Our Services

PTF pioneered active citizen engagement as a means to promote a more open, accountable, and responsive government and improve development outcomes. In our 15 years of operation, we have worked in 53 countries across Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America to complete 250 projects. We draw lessons from each experience and share the resulting knowledge, including more than 50 seminars, workshops, and events bringing together CSOs, governments, and donors.

A distinctive feature of PTF is our volunteer network of highly experienced development professionals, drawn from MBDs, bilateral aid agencies, foundations, private sector firms, and non-profit organizations, who add value to every activity we undertake. Over 70 advisers serve as pro-bono consultants with specialized skills in the design, implementation, and evaluation of civil society engagement in development projects over a wide range of countries, sectors and thematic areas. They undertake assessments, conduct training and provide advice to development organizations, governments, and aid agencies.

PTF’s other major strength is our network of more than 150 CSO partners in 50 developing countries who go beyond advocacy to produce concrete results through constructive engagement with the government at the local and country level. PTF has also established affiliate offices in Europe, East Asia, South Asia, and Africa, providing vital links to partner CSOs and serving as a home base for PTF Advisers around the world.

 

NGOs' services can make a major difference to people's lives: if people lack medical care, then a qualified doctor can be the difference between life and death (or between crippling hospital fees and quick recovery).

Service delivery is not normally a long-term solution to poverty.

It does not always change the basic structures that create and reinforce poverty. It can be paternalistic, not helping people to recognize and solve their own problems. It can also be expensive and hard to replicate at a national or international level.

Service delivery needs to be carefully planned, normally through existing local political or social structures.

If an NGO provides services that are not relevant for local people, or that use up people's time, or that are of a low standard, then they may be a distraction.  Worse still, low-quality service delivery can reinforce local power structures which impoverish poor people. 

 

 

Working with governments

It is also normally important to work with national and local governments. Governments have a long-term responsibility for the welfare needs of their populations. Some governments may seem to lack the will or the capacity to meet their responsibilities. But they cannot be ignored when it comes to service delivery. Otherwise, the relationship between the government and the people may be undermined: one or other may focus their attention on external actors instead. This weakens a central process of development at the national level.

In some circumstances, welfare needs are very acute and the government cannot meet them. Then, NGOs can help by providing emergency humanitarian aid.