– Stichting Antilliaanse Mede Financierings Organisatie (AMFO) in 2008 utilized 20 million, which makes up for almost all its available funds, to finance NGO-projects on the Netherlands Antilles. AMFO-director Stanley Betrian revealed this Monday evening during AMFO’s end-of-year press conference. The director also bid the organization farewell, stating that his three year contract will expire December 31^st. His successor is Reinoudt Karsdorp, who will start per March 1^st. During the intervening period Charles do Rego will be in charge of the foundation.

The total amount made available in 2008 for NGO-projects was 23 million guilders. These donor funds were made available by the Dutch ministry of Interior Affairs and Kingdom Relations. The funding took place as follows: Bonaire received one million and a half for about 20 projects, Curaçao nearly 13 million guilders for nearly 40 projects, Saba more than 600 thousand guilders for 4 projects, Sint Eustatius 700 thousand for about 5 projects and Sint Maarten 3.2 million guilders for about 15 projects.

Children’s homes

The 23 million does not include the extra amount of nearly one million, of which several children’s homes benefited on the three islands where currently these homes are being operated. The same amount of 23 million has been granted by the donor for 2009 as well. The Dutch government also indicated that AMFO will continue to exist in its current status until the year 2012.

Determination

Director Betrian is quite satisfied with the determination with which AMFO, but chiefly the NGO field has worked: “In the past funding agencies, receiving their funding from abroad, not often have managed to actually invest all the available finances. There were many reasons for this. One of those reasons was the fact that the NGO field in the past definitely lacked the necessary knowledge and experience with procedural requirements. In recent years various NGO-organizations have heavily invested in those areas. The organizations now are much more capable to comply with the requirements. The administrative management has certainly improved, which has caused the funds to be nearly depleted.”

Betrian continues: “But also important in this regard is the fact that AMFO as an organization has been managed locally, by professionals who know the Antillean NGO field very well. They are very well capable to acknowledge, identify and distinguish the problems. This results in ‘ownership’, which has proven to be very important: these are our problems, which we truly desire to see attacked and solved. After all we are the ones who will be confronted with social difficulties in case these problems are not effectively solved.”

Structure

The AMFO structure resulted to be a strong point. Betrian: “AMFO has a good governance structure where the responsibilities are split up. The organization has a back office and a front office. The project evaluation, the project administration and a great part of the financial administration have been outsourced .This way the process has become more objective, which allows the AMFO staff to offer more and better service to non-governmental organizations, the so-called social field.

Another factor that has played a mayor role in the successful results of AMFO was the fact that politics were

set aside. The AMFO director: “And we do not refer merely to politics in the common sense of the word. We refer to all types of external influence on the decision making process within AMFO. Of course this is a very delicate point. The decision making can only take place along the lines of the established procedures.”

Improvement

The only area of improvement Betrian mentioned for his successor is the need of the smaller islands for good and sustainable projects. AMFO concludes that the NGO’s on Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba need more attention in order to be able to develop and execute good projects.