Lack of coherence and transparency in charitable activities – Mehr news agency Iran and world’s news
According to Mehr reporter, the meeting to evaluate the performance of the governing institutions of the cause of good in the progress of Iran was organized by the secretariat of the Fourth National Conference of Lasting Good and with the participation of the Office of Social Harms of the Ministry of Cooperation, Labor and Social Welfare at the Ministry’s premises.
Mohsen Walei, Deputy Minister of Social Partnerships of the Ministry of Interior, stated that the current state of good in the country is not clear, and stated: Since there is no territorial plan for good and the governing institutions have not yet reached coherence in the field of good, it is difficult to evaluate Let’s talk about their performance in relation to Iran’s progress. Groups such as the Ministry of Interior, Relief Committee, Police Force, Welfare Organization, etc. issue licenses to charities and NGOs. This multiplicity of licensing centers and the lack of clear laws in the field of charity, prevent a realistic analysis of the atmosphere of charity in the country.
The financial circulation of the charity economy is not transparent
He continued: On the other hand, charities do not record many details of their performance accurately and transparently, while in some advanced countries, even people who help the needy individually, the amount and manner of their help in the government system. It is recorded and can be tracked. This transparency makes it possible to prevent possible violations and secondly, it makes the quantitative and qualitative situation of charity in a country to be constantly evaluated and monitored.
Walei clarified: Currently, there is no consensus even on the financial circulation of the charity economy in the country. The only estimate of this financial turnover is the amount of 40 thousand billion Tomans per year, which was presented by Alaa Research Institute in 2015. While if there was individual and institutional transparency in the field of charity, the financial turnover figure should be accurately announced every year.
The Deputy Minister of Social Partnerships of the Ministry of Interior stated that it is necessary to have sufficient data and information in order to evaluate the good governance institutions in the progress of Iran, and said: This will not happen until the licensing centers are coherent, the duties of each institution are not clear, and the people And it is not possible for charities not to register their good services. We hope that conferences such as the National Conference of Enduring Good will clarify these needs and pave the way to evaluate the state of good in the country.
Endowment and charity have always been popular
In the continuation of this meeting, Hojjat-ul-Islam Ahmad Sharafkhani, the head of the Charity Affairs Center of the Organization of Endowments and Charity Affairs, referring to the history of endowment and charity in Iranian culture, said: the popular tradition of endowment and charity in the history of Iran has led to the scientific progress of the country and never relied on There was no government. The history of charity work in Iran has shown that the government has never taken responsibility in the field of charity because the duty of the government in the field of charity is to facilitate.
The head of the Center for Charity Affairs of the Awqaf and Charitable Affairs Organization said: The evaluation of the performance of the governing institutions in the cause of good means how well the governing institutions have been able to facilitate the doing of good deeds in the country for the people. Good deeds in the country do not need a curator, but need coordination, support and rosary thread; The lack of this rosary thread is evident in the recent donations to the Khoi earthquake. Despite a lot of help from different groups, some Khoi people still have problems and lack of facilities.
Hojjat-ul-Islam Sharafkhani continued: Currently, it is not possible to evaluate this because the structure of good in the country, information and data, and the duties and authorities of the institutions are not clear. The Ministry of Interior, which is political in nature, is involved in good affairs, which are the most non-political affairs. On the other hand, some government organizations, whose inherent duty is to provide social services to the people and receive funds for this issue, have labeled their duties as good work and introduce their activities as good. In such a situation, we should not expect that the good activities of the people will lead to the progress of the country.
Social entrepreneurship has no institution
In this meeting, Dr. Nasim Yadgar, the CEO of the Third Sector Horizon Institute, also said: If the good work in the Anglo-Saxon culture is aimed at warding off evil from classes, in our culture, the good work is based on the two pillars of “dignity” and “Medina”. Dignity means that people deserve human rights regardless of race, color and religion, and Madina means that the dignity of all human beings should be respected, not just their individual.
He continued: In our social life, we have situations where the market does not see any benefit in entering it and the government does not have the motivation and ability to solve it, this is where popular traditions such as waqf, hamiyari, baneh, wareh, etc. throughout history have shown themselves. We can pull out these traditions from the heart of history and update them according to the new conditions. For this purpose, we need institutions that are neither simple and burdensome like the government, nor mercurial like the market. Rather, they should consider the public interest, be agile, transparent, knowledge-oriented and action-oriented, and produce good by considering the priorities left on the ground in the field of good. In the field of goodness, we need hypotheses and theories, and we must implement our theories and then model them.
This social entrepreneurship activist emphasized the role of governments in the field of good: governments play a role in two parts: “emergence of good” and “effectiveness of good”. Their role in the emergence of good in society is to recognize good as a public matter and not a sovereign matter and to open the space for the activities of forces that seek the general interest of the society. Their role in the effectiveness of charitable affairs is that groups such as the executive headquarters of Farman Imam, the Awqaf organization, the aid committee, etc., become knowledge-based, dynamic, transparent institutions with decentralized structures whose purpose is to produce public good on a small scale and to produce institutions on a large scale. be big We hope that the fourth national conference of lasting good will open this horizon for governance.
In another part of his speech, Yadgar said: New models of good work in the world, such as social entrepreneurship, are still abandoned in Iran, and there is no institution, policy, law or bank for that. This means that today the private sector has the law and the bank for its activities, and the traditional models of good have also known their mechanisms to some extent, but social entrepreneurship, which is one of the best models of good work, has been neglected.
Institutions’ duties and expectations from them should be precise
Dr. Farhad Aqtar, deputy director of Prevention Development Center of Iran’s Welfare Organization, was one of the other attendees of the meeting who stated that evaluating the performance of governing institutions is a good thing in Iran’s progress, requiring that the institutions’ duties and expectations from them be precise and transparent. Currently, due to the lack of sufficient information about the performance and duties of various institutions in the field of charity, this evaluation is not possible. In addition, the meaning of progress must be clear. If progress is meant to promote and improve the condition of the target society, some groups such as Behazisti have been able to perform well in this field.
Mohammad Reza Poyafar, Director General of Social Damages of the Ministry of Cooperation, Labor and Social Welfare, who was also in charge of managing the meeting, stated in this meeting: What the speakers in this meeting agree on is that governance in the field of good should not be tenure and to implement, but also to facilitate and supervise. There is some controversy over whether all donors are required to register their information. In my opinion, it is necessary to have a collection of good information so that social capital and social participation do not erode.
He added: The ideal situation is to have a system where people can register their data; Of course, there is no top-down view from the government to record this information. There should be a process that a collection, according to social requirements, makes all its processes transparent, including financial issues, volunteer information, etc. This helps to first determine the distribution and type of problems in the country, and secondly, to determine the distribution of social action to solve the country’s problems.
At the beginning of this meeting, Dr. Seyyed Mohammadreza Sidi, the head of the secretariat of the 4th National Conference of Eternal Khair, stated: Alaa Research Institute, which is the only research institute for endowment and charity studies in the country, in addition to holding a series of specialized meetings on issues of charity, obtaining permission for research papers on endowment and charity affairs, as well as The effort to establish the Iranian Waqf and Charitable Association has so far held three national conferences of lasting charity in 2015, 2017 and 2019. The 4th national conference of lasting charity with the theme of “Capacities and functions of charity and endowment in the development of Iran” will be held in May 1402, and in line with this conference, three pre-conferences have been held so far.
It should be mentioned that this meeting is the third pre-conference of the fourth national conference of lasting good. Those interested can visit conf.ala.org.ir for information about the conference.