AMMAN — The pandemic has imposed extensive challenges for
businesses in Jordan, including charitable organizations, while simultaneously
creating more demand for social needs, according to local officials.
اضافة اعلان
Ayman Mufleh, the minister of social development, told
Jordan News during an interview that COVID-19 — and the subsequent safety measures imposed to contain the pandemic —
affected all charitable organizations by affecting their flexibility of
movement and sources of income.
He said that the virus caused economic damage to all
sectors, and decreased the number of grants that would usually flow to
charities from companies, charitable trusts, and major donors.
“COVID-19 created unlimited social problems that are larger than
one individual or group (can) tackle,” Mufleh said. “The economic uncertainty
caused by the pandemic caused many donors to reduce or even stop their support,
which consequently affected the work and support the local charitable
organizations do.”
According to the minister, 6,522 non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) were registered in the Kingdom as of December 2020, 3,952
of which were affiliated with the ministry.
Mufleh said that these times demand different measures to
meet the current social needs. He called for charitable organizations to be
creative in finding new methods of sustainability, such as building sustainable
marketing and development programs.
According to its website, the Ministry of Social Development
strives to enhance developmental social work and to carry out social policy
development through comprehensive and integrated community development with a
purpose to improve the quality of life of its citizens.
Among the programs created by the ministry to meet the
urgent demand caused by the pandemic is Takaful (which means “solidarity” in
Arabic), a financial funding program, created to support almost 100,000
families during the COVID-19 crisis. So far, Takaful has benefited some 250,000
families in Jordan.
But while Takaful began, other charities were forced to
minimize or even close their programs.
Firas Maghareez Abbadi, the founder of Bader Charity Center
for Relief and Development, told
Jordan News that ever since the NGO was
established in 2014, its work has focused on the needy sectors of society,
especially in marginalized areas around the Kingdom.
“We did an excellent job assisting the society until the
pandemic spread,” Abbadi said. “Everything changed so quickly.”
He said that charities across the country are facing huge
economic pressure, with many closed and others barely surviving.
“COVID-19 has had an immense impact on the charity sector in
Jordan. So far, our charitable organization survived and is trying to adapt to
the decrease in funding,” he said. “Our
work is now limited to providing parcels of food to selective families paying
for our own account.”
The role of NGOs is to support the Ministry of Social
Development in a way that will benefit the community at large, said Samer
Balkar, general director of Tkiyet Um Ali (TUA).
TUA provides and delivers hot meals to passers-by and at its
premises and provides humanitarian food aid to the underprivileged in Jordan.
Balkar said that the sustainability of any organization’s
work relies on different channels of funding, resilience, corporate governance,
and the credibility of the donors. He added that the clarity of a charity’s
vision and maintaining an unwavering focus on the influence the organization
can make in society is also important.
Around 30 percent of TUA’s financial support comes from
international and corporate funds, while the majority of the NGO’s funds comes
from the society itself through grassroots fundraising, according to Balkar.
“During COVID-19 the social support was high. People want to
help each other through TUA, and we were ready,” he said. “Our staff had their
permit to move freely to provide food parcels, hygiene kits, and financial
assistance to all the Kingdom during the lockdown.”
Balkar said that more needs to be done for NGOs in Jordan,
mainly to organize the purpose of establishing an NGO, according to societies’
needs, and to create a clear and structured plan to channel funds to those most
in need.
“Another important future step is the collaborative work and
partnerships across private and public sectors, with the ministry taking a
supervision role,” he said. “That way we might have the potential to contribute
to systemic change and greater societal impact.”
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