Is it okay to have security agencies vet harambees?

kuria kanyingi hold a heap, ward of money, notes at a Harambee fundraiser. [Courtesy]

 

The proposal to vet harambees (fundraisers) seeks to make the entire process accountable. That’s the only way we are going to protect the noble spirit of Harambee.

The challenge of having an unstructured way of fundraising means that anybody can create an incident and raise money from it. There has to be a follow-up on where that money went.

The problem is that many a time, we have a lot of faith in the people who sold us the idea and believe they are actually going to use the money as they stated. It is quite important as a country to ensure crowdsourcing — what is actually a noble process of bringing community together to help somebody, delivers what it promises.

There has to be accountability as well because one cannot say that they cannot account for money raised in a harambee. Even Kenya Revenue Authority allows you to be able to knock-out money given for social responsibility. Just because one donated Sh1 million to a harambee does not mean you are going to solve people’s problems. We are not going to allow politicians to use poverty to manipulate people into a certain direction. We are already seeing that happening in the country.