If you happen to be working with an NGO in a war-torn nation or in situations of emergency, would you stick to the NGO mandate or make some reforms to adjust to prevailing conditions? After all your objective is to save life at any cost and not to save your organizational charter or constitution at the expense of the dying children. If you say, under any situation be it emergency or normal, my mandate is to feed the child and not to help his or her parents, don't you know that the inputs meant for one child will be shared by the members of the family. And if the child is at all served it will be served last and least. The child which you intneded to save will become more malnourished and depleted as the grown ups continue sharing his food with him. No wonder the child will die.

Under situation of famine or other calamities an agency has to accept some flexibility to review its mandate and policy. War and famine are as much enemy as fire and a fireman has no choice but to extinguish the fire. He can not prefer the doors to windows.

A child whose parent is hungry can not be fed without giving something to the parents as well. Therefore change is necessary to be made on the charter of the NGO to suit the prevailing conditions or to make it responsive to challenges posed by the emergency situation. Straight jacket policy will only lead to making a unintentional mistakes which can cause death of innocent children. I am not advocating to help everybody but I am highlighting the need to show some dynamism in situations where the scale of the plight could reach emergency levels.

May I express my gratitude to all agencies who came to Somalia to help our children regardless of which category of the people they supported on basis of gender, age location etc. I know all NGO's came with good intention to us but sometimes their policies become the major constraint to achieve the desired goals.

Her name is Mumina
She is a community nurse
She goes round the village
She saves life with vaccines
She administers oral solutions

Mumina works with a welfare agency
Her duty is to help the child alone
Parents must not share the allocation
She must help the child in isolation
She must observe the agency's mandate

As Mumina monitored the child's growth
Her trained eyes got stuck on the scale
She exchanged glances with others in silence
The child was gasping its last breath
Agony slowly crept in her weeping heart
Cause of death was severe malnutrition
Had the agency also fed the two parents
This child would not have been wasted