have been in touch with you for seven or eight years! You either have to come up with something, or we die." So they said they would give us a bridge grant for three months—something unusual in CIDA history because they normally don’t give anything before they have entered into a formal partnership with an NGO.

In September, after the bridge grant had come to an end, CIDA was ready but the other donors still not. Many nights I could not sleep. One day, my Finance Manager told me, "Didi [sister], we have no money to pay our staff. It’s all gone." I went to my Chair, Abedbhai [bhai meaning brother]—the executive director of BRAC, one of the largest NGOs in the world—and said, "I can’t take it anymore. I have been systematically harassed by the donors."

Abedbhai said, "No, you are a fighter Aroma. You never give up." When he spoke of the incident in 1971, when my grandfather and uncle were brutally murdered by the Pakistani army, and we lost everything, I said to myself, "Aroma, you have your grandfather’s blood. We are all fighters, and we do things not for ourselves but for the nation and for the people." Abedbhai said, "PRIP Trust is absolutely necessary for the sector because BRAC will not be able to do this job by itself. So it is in our own interest to keep PRIP Trust alive. I’ll give you a grant." Then he called the donors who had not yet committed themselves and told them, "You have no right to do this to NGOs in this part of the world. We do development, not business. We serve the people, and you are here to do the same." So those donors gave the green light to CIDA, and CIDA phoned me from Canada to say they were funding PRIP Trust.

Of course, there were many people who didn’t want that to happen. Some NGOs got scared by the work PRIP Trust was doing because it challenged them. So many organizations that take a lot of money do very little work, but they have good relations with the donors. Ours is a valued, value-driven, quality organization. Its acceptability is very high.

If I [PRIP] had been a new entity, it would not have been a problem. But I am inheriting this. So, I had to carry Pact’s ghost for a long time. Everybody was always comparing me with the old executive director; that was the difficult part. I want to be Aroma. I don’t want to be Pact; I want to be PRIP Trust. Because I took over the leadership at a critical moment, when there were no funds, I had to tackle the project preparation while running to donors and making myself acceptable to everybody.

Even though Pact told me this was not a time to hire new people, I said, "No, the show is mine. If we are talking about building the capacity of others, how do I do that if I do not have enough capacity? And how will I have enough capacity unless I have proper professional staff in place?" It is important to have professional people in-house two years before indigenization.

Pact is also very unique; it was extremely supportive and democratic in its thinking. People saw that Pact was 100 percent behind the indigenization process and that it was working so hard, going from door to door to make it very clear to everybody that Pact is very serious about transferring ownership to us. The old executive director was instrumental in making everybody understand that they were in good hands with me.

Finally, in Bangladesh most boards are token boards. Ours, however, is very active. It was clear to me that I could learn from my board members how they have managed their organizations. So I involved them heavily. This helped my partners understand that this board is in control of PRIP Trust and that this isn’t just Aroma’s show. I surrender to the board on matters of policy without losing my identity and control of the organization’s management. Because I share my programmatic ideas with them to get their input, they have given me even more support.

I also involve the PRIP Trust staff in negotiations and important meetings; this gives them a whole new understanding of ownership. Staff feel that PRIP Trust is theirs and that they have responsibilities. I involve them in interactions with the board. I say to them, "You go [to meetings]; why do I always have to go?" The communication between board and staff is very important and shouldn’t be concentrated in the CEO. It has to filter down; indeed, the whole management team played an important role in the operational process of indigenization.

Q: I’ve heard that, although since the end of USAID funding it’s been a bit of a rocky road, PRIP Trust is doing better now. Please tell about some of the significant challenges that PRIP Trust has faced as an independent entity and how you responded to them.

Yes, there were a lot of rocks! I don’t understand the psychology of the European donors. They said, "You are a USAID baby, so it is their responsibility to keep you alive. Why are you coming to us?" It was an ego thing with them. I had difficulty explaining to them that a project cannot be funded by one donor forever, and USAID like any other organization just gave us funds. I said to USAID, "You’d better keep a low profile and don’t approach any donors on our behalf. I have to prove to other donors that the PRIP Trust stands on its own." We need to study the donor mind, donor policies, and donor operations. You know, we had to work on our proposal to the European donors eighteen times and on our log frame [logical framework] twenty-two times! They wanted to see our partners several times to see if PRIP Trust is a good organization to make an investment in.

