Thank you Xue QiEnough of the good stuffs. How about the problems brought upon by NGOs? Before I carry on, let me show you a video.Not so awesome right? Its actually a campaign by Greenpeace, a green NGO, to put pressure on Lego to cut their partnership with Shell. This is after Shells decision to drill in the arctic. In fact, they succeeded. Just last month, Lego announced that they will not be extending their partnership with Shell. So how is this a problem per say?In a businesss POV, NGOs actually reduce their freedom. Like Lego, many businesses have come under fire by giant international NGOs, by behaving unethically, or just in a way unacceptable to them. Them referring to NGOs. As a result, businesses are forced to incur higher costs, like how government regulations do to them. Well, you might argue that NGOs are the societys police and thats their job. True, NGOs advocates the interest of the people and they act as a source of power for us common people who dont stand a chance against the MNCs.But is it always the case? Take a look at these Lego products. Kids love them. Some adults too. But nope, all gone after the termination of the partnership.This highlights something to us. That the consequences of whatever NGOs do to business, will trickle down back to society.For example, as consumers, we will have less to choose from. Dont forget, when there is a supply that means that there is a demand. These harmful toys are made because we wanted them. We want the cool looking Lego toys from Shell. Hence when businesses are force to make changes, our interests are also compromised.Not only the lack of choices, even the costs are passed on to us. Shells decision to drill in the arctic is essentially to fuel our demand for oil. Currently Shell is still carrying on with the drilling. But one day, what if the NGOs succeed? What if Shell stops drilling there? We all know what happens to the price of oil when supply drops.Hence, NGOs are only the champions of a segment of society, not all of us. At times, their self-righteousness may infringe on our interests.

Another issue we have with NGOs, is their flawed system.As mentioned, their main source of funding are from private donors. And therefore donors hold much more stakeholder power, than the beneficiaries who actually hold almost no power at all. As a result, NGOs are accountable to donors rather than their beneficiaries.

A little class activity, $10 to save a child. If two girl scouts approach you, which donation scheme would you prefer? May I have a show of hands for ABAs we can see, we HATE overheads. Donors typically do not like donating to expenses. However, like a business, these expenses are crucial to the operation of NGOs. Advertising and whatnots. Donors are not experts in the field of aid, and yet NGOs are pressured to follow their demands and the result is a suboptimal organization with less-skilled workers and a small budget. In other words, an inefficient use of our resources.Also, let me show you a really cool water project a few years back. PlayPump is a water pump concept where children pump water by playing on the merry-go-round. Sounds cool doesnt it. The project even gained so much donations and publicity and even had celebrities like Jay-Z featured it in one of his music videos.But, of course I wont be showing you this if it actually succeeded. After calculations, PlayPump actually requires 27 hours of playing per day to hit the target amount of water stated. It is also 4 times more expensive than our boring, yet effective, conventional water pumps. Simply put, its an attractive, but a really stupid idea.Why are such unfeasible projects being carried out? We feel that NGOs are losing their focus. They are coming up with marketable solutions to attract donors. Solutions are focused more on marketability instead of practicality. True, it is not entirely their fault as they need to attract that source of income. It could be the system being at fault too were not sure. But nonetheless, the shift towards being marketable instead of practical is creating a problem for us when theyre wasting resources on cool but silly projects.With this, I will pass on the time to Gerard to continue complaining about NGOs.