In the spotlight with Caroline Harper, Sightsavers
Caroline Harper, Chief Executive at Sightsavers talks about mainstreaming disability, the importance of demonstrating results and the challenges facing the development sector.
What are you are working on at the moment?
Our big focus is on assessing the quality of our work and improving performance. We are increasing our restricted income proportion because it is key to the organisations growth and the donors we’re working with now are much more demanding on being able to demonstrate impact and quality of work. I spend a lot of time presenting our work and talking to other international NGOs about what they are doing and trying to learn from them.
What is Sightsavers most significant achievement?
I think it has to be our ongoing work on River Blindness (Onchocerciasis). We are now reaching 23 million people a year in Africa and in most countries where we work you won’t find many people blinded by this disease. But when we go to the countries where we haven’t been working, for instance southern Sudan, we find a very high proportion of people who are blinded through River Blindness and we realise that it would have been a very big problem in countries like Ghana had we not been supporting those treatments. We are now at a point where we think we can eliminate its transmission and the fact that Sightsavers has been so involved in eradicating such a terrible disease in Africa is amazing.
Is there a role for international NGOs in the future?
The first World Report on Disability found that not enough is being done to address the needs of people with disabilities. How can NGOs better serve this group of people?
It’s really frustrating how slow the progress has been on disability, and it’s sad that there’s still such a lack of priority and interest. To give an example, in the context of the MDG around universal primary education, of the 65 million children in developing countries who are out of school, one-third are disabled. So you would think that disability would be a big topic in the same way that the environment and gender are but it isn’t. As we all become concerned about value for money we have got to be very careful that there isn’t a push to just do what’s easy. I’ve heard it said that it’s cheaper to educate non-disabled children so let’s not worry about the disabled children because it’s far too expensive. We have to make sure that doesn’t happen in the drive to demonstrate that we’re being cost effective. We won’t achieve the MDGs unless we include everybody.
Sightsavers is a member of the Beyond 2015 group which aims to influence what follows the MDGs. What’s important from a disability perspective?
The Beyond 2015 group is very important. Disabled people were essentially left out of the MDGs and yet they are disproportionally represented amongst the very poorest people. I think all development programming needs to include disabled people and donors should be asking for information and data about that inclusion. Both individuals and representative organisations have got to be included in the beyond-2015 debate and process of developing the framework so that it’s written in such a way that it really will deliver for disabled people.
What do you think is the key challenge for the UK development sector?
Undoubtedly it’s going to be the economic situation and the push from the media about not wasting money on ‘foreign aid’. With the cuts here, the atmosphere and environment for support for development is going to be much more difficult. I do think though that the media hasn’t caught the full mood of the public and I think there is a real groundswell of support out there (look at the increased support for Comic Relief), but as the cuts really bite we are going to have to work very hard as a sector to keep and increase that goodwill and trust.
We must show that we achieve tangible results and that we understand our costs and impact. It’s not easy but if we don’t and the sympathy and support from the public ebbs away it might have a real impact on whether 0.7% is finally realised.
In recent years, ‘the BRICS have become a more powerful influencing force. What impact do you think this is having on development?
I think the role of China is going to become the single biggest question going forward. It appears that their influence is going to be driven primarily by economic cooperation and they clearly value rights of sovereignty such that they are less likely than we in the west to challenge governance structures. It will be very interesting to see how these changes affect Africa.
India is another interesting case. We in Sightsavers have been shifting our emphasis northwards for a number of years but this year we are beginning to fundraise there. Our aim is to have the Sightsavers India operation at least self-supporting over the next 5-7 years so that while it remains part of the Sightsavers family we don’t expect to keep supporting it with UK funds indefinitely.
It’s certainly going to be a different world in 10 years time. Is there a role for international NGOs in the future? The most important thing for Sightsavers has been to change from a UK charity with overseas offices to an international NGO working as a development organisation.
It’s really frustrating how slow the progress has been on disability.
Where would you like Sightsavers to be in five years time?
I would like us to be recognised as a leading international NGO beyond the sight-restoration sector – an organisation that people are queuing up to talk to and to work and partner with, and as an exemplar in good practice and understanding impact and effectiveness. I would have like us to have eliminated River Blindness in many of the countries where we work and to have seen a major step-change in the number of eye health workers particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.
I would also like us to be working in more of the lowest income countries. Ultimately, I would love to be in a position where I don’t have to stand up at a major conference to ask what is being done about disability because everybody is already including disabled people.
Do you have a mentor or someone who has inspired you?
Lady Jean Wilson, the widow of the founder of Sightsavers, is amazing. She’s in her late 80’s and is still travelling the world. She’s now a strong advocate for hearing impairment and she’s recently been at WHO in Geneva holding them to account for not doing enough.
I was recently in Nampula, Mozambique and met an optomologist who could have been in Maputo earning far more money but instead he was in this really run down hospital with hundreds of people queuing for treatment. He was the only ophthalmologist there, working all the hours but was the most cheerful person you could wish for. It’s people like that who inspire me now.
Before joining Sightsavers in 2005, Dr Caroline Harper had a number of roles predominently in the private sector including as Managing Director of Amerada Hess Gas Ltd, a subsidiary of Amerada Hess Ltd dedicated to selling gas to industrial customers. She was awarded the OBE for services to the gas industry in 2000. Following the sale of the company in 2002, Dr Harper spent six months travelling in Africa, China and South America, before setting up her own interim management business. After a further period of travel, Dr Harper became a non executive director of Notting Hill Housing Group before joining Sightsavers.