Before going to the donors, you need to have a well-designed plan. You need to make a clear division: management should concentrate on ongoing programs; the CEO and other high-level professionals should deal with the donors. I found it very difficult to handle both simultaneously. I said, God, please give me strength to hold these two strings together. It was like driving a chariot up a mountain. Plus, I was trying to prove myself as the new manager because the donors wanted to see how well I handled it. Every time, we would get asked three to five pages of the same questions, and we had to answer them all over again.

Once they believe in something, it is difficult for anyone to take it away. Before PRIP Trust, the NGOs would not speak with one another except at meetings and receptions. PRIP Trust wanted to help the sector grow through a participative partnership process. Bangladesh is a homogeneous country, and people’s positive emotion has worked to help our effort. Personal attachment is very important. The other NGOs got very attached to PRIP Trust because they saw that PRIP Trust is a friend who stands by them and is not selfish. This helped a lot.

Also, in Bangladesh, your background is very important. They see what path you have followed all these years, and they have to have confidence in the leadership. The whole question of trust is there. If they had not trusted me, they would not have supported PRIP Trust.

How can I know? Others would have to tell you that. But, one of my gifts to PRIP Trust is that I value my organization, and I tremendously value my staff. I trust them. I give them freedom and help them grow. A human being is a fathomless ocean, and you have to know how to search for the little pearls that it holds. When you identify one, it is your duty to bring the pearl out and make a beautiful ring. I am basically a craftsman.

I give them responsibilities with ownership. I don’t interfere. I make them accountable to the stakeholders, not to me. With every piece of work, I appreciate them, and that recognition gives them inspiration to take on more responsibilities. People think adults don’t need appreciation, but they do. They become used to it when they are kids, but then when they grow up, they have nobody who appreciates them. I value people very much. At PRIP we are like a family. We don’t always talk about work. Often we discuss what is happening in the country. I keep them in good humor. In some offices you will see tired and sad faces. Ours is not a sad office.

I don’t hide my emotions. They tease me about it. They like it when I push the donors. We don’t accept everything the donors say; if we did, the staff would become demoralized. We aren’t beggars. We should hold our head high. You cannot compromise on the basics—convictions, commitment, beliefs, and dignity—no matter what field you are in. I say to my staff, "I was like you. I came up through a very rigorous process, step by step. I did not skip a single step." I also tell them, "If you are feeling bad about something, come and tell me."

A real pearl comes from the womb of the shell, and pearl making is a very slow, painful, and rigorous process. If you remember the famous painting, the Birth of Venus, she comes out like a pearl from the shell. So the shell is Pact, the pearl is PRIP Trust, and with the NGO sector, I am trying to make a necklace at the sectoral level. PRIP Trust is the pendant of course! It is a diamond, which gives light.

We have a very good relationship with them. Pact is regarded with great respect here. Because we have been the subgrantees of Pact, and people have seen Pact as the mother organization of PRIP Trust, and because Pact has a personal relationship with the major players in the development field in Bangladesh, Pact and PRIP Trust are working together to develop a Social Justice Network to help the NGO sector in Bangladesh. It is a long-term program done through a partnership process. Pact is a friend and partner today, not a conduit or funder.

Q: To use the metaphor of an iceberg, what is the hidden part of the iceberg that no one talks about openly but is nevertheless important to surface about the process of indigenization?

A huge part of the underwater iceberg is the issue of confidence and trust. This is not talked about openly. The donors were not sure if we could continue with the same level of quality.

The donors have made the NGOs sophisticated contractors for their own [donors’] purposes. PRIP Trust is a very little voice saying that we have to build local support organizations that can lead the development process and keep it going. Donors did not like this. They seem very nervous about the potential of the mid- and smaller-size NGOs. Sometimes it seems that donors would rather make a few NGOs fat and ignore initiatives taken by the small NGOs. It was difficult for us to believe that donors couldn’t understand the concept of support organizations, even though we went over it fifteen times.

