We All Have A.D.D. (Attention Deficit Disorder)

The toilets are everywhere: Hundreds of unused outhouses peek from between the palm trees dotting the coastal road south from Batticaloa to the village of Thirukkovil. Built just after the 2004 Tsunami devastated Sri Lanka’s eastern coast, the mildewing boxes, some just yards apart from each other but far from villagers’ homes, are a glaring example of emergency humanitarian aid that has gone unused just a few years after the crisis.

The cornucopia of bathrooms was well intentioned and sanitation is certainly an important need here but this is one of the problems that crops up when NGOs do not necessarily consider the communities’ needs and practices from the very beginning of a project: A wasted investment of money and effort that does not benefit the community in the long term.

The lesson for humanitarian NGOs is: Listen to the needs, allocate aid in a usable way, involve the community so that its members take ownership of the project, and have a sustainable exit strategy so that the benefits last.


The lesson for donors and philanthropists is: Research the sustainability practices of the NGOs to which you donate.

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Standing in stark contrast to the unused bathrooms on the road into town, the Thirukkovil Community Center is full of life and is transitioning into local hands. Used by over 100 people a day – whether adults for individual counseling or children for tutoring and relaxation – the Center is an essential part of village life. When the Center first opened its doors in 2007, it was a slow process of trust building and managing security risks from paramilitary groups. But now, with morning counseling and home visits, afternoon children’s traumatic stress relief programs, an income generation strategy, and a handover to the Sri Lankan Consortium of Humanitarian Organizations (CHA) , it is clear that the Center will not only be here for years to come but will be used and owned by the people of Thirukkovil as a psychosocial resource.

The transition process is a delicate one: Over six months, starting in April, CAM will hand over responsibility for the program’s management to CHA while providing transitional funding and advice. Sustainable transitions do not just happen: They take planning from the very conception of a program and careful nurturing throughout. It’s an investment not only in the community but in making donors’ dollars last – The money that CAM put into the Community Center will not evaporate into thin air, like the money that made all of those toilets seems to have.

From left: CAM Desk Officer for Sri Lanka, Samantha Brangeon, CHA Deputy Executive Director, Firzan Hashim, and CHA Pyschosocial Consultant, Chrishasa Pasanavikana

CHA’s Deputy Executive Director, Firzan Hashim, drives home the point: We all have A.D.D. (Attention Deficit Disorder).

“The needs now are more than six months ago - Money came in during the war. Now, we have no excuses [for not providing aid]. Now people are looking for normalcy and we are letting them down. We are letting them down but there are no funds.”

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It is compassion fatigue: We watch in horror as disasters, wars, and earthquakes consume whole countries, we rush for our wallets to make a donation, we hope we do some good, we move on with our lives, we forget about the day after. And it is the day after that is so crucial.

International donors – governments, global organizations – are often the same. Donor cycles seem to move from disaster to disaster – departing Sri Lanka for Haiti, from Haiti to the next crisis. This pattern leaves little room for sustainable transitions to local hands.

And the cycle continues: Disaster brings in emergency aid but few sustainable projects; attention fades and a post-crisis funding gap chokes off aid; perhaps further down the line development projects will begin, long after the investment of emergency aid can be salvaged.

That’s what we do: Plug the post-crisis gap. It is a kind of Adderall for humanitarian aid, extending our focus a bit longer. By providing private funding to NGOs committed to sustainable transitions and local capacity building, like CAM, we try to refocus attention on those places that have lost the limelight and the resources that sadly go with it: Sudan, Chad, Angola, Central African Republic, Sri Lanka.

It is not adrenaline-pumping or glamorous or sexy. It will not be a breaking story on CNN or Fox News – although it should be. But if we could all travel to this forgotten corner of Sri Lanka, full of devastation and resilience, we might not lose your focus.

Instead, it might become crystal clear: The pain does not disappear when the cameras do, and neither should our attention.


To sustainably support communities transitioning from crisis to development, please donate.