This is a gentle reminder to all applicants that if they are already funded by other sources, they are no longer eligible to apply for our aid.
This clause is stated clearly in all our aid policies.
In the past few days, we received requests for our aid and we were informed that these people were already enrolled in another organisation’s funding programme and that it was this other organisation that had asked them to apply for our aid.
We find this extremely strange, and the problem was, everything was stated rather vaguely in the initial email communications so we had to spend a lot of time in email exchanges to get to the bottom of it. We could have certainly put all those hours to much better use, really!
We had to contact the person-in-charge of the said organisation to get to the bottom of the whole fiasco and it has taken me a few days with very long hours to do this.
Finally, we found out that it was the work of one person (let’s call her “the agent”) who claimed that she was representing this organisation when the organisation actually does not even know who she is.
In the email exchanges, we found a lot of inconsistencies and dishonesty and we also just found out that the applicant (who isn’t literate in English or BM) did not even write the emails herself, but rather, the emails were all written by this “agent” who acted as a third party (yes, an “agent”) to supposedly help these people, but had instead caused so much trouble due to all the inconsistencies, inaccuracies and lies. As you know we have a very strict honesty policy, so once caught lying, the person will be blacklisted.
Before doing the blacklisting, I managed to hunt down the applicant’s phone number and called to speak with her personally in order to understand the whole scenario. After the very long phone call and struggling with two different Chinese dialects, I now understand that the applicant was innocent and the agent was the one telling all the lies, the twisting and turning and creating more lies to cover up the lies.
So, we will be helping this applicant now but definitely blacklisting the agent. If there is one thing we despise, it is lying. When a person can tell one lie, there is no evil he will not do. Indeed, she created lies after lies to cover up the lies! There simply is no end to lying.
So now, back to the subject of cross sponsoring:
We have learnt from previous experience in the last 14 years that engaging in cross sponsoring can result in very unpleasant outcomes that are beyond our control. And example would be multiple claims. We had already encountered such many years ago which forced us to tighten our policies to prevent its recurrence.
One of the worst cases was when someone took an unsuspecting elderly couple’s receipt to claim from individual donors, then claimed from two other organisations before finally claiming from us (ours was the last because we kept the hardcopy of the receipt). She did this all within 2 weeks because that was our deadline. How many claims would that have been for one single case? And we only discovered this because we published the claim and another organisation saw our post and contacted me, “Hey, we too paid for this case! And so-and-so also paid.”.
The things humans do, right?
And there have been other modus operandi too. When it comes to cheating, the sky’s not the limit! People can get very, very creative.
Hence, this is why we cannot approve an application if the applicant is already funded by other sources. We ask all applicants to be honest for your own sake…so that you can sleep peacefully at night.
We can, because we do our utmost due diligence to check through every case before approving it.
This is why I have been sleeping late and getting up very early in the last few days when such cases suddenly came in. I have been digging. And it is so time-consuming. It is unnecessary wastage of time if only people would read our policies and respect them.
So, please.
If you are already getting another organisation’s funding, please do not apply for our aid.
If you are in charge of an organisation that gives out aid, please do not direct your applicants to also apply from us. This would only lead to multiple claims which is oh-so-wrong. If you wish to collaborate with us, do have the courtesy to write to us directly.
And please, we do not entertain third party requests so kindly do not act as an agent for others.
Thank you.