I believe the donors were nervous about putting funds into PRIP Trust because they knew it would lead to a shift in the development paradigm. In the new paradigm, they will have to change their policy by giving less importance to funding projects and more importance to capacity building and to recognizing the small NGOs they have thus far ignored. Some seem to think it too much bureaucratic work to support small NGOs.

I think the donors are developing an exit strategy for themselves because they are trying to make the big NGOs donors, and they are putting their donor responsibilities onto them. If the big NGOs become donors, then there will be a lot of conflict among NGOs. PRIP Trust is trying to do it differently. Although donors want to ignore that fact, small NGOs have a lot of acceptability in their locality. PRIP Trust has been working on its growth. This kind of thing threatens donors because then you can fight on policy issues. You can bargain and negotiate on policy, and donors don’t like anyone challenging them on policy issues. They don’t like the mid-level NGOs coming to the forefront and taking the lead. They don’t like to see women doing that either.

All these factors are part of the complexity, but they don’t spell it out because they aren’t honest. They give different signals at different times. They have their own politics. This issue of partnership is funny: donors talk of partnership, but we cannot be partners because we are on the receiving end.

We made the donors understand that we are a different kind of animal, one who moves in the environment with our own antenna. We are focused not upon PRIP Trust but upon the sector. Donors know that we know what’s going on in the sector, and that makes them very uncomfortable. I am very accepted by the small and mid-level NGOs, and the donors know that I’ll be a spokesperson for these NGOs.

The issues are confined to the big NGOs. It is PRIP Trust’s purpose to make sure issues and policies are translated below that level because you can’t make NGOs contractors for your work. It doesn’t help to strengthen the sector if it is not well versed with policies and issues. It has to be a transparent and democratic process because the country is going through a process of democratization; if people are not involved in that process—and NGOs are not part and parcel of it—you cannot build an accountable and transparent society. The donors are talking about empowerment, but the empowerment has been confined to the borrowers of microcredit. That is not a solution. Microcredit is only one segment of poverty alleviation. It is not the answer for the totality of poverty alleviation. Poverty alleviation has strong linkages to democracy, which finally links to empowerment.

So, to what purpose are NGOs working? Are we working for donors or for people? We are now working as intermediary agencies, but we need to think about whether intermediary agencies have an ongoing role or whether we should eventually phase out and turn over our role to the grassroots people. We can be meaningful only if our role remains one of catalyst, not implementer. This issue is not being addressed, and it bothers me.

PRIP Trust is working to institutionalize the process of empowerment and strengthen the grassroots. That is our motto. You have to dream big and believe in it. I want to use the opportunity of liberalization because I don’t want to shut myself off from the world and keep executing a stereotyped model. The world is moving fast, but I have to see what part of globalization I would like to adopt. Normally, NGOs like to remain as implementers; becoming catalysts is threatening because their roles start diminishing.

Everyone seems to be running after microcredit, which is linked with sustainability according to the donors, the government, and the NGOs. All of the NGOs have a component of microcredit, and from that microcredit they make money to sustain their organization. But this is not sustainability. PRIP Trust is talking about sustainability from a very different perspective, the sustainability of the organization by the people and for the people. I strongly believe in building and strengthening the capacities of the NGOs, but I don’t have to do it through that model because my purpose is different. I am not confined to the NGO sector. I am in demand with the government, the corporate sector, and other areas in civil society. We are a trust; we don’t have to act like other NGOs, and that is our uniqueness—which comes from a shift in paradigm.

I am very much with you there. Capacity building is not very well understood, and there is a lot of confusion surrounding it. Capacity building has absolute roots within the local community. If there is no urge, understanding, or demand within the local community, then there is no need for capacity building. The INGOs should understand that they cannot inject capacity building, for it is an inner feeling coming from the LNGOs. INGOs have their own perspective, which is influenced by their desire to serve some of their projects. It is very project oriented, and not deeply rooted. When you bring a foreign plant into your own soil, either you have to adapt it or you have to bring it with your own pot; then you can grow it for awhile, but ultimately it will not survive. Imported fruits and flowers will not grow in this soil. We have to bring indigenous fruits and flowers, so that this soil can sustain them.

