NGO's do good, but have problems

Strategypage has a long nuanced essay on NGO's: Their good points and bad points.

Good point: They deliver aid

Bad point: they preach and try to change society

This move from delivering aid to delivering ideas, often unwelcome ones, has put all NGOs at risk. The NGOs have become players in a worldwide civil war between local traditional ideas, and the more transnational concepts that trigger violent reactions in many parts of the world.

This used to be the complaint against church charity outreach, but few notice that pushing gay rights and abortion in conservative societies is just as upsetting as going in and smashing their idols in the name of Jesus: 

Indeed it is worse, because religious NGO's usually reinforce moral values that agree with those of these conservative soceities. In contrast, too often NGO's are full of "idealists" who push  policies undermine the family, which is the main social umbrella for the sick, children and elderly. Family planning (including sex ed like the NGO's are pushing here in the Philippines) and abortion translates to teaching your girls that it is okay to have sex (leading to a lot of kids here without fathers), and Gay rights translates to teaching people not to get upset when those in charge rape your boys (not just your girls). 

You don't just go into a place without speaking the language and pretend you are Lady Bountiful: You have to work with people.

Even Poor people have opinions. For example, here the distrust caused by the Dengue vaccine scandal has led to some parents not getting their children vaccinated, and so we now have a lot of measles and even polio cases in Manila.

and "anti vax" hysteria in the western press gets read and magnified by immans or even Catholic bishops who then warn their people that such shots are dangerous or a way to kill them off or stop them from having children.

this idea is easier to believe because some NGO's are pushing modern sexual agenda.

In medicine, pushing family planning can be seen as eugenics or genocide by locals, and pushing legalized abortion, which is seen as murder, is worse: So pushing Depo shots that stops pregnancy or abortion pills makes the rumors that the vaccines are making kids sick or causing mom to lose her baby more believable because western medicine is tainted by the idea that doctor want to stop locals from having children.

Alas, sometimes the rumors that doctors are out to kill you is true:
it's a dirty little secret that the esteemed organizations "doctors without borders" was founded by a guy who euthanized patients he was supposed to be helping:  And then they wonder why people distrust medical personnel.

Also note that often NGO's are too snotty to work with locals, which increases opposition. One reason is that local officials steal a lot of stuff, but until you recognize that they also spread that stolen money around to their friends and extended family and the poor who they had connections with, it isn't as if they used it to fund their cocaine habit (a la Hunter Biden).

Development programs disrupt the existing economic and political relationships. This is especially the case if the NGOs try to change the way things are done. The local leaders are often not happy with this, as the NGOs are not always willing to work closely with the existing power structure. While the local worthies may be exploitative, and even corrupt, they are local, and they do know more about popular attitudes and ideals than the foreigners.

except in "failed states", of course, where the money is spent to buy guns and pay their private militias.

and then there is this:

Increasingly people in the countries NGOs deliver aid to complain about the NGOs being more concerned about their own safety and comfort than in making the lives of the locals better. But it's not as simple as that. There are also disagreements within the NGO community about how to deliver aid in areas swarming with bandits, Islamic terrorists and other bad actors.

yes. You can't help people if you are dead.

but what about NGO's who pretend to aid people but are actually just examples of wokeness and virtue signalling?

The NGOs that continue to send people to these dangerous areas complain that many NGOs that used to be there with them are now snagging a lot of aid money and moving to some well-guarded urban area to spend the aid money on studies, seminars and research into how to achieve peace and prosperity via diplomacy, negotiation and creative financing. The NGOs still out in the field consider this growing interest in this new “non-contact” with the people needing the aid, approach a craven copout and diversion of desperately needed funds from buying food and emergency services for people.