Statement alone is not enough

This seemingly obvious action has caused an unexpected side effect: "VAR checking" statements to expose "charity banners", that is, verifying information about the amount of money contributed to the Fatherland Front that has been announced by an individual or organization.

Friedrich Engels' famous quote "It is better to spend a night searching for the truth than to doubt it all your life" is used to describe this situation. Many people do not hesitate to spend time "examining" 12,000 pages of account statements. Unexpected stories, unwanted truths have been revealed since then.

While the public is gloating over the "results" of the VAR check, I want to look at other aspects of this story.

Checking account statements is not bad, but exposing others does not make anyone better, especially when they themselves may not have contributed to support their fellow countrymen affected by the storm and flood. Those who like charity banners, even if they inflate the amount to show off, at least they have donated.

But there is something even more important. Many people focus too much on statements and consider them as a guarantee of transparency and effectiveness in charity work. That is not enough.

A statement shows the amount of money transferred into (credited) and transferred out (debited) of an account. This is a proof of transparency of the unit receiving the donation. But more needs to be done to fully transparent, especially the effectiveness of charity work.

As a social worker and community development worker in non-governmental organizations, domestic and international social organizations for over 20 years, I affirm that disbursing funding to beneficiaries in a practical and effective manner has never been an easy task.

The simplest way to disburse money is to issue money, which also requires a list of signatures with full information of the recipient and documents proving the appropriate subject. For example, poor people need a certificate of poor or near-poor households.

But doing charity - humanitarian work, or as we often say, social work and community development, is not just about giving out money.

Like the story of giving fishing rods instead of fish, even teaching how to sell fish when you catch a lot, doing social work and community development requires techniques, skills and methods based on theories and empirical research. This is a professional job. The ultimate goal is to help people improve their capacity and access to comprehensive education, adequate health care, suitable jobs, sustainable livelihoods... thereby rising out of poverty and proactively responding to natural disasters, not continuing to passively wait for support from the outside.

To do so, many different activities are needed, from communication - education to raise awareness and change behavior - to upgrading facilities and equipment; from emergency relief activities to long-term support activities and sustainable livelihood models.

In terms of auditing, these activities require a lot of documents to prove. For example, a training session needs to have a list of participants, confirmed by a local agency/organization and signed by the participants, training materials and CVs of the instructors with contracts and pre-/post-course evaluation reports, invoices for purchasing stationery, and photos of the training session... This is clearly something that the account statement itself is not enough to prove the transparency and effectiveness of disbursement of donations.

Before implementing a training session like the example above, we must design the projects and programs that the training session aims to achieve certain outputs. Careful project design and close monitoring and evaluation of implementation are ways to increase the effectiveness of social work and community development, thereby increasing transparency and accountability to supporters and donors.

Working as professional organizations with the participation of dozens, even hundreds of well-trained people in each organization, we always face the pressure of disbursement with the fear of underspending. Because, as said, if we just give money, just give fish, it is too easy.

Humanitarian and charitable work carried out by professional social organizations, agencies such as the Vietnam Fatherland Front and the Red Cross Society is not easy, so it is even more difficult for individuals or groups of people to carry it out on their own.

The lack of professionalism and skills in the way some individuals work can lead to undesirable results, first of all, public doubts about the transparency of disbursement, or risks to health and life as has happened before.

This is not to deny or criticize those individuals who are trying their best to call for support and are not afraid of difficulties to directly participate in humanitarian relief work in disaster areas. It is to say that this is a job that requires professionalism to move towards transparency and accountability.

Obviously, to demonstrate the effectiveness of charity and humanitarian work, statements alone are not enough.