It saddens me to make this post today. The cause of my consternation is that if all the claims I put forth are true, then we as SOS have diverged so far from our founder’s dream and vision; that we should find ourselves a different name. A quote that comes to mind is:

 "Men, like nails, lose their usefulness when they lose direction and begin to bend."

Walter Savage Landor

Are we as an organization losing our usefulness? 

The SOS vision states that, “Every child belongs to a family and grows with love, respect and security.” Sounds simple yes, but it seems the people on the ground have become increasingly confused by its meaning. One thing we need to keep in mind is that as an organization, we are major contributors in the creation of policies related to children so we cannot preach what we do not practice. Our organization should be at the forefront in the fight for children’s basic rights. We should not be the perpetrators of abuse of the children directly through our employees, or indirectly through our policies.

Rampant misappropriation of funds

Food is one of the basic rights that we as an organization have the ability to protect, and should be protecting. Unfortunately, this is one of the areas we are failing miserably. Funds for food are received two week into the month; and in some cases three weeks into the month. Apart from food being a basic right, shouldn't we have in place a mechanism for disbursing funds with minimal cash handling to deter mismanagement of funds?  If an item was on the budget to begin with, why is the money being diverted, or withheld? Is it a policy for our organization to replace funds for food with donations? If this is the case who decides on the monetary value on the donation and what is done with the diverted funds?

Sexual Abuse

Given the nature of our business, we should have zero tolerance on sexual abuse. We need to be non-negotiable in cases involving sexual abuse because our vision expects us to provide security to the children. The major reason to have such a policy is because there is a huge potential for “Quid pro Quo”harassment, that is sexual favors in exchange for benefits. We have seen cases of administrators who had sex relations with all and sundry, youth and mothers included.  Such a situation is highly unethical and a health hazard; in some courts such an individual can be charged with felonious assault, especially if a disease was spread in the act.

Conflict of interest

It is wrong for our employees to use SOS as the main market for their business activities, especially so, if they happen to be the same party directly involved in the sourcing of the services. For example, a PR manager sourcing services from their own PR firm. Need I say more?

Nepotism

Is it true that our hiring process is hacked? If this is so, the solution is as simple as getting a new firm to do the job. From a management point of view, this is one of the reasons for low quality output, entitlement and corruption. Our processes as an organization should have enough flexibility to allow for such a change without interruption to our daily business.

Talking about our hiring process, I would wish to see the day when our National Directors present their mission for the organization upon their assumption of office. This mission should be hung up in a central place in all the projects and at the end of their term be evaluated based on it before rehire. This will encourage transparency and accountability.

In conclusion, as an organization we need to go back to the basics of our mission in child care. We need systems of accountability to be put in place at all levels of our organization. We need red tape reduced for processes that are crucial in the running of our organization. We need ethical administrators to implement our vision and all the project players need to be on the same page with regards to our goals and mission. 

Let’s all strive to remember to maintain our usefulness.