With regards to the first area after doing a little reading on the subject I began to realize that Sri Lanka was not a top priority for government and the more traditional donors organizations anymore. The civil war had been over for 8 years and everyone had gone home. 8 years should be sufficient time to get a country back on track right? so they were not a priority anymore. What the world had forgotten was that this ethnic conflict had ravaged the country for up to three decades and along with the tsunami of 2006 had left over 600,000 people homeless and without any options. Now this wouldn’t seem like a dire problem to a more developed country but to a country with 23 million people ( almost the same population as Australia) of which over 40% live under crippling poverty this was a mountain that is still to be overcome. So all NGOs, INGOs and every other development actor present in Sri Lanka is hurriedly reassessing their strategies and looking for funding to assist the county from drifting further and further down the poverty index. it has become necessary to look beyond the Development Assistance Committee (DAC), which includes 24 countries and invite the New kids on the block Brazil and China and the multitude or foundations, social enterprise and even celebrities to the aid party.
Next I pondered on the phrase “more attractive” what does this mean really? I understood the desperation behind this phrase. Money was needed and it was needed fast to address all the issues the country was faced with. However to what lengths would we be willing to go to achieve this? more attractive by giving in to any of the demands these new actors presented? more attractive by changing our focus and hoping that we could work in our needs once the time was right? more attractive how? this thought scared me but also gave me a little hope. More attractive could mean more accountability, more transparency. More attractive could mean more focused projects! more attractive could also mean creating a more productive environment devoid of the incessant red tape and bureaucracy Sri Lanka like many developing countries and come to be known for.
All I could do was hope for the best.