{"id":446,"date":"2026-04-20T12:04:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T12:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.wearecohere.org\/?p=446"},"modified":"2026-04-20T12:06:33","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T12:06:33","slug":"help-without-organisation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.wearecohere.org\/index.php\/2026\/04\/20\/help-without-organisation\/","title":{"rendered":"Help Without Organisation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

How can help be channelled? Should humanitarian aid flow only through an organisation?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We (Joseph, Adhiambo, and Jovial) recently spent 10 days travelling through Kampala and southwest Uganda, listening to refugee leaders and having very interesting conversations about how to truly listen to the community and understand the community’s needs. One of our heated discussions was centred on why humanitarian aid needs to be channelled through “organisations”. Joseph asked whether we were there on the ground when the RLOs started before even registering as organisations. And the truth is, we as Cohere were not there in most cases. We have been working with the organisation for about 2 years since its inception, yet its leaders have \u201cactivities\u201d in the community without being organised or registered. So what is truly important here, being organised or supporting the community? So this discussion led us to reflect on the above question: Does humanitarian funding need to go through professional organisations?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Helping people in need is an innate human instinct. People often see a problem in the community and try to fill the gap and find a solution. In South West Uganda, in Rwamwanja refugee settlement, Bana Mazembe is a well-known community activist in his late 60s. He came to Rwamwanja in 2016 as a refugee and, within a short time, noticed that the community’s youth lacked a safe place to express their creative potential. Bana Mazembe created a football and art centre to fill that gap. Without funding, Bana Mazembe coordinated community football games, giving the youth an avenue to heal from their trauma and, for a few hours each week, just belong in Uganda. This is what the Rwamwanja youth needed at the time. This is the gap Bana Mazembe felt he could personally fill without funding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The fact that RLO leaders use their own money to support communities for years to come without misappropriating it should be the first step in the due diligence process that the community trusts them with their interests.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Ten years later, Cohere crosses paths with Bana Mazembe, and there is an opportunity to help him upgrade the football pitch. The question then becomes: can we find an informal organisation that is not \u201cRegistered\u201d or \u201cOrganised\u201d? How do we protect Cohere Funds or conduct due diligence to get to know Bana Mazembe? Based on our observations and feedback from the Rwmwanja youth, and the good work Bana Mazembe has done in their lives, we think it’s enough for us to fund him, even though he is not organised. The fact that RLO leaders use their own money to support communities for years to come without misappropriating it should be the first step in the due diligence process that the community trusts them with their interests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leaders like Bana Mazembe exemplify the true cost of vision for many years. We have  witnessed refugee leaders being evicted from their homes due to rent bills in favour of organisation work. Despite personal humiliation and hardship, they prioritise their mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The truth is, helping others was there before the donors, and the need to fund through an organisation is not driven by protecting the community; it’s driven by protecting the donors. Which, personally, is the wrong way round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By prioritising the protection of donors\u2014who, based on our limited understanding, are generally less vulnerable\u2014the humanitarian sector has introduced excessive bureaucratic procedures, such as rigid, documented due diligence requirements. These processes often create inefficiencies, increase operational costs, and ultimately divert valuable resources away from the communities they are intended to serve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, safeguarding policies are, in many cases, Western-centric and designed primarily to protect organisations from liability rather than to meaningfully safeguard communities. What if, instead, we centred the perspectives of the communities themselves? How do they define safeguarding? Could we co-create safeguarding approaches that genuinely reflect local practices, norms, and accountability mechanisms?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Cohere, our first step in supporting people is building trusted relationships with those individuals working to fill those gaps. Donors should first get to know the people they fund and be guided by human connections when engaging with their partners. If you spend just 30 minutes with Bana Mazembe, you’ll see that he doesn’t need an organisation to support youth in south-west Uganda. In fact, sometimes the creation of an organisation – the costs to register, and overheads like rent and equipment can become a distraction. Rather than funds being solely focused on filling the gap in the community they become absorbed in legitimising the organisation<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In conclusion, we have learnt that helping does not need to be done through organisations and can also be done through informal channels. We should really explore this alternative way of getting to know our partners, and we will discover truly inspiring leaders, like Bana Mazembe, who are too often overlooked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How can help be channelled? Should humanitarian aid flow only through an organisation? We (Joseph, Adhiambo, and Jovial) recently spent 10 days travelling through Kampala and southwest Uganda, listening to refugee leaders and having very interesting conversations about how to truly listen to the community and understand the community’s needs. One of our heated discussions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":390,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[18,14,10,8,20,25],"class_list":["post-446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","tag-funding","tag-human-relationships","tag-inclusion","tag-partnerships","tag-refugees","tag-trust"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.wearecohere.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/bnmz.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.wearecohere.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.wearecohere.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.wearecohere.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.wearecohere.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.wearecohere.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.wearecohere.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":448,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.wearecohere.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions\/448"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.wearecohere.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.wearecohere.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.wearecohere.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.wearecohere.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}