The Roles of NGOs in Eradicating Poverty : Critical Perspectives to the Existence of NGOs

In the last decade of the 20th century, the issues of poverty eradication in developing countries, particularly in Indonesia, have mostly been associated with the success stories of NGOs. Vakil (in Jordan & Tuijl, 2006: 8) defines NGOs as institutions which are characterized by ‘self-governing, not-for-profit and with an explicit social mission’. Their successful stories can not be separated from their roles in eradicating poverty itself, including providing direct services and influencing the government policies affecting the poor. As a new actor and an independent and democratic organization, which is well-known for its participatory approaches, NGOs have succeeded in closing the gap left by the government’s and the market’s failure to provide basic social services and reduce poverty. Furthermore, the opinion that NGOs represent the voices of poor people has made it much easier for them to work with poor people at grassroots level which the government has found difficult to do. Therefore, this leads to the general assumption that NGOs always do good things and the over generalization that all NGOs are good. However, people nowadays are more sceptical, realistic and objective in observing NGOs in the context of their roles in poverty alleviation based on some cases which have shown a decrease in NGOs’ performance