Per Diem

The past few days I have been in Lomé for a conference with the World Health Organization (WHO) about their campaign to eradicate Polio in Togo and West Africa.  WHO was kind enough to pay for our transportation to their office, but also laid upon us a “per diem” of no insubstantial sum that made a few of us volunteers a bit uncomfortable to accept.  The sum they gave to us is the typical amount for an average person who in invited to attend a WHO event and for the number of people who participate annually, WHO hands out a huge amount of money.  The idea that the money they were giving us to come and participate in a meeting could have very well been spent in a better way, such as buying these vaccinations they need to distribute, haunted some of us as we took the superfluous sum. 

A per diem is intended to cover incidental costs, such as meals and lodging, you have while participating in an event.  The idea of providing for someone to come to your event is not a unique one, but here in Togo the idea of a per diem is taken to excess. 

In the States it is typical to personally pay for training.  If you want to be certified in CPR you pay, but here everyone expects to be paid.  It can be extremely difficult to get participants in any sort of training or project without paying them and a guest speaker (such as a local doctor) can cost you even more.  You can waste a substantial part of a budget on per diem and with very limited funds this can be extremely frustrating.  Often the majority of a budget for a project such as educating a population on an issue has been the per diem.  A substantial amount is expected by participants in the form of a per diem, but the Peace Corps is attempting to discourage the giving of per diem by decreasing the amount we are allowed to allocate for that purpose in our funding applications.

I am not about to say that there are not true volunteers here in Togo, but nearly everyone expects payment for participation.  Even if they are local with no transportation or lodging costs, people want to be paid.  I don’t know if it’s a result of previous institutions being here and creating the expectation of pay for nearly everything or what, but I can’t help but think of the resources that are wasted in the per diem system.  If people would be willing to give their time for free or minimal costs, the money saved could be used to support the aspects of projects and development that actually require funding rather than going towards paying someone for coming to a meeting for a few hours one afternoon.