국제개발협력에서 문화적 인식과 NGO활동에 대한 질적연구: 네팔 사례를 중심으로

Since the 1950s, international development cooperation NGOs have played an active role as an alternative system equipped with an independent and neutral stance replacing national and international organizations’ foreign aid system. However, there are also critical views on whether the quantitative expansion of international development cooperation NGOs and their contributions have actually brought meaningful changes and development in the third world countries. Nepal, known as one of the world's poorest countries and neglected nations in the international society, has served as a core stage for international development cooperation NGOs’ activities; also, the number of international NGOs and local NGOs has increased dramatically in Nepal. To tackle this situation, our study focuses on the research question on ‘In what direction are local NGOs in Nepal has evolved and what is the reason behind it?' by adopting Korten's (1987;1990) NGO Generation Theory for analyzing the data. This study used a qualitative research method by interviewing the founders, employees, and activists of two local NGOs in Nepal that were engaged in clothing recycling and education projects in mountain villages. As result, these Nepalese local NGOs have the corresponding characters of the 4th generation of NGOs in terms of their organizational purpose, problems, actors, roles, and management. In addition, the main characteristics of these 4th generation NGOs were based on the positive cultural perception of their countries. This study confirms that understanding the cultural awareness of the local people about their own country is a key factor in international development cooperation.