With the announcement of qb taking naming rights sponsorship for the 2008/2009 Cambodian National Volleyball League, the CNVLD has successfully made the transition to corporately-funded sustainability, a first for a local Cambodian NGO.

Following the lead of ANZ Royal Bank in Cambodian corporate citizenship in taking naming rights for the ANZ Royal CNVLD Wheelie Grand Prix programme, qb’s sponsorship of the National Volleyball League represents the first ever Cambodian sports league to attract a naming rights sponsor.

The qb 2008 Cambodian National Volleyball League can, after seven successive seasons, also be proud of its entire team sponsorship from the corporate sector with prestigious companies such as Siemens, Kingmaker, bhp Billiton, International Cambodian Drilling Services, International School Phnom Penh, Templestowe College, MPA Security, Globe Magazine, R.O Water and CTN all contributing to the Cambodian athletes with a disability being recognised as the nation’s rightful sporting heroes.

The gradual, successful weaning away from donor funding has been a long, complex and often frustrating process which the CNVLD began with its registration as a local Cambodian NGO in 2003. One of the greatest challenges during this transitional period has been the failure of donor nations, and in particular international NGOs (INGOs), to recognise that the unique power of sport to effect positive social change across a remarkable range of sectors - civil society development, landmine survivor rehabilitation, economic assistance, health, gender equality, employment creation, national sporting pride and the breaking down of negative social perceptions regarding persons with a disability – is a long process that cannot be achieved with short term inputs. To reach the current point has taken the CNVLD eight years.

Many aspects of the CNVLD are modelled directly on the pioneering work of Khun Mechai Viravaidya and PDA of Thailand who have long argued that in order to achieve sustainability, NGOs must accept the time-constraints on donor funding and not only forge links with the corporate sector but create their own paths towards sustainability:

“As major donors concentrate more on dealing with countries in states of emergency, countries will have to deal with continued efforts at social development and poverty eradication more or less alone. As other countries receiving aid “graduate” from less developed status, their civil societies will also find themselves in need of non-donor funding solutions. Hence NGOs must begin to develop at least some degree of self – sufficiency if they have any medium to long term prospects” Khun Mechai Viravaidya –NGO Sustainability Paper.

The great reluctance to accept the need of local organisations to nurture and solidify positive, long-term relationships with the established and emerging corporate sector and the process and vision required to achieve sustainability post-donor reliance represents a central flaw in the western-modelled donor approach. The ideal equation involves initial, substantial support through the donor base to allow the development of a professional product capable of achieving international recognition and success, including the provision of technical expertise. This product can then be presented as a favourable package to the corporate sector on the basis of a high media profile and a unique opportunity to demonstrate responsible corporate citizenship.  The CNVLD’s corporate base started in 2004 with just two sponsors, the Sunway Hotel and Siemens, which in turn has served to attract further corporate support.

Corporate culture engages exceptionally well within the sports and development paradigm – a programme’s success in mutually promoting national sporting pride and corporate responsibility naturally generates increasing long-term interest and support. donor / INGO culture, while no less brutally competitive, essentially masks its inability to operate in unison towards common success by consistent duplication and a focus on short-term input and successes. CNVLD teams set up in areas requested by donor / INGO  sponsors have often been left out in the cold after just one year, because ‘funding priorities have shifted’.

A perfect example of this divergence was a recent statement to the CNVLD by a major donor nation operating in Cambodia that they could not consider supporting disability sports programmes as their priority was on health improvement initiatives and sport did not fall within these parameters.

An ingrained reluctance to engage with the corporate sector also characterises the dominant mindset within the INGO community, where accusations of exploitation and a lack of political and economic transparency mask an erosion of the donor / INGO ‘comfort zone’. This process is a natural product of economies and polities emerging from periods of instability which sees the influence of donor funds exponentially decreasing. The distinct lack of strict, international regulation, financial transparency and effective management over the vast, global aid and development industry thus becomes quickly exposed as local social and economic trends shift upwards.

This approach has been compounded by the well-publicised fact that the vast majority of aid and development funding never leaves its country of origin or is dissipated through in-country support to excessive administrative costs, short-term senior management tenures, high-cost consultant packages and down-ladder grant allocations.. In the past, the CNVLD broke off relationships with at least two large INGOs when it was discovered that proposals to their donors for support for CNVLD sports teams were being inflated by up to 200%. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has repeatedly and publicly criticised the percentage of funds which are absorbed through external consultants

In contrast, the CNVLD’s integrated sports and development programmes and the insistence on ensuring the majority of all funds are channelled into direct athlete support has been acknowledged at the highest levels from the United Nations Best Practices Award for Sports and Development in 2006 to the advancement to the finals of the Nike Changemakers Sport for a Better World competition in 2008.

Just as the INGO community often decries corporate influence, so the corporate sector remain consistently critical of the negative legacy of poor INGO fund management and subsequently remain distant from all but those who can deliver international standards of transparency and quality service. Having sponsored the Wheelie Grand Prix since 2007, ANZ Royal Bank’s community programme now advises funding applicants that they expect proposals, implementation, reports and transparency to meet the standards displayed by the CNVLD.

Corporate donors tend to actively engage the CNVLD in its efforts to promote transparency and persons with a disability within advertising campaigns. In contrast, the CNVLD often found out through secondary sources that donors or INGOs were taking credit through promotion overseas for the success of the whole programme as a means of generating more funding and promotion for themselves.

The process of sponsoring a CNVLD sports team perfectly reflects the polarity of the corporate vs. donor cultures. Corporate sponsors genuinely adopt their team as a symbol of their community engagement; staff volunteer for events, attend competitions in significant numbers, vocally support the team and even organise games against them. In contrast, it is exceptionally rare for any donor / INGO  representatives to even engage in project monitoring let alone actively support their team or attend events. As a result, assessments of success differ greatly between the two. Attendance at and engagement with events quickly demonstrates the long-term pride, self-confidence, discipline, teamwork, happiness and positive promotion which come from team-based sports. A lack of active engagement sees an ongoing focus on statistics and development jargon in ignorance of the true human impact.

Yet despite having achieved corporate sustainability for 2008, the National Volleyball League is only one step along another long, challenging road for the CNVLD and is merely touching the tip of the iceberg in terms of implementing a truly national disability sports infrastructure. As the 2007 WOVD Cambodia Standing Volleyball World Cup, the qb 208 National Volleyball League and the ANZ Royal CNVLD Wheelie Grand Prix have demonstrated, Cambodia’s capacity to host  and compete in international standard sporting events is unquestionably established.

As Cambodia’s economy rapidly improves and sport once again becomes a national pastime, the CNVLD envisages far greater long-term input from the corporate sector to enable not only the strengthening and expansion of local disability infrastructures but also to allow Cambodian athletes with a disability to compete successfully on the international stage.

The CNVLD and the Corporate Sector:

Working Together Towards Sustainability of Cambodian Disability Sports