[Imc-finance] Re: Funding Nigeria-imc: 3 items to consider

[winters]

Hi all, 

I am very happy to respond to the mail below.
I also highly appreciate the networking systems of our dear indymedia and 
above all the special commitments of different people from all over the 
globe irrespective of age, colour, knowledge, standards, religion etc. 

I hardly respond to mails like this especially when it directly attack 
persons' personality and integrity, I mean when such mails  breaks what i 
may refer to as official conducts. 

we are all bonded together as one big family through our collective believe 
'indymedia's mission'. Hence we all volunteer to give our time and knowledge 
to it. Some of us have lost our jobs, gave all our savings and even our 
security  for this mission. Some of us have travelled from one continent to 
the other exchanging ideas and building co-operation between people of same 
minds , all to make indymedia  globally and locally work and reach people. 
Most time people that can go this far may be able to sacrifice all they have 
to the mission , but not their last asset- ' their integrity'.  Also, a new 
IMC  like Nigeria , working from global south may be able to  give all it 
takes to be strong , effective, reliable and also meeting global network 
demands , but may also not be ready to be rumoured around the globe as 
unreliable and non existing in any capacity. I have been opportune to travel 
to many continents of the globe and with my work in environment, social and 
community development , i have come to realise that just like all fingers 
are not equal , so also economic, social, and environmental standards   
varies from pole to pole. I have also come to realise that what is 
obtainable in the north may not be obtainable in the south due to different 
problems and  constrains like poverty, people priorities, societal values, 
resource availability etc.  I have always tried to to give equal measurement 
to all people especially when they are all not in same conditions. I also 
believe that tagging some IMC BAD or so even when they are doing their best  
may not be the best way to helping IMCs improve. I am sure no IMC in the 
globe can boast that they have reached perfection.... we are all working to 
achieve that. That i know is our goal. I advise we should be careful in the 
way we attack IMCs especially when you actually sit in one part of the globe 
and shot punches to another group on the other end. Most times  it doesn't 
help their growth . This kind of mails often kill projects and ideas even 
before they are conceived. We all need encouragements rather than 
condemnations to help us all volunteer more time and strength to achieve 
indymedia goals. 

Nigeria IMC this year got funding from our partner  UCIMC and we did have a 
good understanding between us before the funding came through. it was 
approx. $3,000. Which i Winters received for IMC Nigeria while i was on a 
visit to England. what we know and we are used to is when you are funded by 
a group you at the end of your organisation's accounting year send a copy of 
your account to the funding group or send account of funds sent to your 
group to the donor when they request for it. We have never at anytime 
recieved funding from IMC global . Or if we may ask , when we get 
independent funding from any source do we send our account to IMC global or 
send it to IMC lists? These issues are quite confusing. I hope there is a 
balance treatment in handling IMCs affairs globally. This draws our 
attention to the issue of question mark appearing in front of IMC Nigeria 
link in the listing pages of IMC Document website. Same question mark also 
appears for IMC South Africa. This page ( IMC Document 
website)http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/WebHome#_Africa_  there are 
links to all other IMC , but non to Nigeria and South Africa. Can some one 
answer this questions? 

As we all work to make indymedia reach out to all , we will be glad if 
volunteers and local IMCs are allow to do there work instead of getting 
condemnation for every little work done. little drop of water makes a great 
ocean. Rome was never built in one day. 

Best wishes, 

Winters
Nigeria IMC 

 

Petros Evdokas writes: 

