Pak NGO wins honour for country

Islamabad

The Institute of Rural Management (IRM), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) engaged in capacity building of young women and men throughout the country, brought good news to Pakistan when it was ranked 187th among the top 500 NGOs of the world by the Geneva-based think-tank ‘NGO Advisor’ for the positive and constructive contributions to the society.

The spokesman for the IRM, Ahmed Ali Janjua, said that the IRM started work in 1993 and over the last almost 24 years it has made ‘remarkable’ contributions towards the society by grooming the talent of young women and men, enabling them to lead a healthy and constructive life and become a useful part of the society.

He said that the Geneva-based think-tank, ‘NGO Advisor’ makes an annual assessment of NGOs working all over the world on the basis of their work and performances in their respective fields of operations.

“The IRM decided to enter this prestigious competition for the first time this year when we felt that we have attained the desired levels of competency and integrity to offer ourselves for assessment and analysis by the Geneva-based ‘NGO Advisor’,” the IRM spokesperson said.

“We have all the confidence that we have become major contributors towards the efforts being made to uplift the society by making youth strong. That we did by imparting professional skills training on them, enabling them to support not only themselves but grow to become entrepreneurs, thus generating more jobs for the people around them,” Ahmed Janjua said.

He said that over the last almost 24 years the IRM has groomed into country’s finest and one of the largest capacity building institutes. In its latest assessment made by the ‘NGO Advisor’ in December 2016, IRM was listed as one of the top 500 NGO as it was ranked at 187th.

He said that the rankings are based on variables like diversity of funding stream, independence from Government, impact measurement, sustainability, innovation ratio, transparency and accountability, audit results and governance models.

A total of 3,500 organizations from around the world were shortlisted for the ranking. And among the selected 500, two are from Pakistan. The other NGO from Pakistan, which is listed among the top 500 by the ‘NGO Advisor’ is ‘Aman’. But it was unique on part of the IRM that they entered the competition for the first time and were successful to be picked by the ‘NGO Advisor’ to be part of the top 500.

Ahmed Janjua said that the IRM is one of the most recognized and largest capacity development and learning facility in the not-for-profit sector outside government in Pakistan. Over the period of over 24 years, IRM has developed the capacity of over one million professionals and reached out to more than seven hundred thousand families.

Mr Janjua said that the IRM has the distinction of developing the capacity of professionals in more than 20 countries. IRM has undertaken multi-sectoral projects and has varied experience of working with UN agencies, INGOs, public sector organizations and other bilateral and multi-lateral agencies locally and internationally.