The INGOs do capacity building in their own style, but pushing their style does not sustain. The INGOs like to claim that they are the ones talking about capacity building, but they haven’t gone back to the people for an assessment to see if there was need for the capacity building which they have been telling the donors about. This is happening because there is no forum or organization designed to do that, so the INGOs go project by project. Once the project is over, the INGOs disappear. So when INGOs say, "I have built capacity," I say, for whom, why, and for what purpose? The capacity building of INGOs is conceptual, a fad; they are not clear for whom they would like to build capacity.

I designed a plan to do a mapping of need for the whole NGO sector in Bangladesh, to get firsthand information through a very participative process. The only recognized apex body of NGOs in Bangladesh is called the Association for Development Agencies in Bangladesh (ADAB), which has 960 registered members spread among sixteen chapters. I happen to be the Vice Chairperson of ADAB. I am going to each chapter, sitting down with chapter members for five days, and identifying the needs of their organization. Once completed, this massive mapping will be the first time that such a scientific data collection has been done. This mapping should be completed by April, and we are going to present the findings at the Support Organizations conference in Bangladesh.

I will also redesign PRIP Trust’s capacity building by involving other NGOs who have worked with us and become resource organizations. We’ll work as a team. I brought three big NGOs—BRAC, Proshika, and Caritas—as resource organizations because they can provide technical assistance as well as expertise in areas of capacity building in which I have none. The other purpose is to have a responsive NGO sector. This whole colonial mentality is still with our people, that INGOs alone can teach capacity building. Why do we have to take it? No. Sorry.

Once I get a complete picture, I can come up with a proper design for capacity building. Then maybe I will have to relook at PRIP Trust, but before that I’ll have to have a strong base, so that the INGOs can’t come with their own prescriptions and make us swallow them.

It worked for us and will work for others also. NGOs are a different kind of animal, Sangeeta. We are not the bureaucrats of the government or the bureaucrats of the donors. We have our own culture, which is not always understood by the other actors in society. It is important to have a combination from civil society, and if you are an NGO you have to have people from other NGOs. An NGO can understand an NGO, like a dog can understand a dog. A tiger can understand a tiger, but a tiger cannot understand a dog. The tiger will eat the dog! I was careful to make sure the tigers don’t eat me. Competition between NGOs will be there, but if we are trying for sectoral unity, we must have people from other NGOs for strategic support.

Don’t ever bow down. Don’t compromise on your convictions or your commitment. The donors pushed us around for eighteen months. They wanted us to change our concept and to change into a service-delivery organization. They even said they would give us more money. Your convictions and your commitment to the people are your number-one weapon; that will always help you.

Be honest with yourself. Admit that you can and do make mistakes. People learn from their mistakes. I myself am a creature not of the heavens but of the earth. I can make mistakes, but I know how to admit them and to make corrections. You can cry, but don’t get bullied. The donors are trying to experiment on us, so never get used as a guinea pig. You have to be assertive. Never compromise on quality, not on your dead body!

Aroma’s leadership is marked by an irreverent revolutionary fervor that provokes us into imagining grander possibilities for our civil society. In Education of the Heart, Thomas Moore said, "Politics [in this case, politics in the world of development] needs a soul to make its work humane and to give it its appropriate communal context." In Aroma’s case, the politics-as-usual in development, rather than cramping her style, has only flamed her vision. I was struck by her chutzpah in dreaming bigger than "necessary"—beyond PRIP Trust, beyond the NGO sector—for her ultimate constituency: the poor and hungry. Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching) has said, "People usually fail when they are on the verge of success. So give as much care to the end as to the beginning. Then there will be no failure." One of the reasons Aroma’s dream would have to come true is because it seems to be a habit of her heart to give much care to the end.