Welfare Committee Annual Report

Yukiko Kukita

Welfare Committee Chair

Summary

This year the Welfare Committee put more emphasis on streamlining and improving its support system in order to gradually transform the committee’s activities into more effective and development-oriented ones. The committee members discussed extensively on how to set up criteria to assess NGO’s

(a) activities in terms of its effectiveness in empowering people, especially women and children, and

(b) promoting self-reliance and sustainability or supporting organizations. Welfare Committee actively visited many NGO projects and tried to apply those principles for making recommendations to the UNWA Executive Board for funding.

Another important principle it tried to establish was transparency and accountability for funding NGOs. Both internal and external transparencies were looked at. For improved internal transparency the committee tried to establish a clearer process of funding (receiving request letters from NGOs, visiting their projects, assessing their proposals, making recommendations to the Executive Board followed by Executive Board’s approval). For external transparency, i.e. transparency of NGOs’ use of funds, we visited most of the projects after funding for monitoring. In order to assure transparency, Welfare Committee needed a lot of time and work.  I feel more understanding and commitment towards the Welfare Committee from the other UNWA members are necessary. For accountability we tried to explain how decisions were made and what were the results gained. We may have to be more active in presenting our activities and getting more UNWA members involved in the future.

Activity

The Committee met once a month and reviewed the support requests submitted, and project visits were planned. Funding recommendations for the Executive Board of UNWA were made based on project visit reports submitted by the committee members. 

We have decided to establish an official communication mechanism between the local NGOs or the groups and UNWA. All the support request and thank you letters used to come directly to the welfare chairperson. But this caused many difficulties both for the local organizations and us, especially when our chairperson moved to other country or our new club year started. We have informed local organizations to submit request letters and reports to our official address at UNDP P.O. Box.

At the same time, we have been updating our project files by sending “ Project Updating Questionnaire” to the organizations and groups that we had contact so far. Welfare Committee made this questionnaire form in October. The questions included basic information of each organization such as organization’s official name, official address, contact person, the mission statement and the size of the organization. It also included questions about the financial status, requests and opinions toward UNWA and income generating activities run by the organizations. This would help us to understand   the needs of those organizations and process their request for support quickly.

Welfare Committee members discussed various issues came up through the visits. We met many people, had a lot of talk, gathered worthy information and gained new knowledge. This is the most important part of our activity as it promotes mutual learning between the local organizations and UNWA. Through these activities, Welfare Committee members enhanced knowledge as well as their team spirit.

There have been about ten active members working constantly and tirelessly for Welfare Committee in this year. Since the former chairperson resigned for her health reason in May, I joined the committee in June for the first time as a liaison between Welfare Committee and the Executive Board, and became the chair a.i. in September. I have been an UNWA member for last three years, but until I joined the Welfare Committee, I didn’t know how much time and energy the members have been putting in their voluntary work.

I personally feel that it is time for UNWA to reconsider its mission and activities, as many local organizations and groups supported by UNWA are developing and changing. As the United Nations is moving towards sustainable and Rights-based development, UNWA needs to transform from being a charity organization to be more right-based and development-oriented organization. The Welfare Committee’s tasks would become more complicated and challenging.

This year the Welfare Committee has started taking in this new challenge. We sometimes had difference in opinion and faced difficulties in setting new criteria. But Welfare Committee always maintained the atmosphere of discussing issues openly and freely. It has been a great and enjoyable experience for me to be part of this active and lively committee. I would like to express my deepest appreciation to the members for their cooperation, understanding and guidance.