>  
> 
> Funding Nigeria-imc: 3 items to consider 
> 
> In this article:
> o - the 3 items
> o - some further thoughts, and Alternatives
> ------------------------------           
> 
> Funding Nigeria-imc: 3 items 
> 
> 
> In order to make informed, responsible, decisions
> regarding the funding of imc-Nigeria, we need to
> consider the following items in the list below. I’m
> very glad to see that our members of the imc-finance
> working group are now asking intelligent questions and
> making an effort to get clarifications, and I wish we
> had been doing this all along, for *all* of the funding
> requests! Here are the items to consider: 
> 
> 1. Nigeria-imc has received imc funding previously,  in
> the recent past. This information is not being shared
> openly in the discussion, and it should be given some
> weight. The money that was given should be accounted
> for, the procedures should be examined, and we need to
> see :
> a.  who were the recipients, what was the money used
> for?
> b.  who were the recipients accountable to? Did they
> give a report on how the money was used? Did the imc
> group which approved the money,  remain satisfied with
> that exchange? 
> c.  who are the imc people who funded imc nigeria in
> the past, who are they accountable to, and why are they
> not talking about this openly now? Shouldn’t this
> funding request be seen in the light of previous
> funding? 
> 
> 2. The previous time that imc-Nigeria requested money
> (it was for $20.000 !! ) I wrote this article about it:
> "[Imc-nigeria] Ways to help imc- Nigeria without money"
> http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-nigeria/2002-June/000091.html
> It was also published as a part of the imc-finance
> dialogue about it, here:
> http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-finance/2002-June/001335.html 
> 
> There was never any response to it, from anyone in
> imc-finance. Nor was there any resonse from anyone
> related to imc-Nigeria (except I received a very
> hostile letter from their supporter, Marcus Sky
> {IMC-UK  nessuno}, who wrote to me supposedly on behalf
> of Winters, but I do not believe that Winters would
> have been so crude or crass, even if we had an apparent
> difference of opinion - so far, Winters sounds like a
> reasonable person who simply had questionable ally).  
> 
> Anyway, now would be a good time again, for imc-Nigeria
> to answer some of our questions related to languages,
> to community organization, to politics, etc. It’s not
> unreasonable for us to ask our Nigeria colleagues what
> exactly is happening with the imc group there. For
> example, even after my many questions on the group’s
> rhythm of activity and process, the group produced
> *one* article in the last six months (please see the
> imc-nigeria site for yourselves). This contradicts the
> claim we have read that supposedly "The IMC-Nigeria has
> been a well-established IMC for over a year."  
> 
> And the majority of posts from visitors on the site,
> are still from Europe and the US ( what makes this
> group Nigerian?) And again, since the answer to this
> question may re-surface as an excuse: since the
> internet hardly exists in Nigeria, its "mission-
> orientation" to being online,  might be entirely
> inappropriate. It’s very possible that  the country’s
> needs for Free (radical) Media might be better served
> by Indymedia activists working with *different* media,
> such as Radio, Video, Press, etc. But we don’t know
> this, and cannot judge this from a distance, only our
> colleagues in Nigeria have the familiarity with the
> issues and the autonomy to decide this. Except, it
> would be nice if they were open to *dialogue* with us
> about these issues, since they are asking us for
> funding. Why is the group not open to dialogue about
> these issues?   
> 
> Even the imc-Nigeria email list, was graciously managed
> for a whole year until this October by one of our most
> committed US- based comrades, Scott Lewis of the
> Bandwidth Coop, who is an internationalist American; it
> was not managed by any of the Nigerian colleagues. The
> current (new) manager of the list, is not in Nigeria. 
> These also fly in contradiction to the claim we have
> read that supposedly "The IMC-Nigeria has been a
> well-established IMC for over a year."   
> 
> All these "problems" in publishing and communication,
> are not generated by a lack of money! They can be
> addressed by any group of activists who have an
> interest in organization, tangible politics, and who
> are committed to co-operation. It does not take money
> to organize. Why do we persist to keep on wanting to
> give money to groups (like imc-nigeria) without asking
> questions about organization, political orientation,
> structure, etc? 
> 
> 3. imc-nigeria seems to have a "special relationship"
> to funding requests. This is the third one I have seen
> in one year. This is remarkable for a group that has
> written six short  articles in one year! (The articles
> are about one paragraph- long each.) We need someone
> who is "behind the scenes" in relation to imc finances,
> to explain to us why this situation exists, what is
> this special relationship, and why it keeps coming up. 
> 
>      **** 
> 
> Some further thoughts and Alternatives 
> 
> I am very much in favour of Jay’s visit and imc
> contacts in Africa.  
> 
> If there is some compelling reason (I don’t see one,
> but it might exist), I would feel a whole lot better,
> to just give some of this money  directly to Jay (a
> much smaller amount), and he can use it at his
> discretion for contacts, for getting around,  and for
> doing imc work in Africa. It’s just plain and simple. I
> don’t know Jay, but I trust him because I have seen
> that he is open to dialogue, open to being questioned,
> open (and self- motivated) to being accountable. None
> of the other parties involved in this deal so far
> (either those listed to receive the funds, or those who
> have funded them in the past) are showing any self-
> motivated openness to democratic procedures. Without
> transparency we cannot have democracy among us. 
> 
> Also, our colleague Winters of the imc-Nigeria group,
> seems to have some relationship (physical presence?)
> with the UK. It would be so simple for Winters to
> co-operate with our imc colleagues there, in the UK -
> we have a lot of new, and old imc- groupings all over
> the UK - and this co-operation would also generate
> whatever "training" is needed, and it would benefit all
> of us, at no cost! Why even *think* to fly him to
> Nigeria just to meet with Jay? 
> 
> Regarding the effort to create an Ambazonia- imc, and
> its possible participation in a meeting with Jay in
> Nigeria (therefore necessitating imc expenses and
> funding):
> a.  the group, as far as I know is not yet in the imc
> network, so, most likely not eligible,
> b.  it has not yet clarified its relation to lesbian-
> and gay- liberation politics in the various political
> position statements it has sent us,
> c.  it has apparently good allies within the germany
> imc groups, and the washington dc imc groups, so there
> are many ways for our new Ambazonia colleagues to
> become familiarised, trained, involved in our process
> through direct, face- to face contact with solidely
> active imc members. 
> d.  if there is a pressing political need to speed up
> this process, and to make it a priority for us to
> finance a meeting of Ambazonia imc contacts with Jay in
> Nigeria, it needs to be demonstrated to us in political
> terms we can understand. 
> 
>      **** 
> 
> I hope our colleagues from Nigeria-imc will want to
> answer some of all these questions above.
> Also, I hope our imc colleagues who know more about
> other, previous,  imc funding to imc-nigeria, will step
> forward with the information and share it openly.
> These will enable us to help imc-Nigeria better. 
> 
> All of the above concerns are specifically related to
> the current funding request for imc-nigeria, but the
> concerns should apply to *all* the requests we receive.
> I wish that our procedures here at imc-finance, can
> expand to include these political/organizational
> concerns and explorations in our dialogue at all times,
> instead of just the sterile "yes" or "no" we are asked
> to offer as mindless cattle. 
> 
> Your thoughts would be most welcome,
> Petros
> http://PetrosEvdokas.mainpage.net
> ------------------------