Imagine you are in a training. And you ask yourself who is the beneficiary of this training? Logical answer should be me! I’m the beneficiary of this training! Common sense. But according to EU Regulation, the beneficiary is the one preparing and/or implementing the operation. In short, the one getting the money (the training organisation, the municipality or the ministry organising it…). This is confusing. So, time for a change?
OECD did that change already. Beneficiaries are defined as, “the individuals, groups, or organisations, whether targeted or not, that benefit directly or indirectly, from the development intervention.” But this is creating another confusion giving the impression that people are getting a “benefit”. It sounds like getting money. And it makes also no clear distinction between the ones getting the effects of the intervention and the ones implementing the operation.
So how to change and to reflect in a better way the logic of intervention? The point is to achieve some results because of some contributions: we are looking not for “beneficiaries” but for the best contributions in order to make the change real. In that sense, the term of “contributor” will be more appropriate. Contributors or implementers, because we need operations to be implemented in order to bring the change for some specific areas and group. And here another source of confusion: shall we talk about target group, users, affected people, addresses? If the point is really to make the change as specific as possible for some people, in a targeted way, we should talk about target group.
So, at the end of the day, we are supporting implementers that contribute to achieve some results for a target group?