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13
NEWS
August/September 2012 www.esb.ie/em
Funding our Priorities, Meeting Desperate Needs
ElectricAid is careful in how it chooses to spend your donations and what projects it will support.
Every funding application goes through a rigorous vetting process that starts with the requirement that applicants must have a credible reference from somebody known and acceptable to us.
Each application is examined in detail by our Evaluation Group and, if successful at this stage, the final decision on whether an application is approved, or not, is taken by our Executive Committee.
There is a reporting requirement on all successful applicants and projects are liable to having unannounced site visits both before and after funding goes ahead.
The applications that are most likely to be approved are those that conform to our own funding priorities. These are:
- Basic Infrastructure – especially water and sanitation
- Basic and vocational education
- Energy – access, security and conservation
- Health – programmes, facilities and equipment
- Micro-finance and micro-enterprise
- Sustainable agriculture and food security
Additionally, we recognise the HIV/AIDS pandemic as an over-arching issue, which informs our choice of projects to support in the priority areas described above.
ElectricAid – the Irish dimension
A regularly heard criticism of ElectricAid argues against the value of overseas development assistance per se: “We have enough problems in this country, we should be looking after our own”.
There are two answers to this argument. The first is that our problems come nowhere near the problems of those in the developing world, where people in abject poverty suffer the effects of civil war, disease and the worst effects of the global economic meltdown. The ethical argument for overseas aid, directed at the poorest people on Earth, is overwhelming.
The second response is that ElectricAid has always also funded projects in Ireland, focussing our attention especially on projects benefitting children, the disabled and the disadvantaged.
In total, we have funded 379 Irish projects at a cost of about €2.5 million – that is more than 10% of the €17m that we have spent on projects worldwide in the last 25 years.
In 2005, the ESB community extended its commitment to corporate responsibility and social justice with the creation of a new partner-entity, ESB ElectricAID Ireland, which has since then directed an additional €6.5 million into two specific areas of need in Ireland – homelessness and suicide.
Together, through ElectricAid and ElectricAid Ireland, the ESB community is helping more good works in this country than ever before.
ElectricAid – the corporate dimension
ElectricAid is a stand-alone entity, owned and controlled by its 2,700 contributing members.
Nevertheless, a huge factor in our continuing success is the steadfast support of ESB and, more recently, of EirGrid.
ESB made a remarkable commitment to ElectricAid in 1988, when the company undertook to match staff and pensioner contributions on a 2:3 basis, up to an annual limit (currently €250,000). In 2006, EirGrid made an identical commitment.
In 2005, at the time of the launch of our sister-entity, ESB ElectricAid Ireland, which funds projects in Ireland that tackle suicide and homelessness, ESB’s commitment was deepened. The company appointed full-time staff to manage the two charities, which has been a catalyst for spectacular growth in membership, income and, most importantly, work done in the field.
There is no such thing as an over-head-free organisation, but ElectricAid is a ‘free overheads organisation’, where running costs are paid by ESB. This means that every cent of contributions and donations goes, without exception, towards financing projects. We are deeply grateful to our corporate partners, and we look forward to working with them for another 25 years.
ElectricAid: the early years
Conceived in 1986 and born in April 1988, ElectricAid had a long gestation period quipped founding member Colm McLauglin.
This two-year incubation was mainly because of the work needed to set up a ‘deduction at source’ system for contributions from staff salaries, but it also allowed for plenty of practical pre-natal preparation work that has guaranteed the long-term health and well-being of the organisation.
Colm’s fellow founding members were a relatively small group that included Kevin Gaughran (the first Chairman), Gaye Cunningham and Fran O’Neill of ESBOA, Tony Mulholland of MSF (now Unite), Marie Brady, Brian Dowd and Jean Stott, but a little over a year later, at the end of 1989, ElectricAid had more than 1,000 contributing members.
A myriad of motivations have prompted people to join ElectricAid: some have a belief in social justice informed by their trade union involvement, others see it as part of corporate responsibility; some see it as their religious beliefs in action, others see it as part of humanism. Certainly, Ireland’s heritage of overseas development work and ‘the missions’ gave many an insight into how micro-projects could make a massive difference to people in the developing world.
There was much debate among the members as how beneficiaries could gain most from the scarce funds, but it quickly became a consensus that the focus should be on development projects that would bring sustainable projects.
The first ElectricAid funded scheme in April 1988 was a Concern project for water pumps in Nampula, Mozambique, involving a grant of IR£4,611. This grant was supplemented by a smaller sponsorship of a primary school project in Bangladesh. The number of projects funded annually increased rapidly to between 40 and 50 a year.
We received many expressions of thanks from beneficiaries, but the most direct evidence of how ElectricAid funds were making a difference was in 1994 when a special appeal raised over IR£50,000 for the victims of the Rwandan genocide. GOAL invited Colm McLaughlin to visit the refugee camps in Rwanda and Goma and see for himself the lives saved and medical and education facilities put in place and GOAL director John O’Shea said he was very impressed by the speed of the ESB charity’s response.
In addition to their financial support, ElectricAid members have been generous with their voluntary labour as trustees, officers, committee members and local representatives and the charity has been blessed with excellent chairpersons, vice-chairpersons, secretaries and treasurers, including some multi-taskers like Tony Mulholland, Mary Baxter, Tommy McGurrell and Dorothy Brannock who filled more than one role.
ESB Group gave great support to the emerging organisation by readily agreeing to cover all ElectricAid administrative costs and by matching the funds donated by members. Thanks to the company, to staff and to ESB pensioners, we have improved the lives of millions of people.
