Hi Rick. I wasn't trying to be a pain, just pointing out proper acronym (and what it stands for) so you wouldn't lose any time by Fabio asking you to clarify what NOGs are.
LOL
I actually looked into this question myself 6 years ago, when I still lived in the DR. At the time I was trying to organize a coalition of interested parties to get changes in waste policy and practice, and I attended a number of meetings organized at that time by ONAPRES as part of a World Bank loan they had to formulate environmental policies. I kept meeting ONGs at these meetings that I had never heard of, and never saw active out in the field. Yet on closer examination, they were getting hefty sums from the official budget.... always seemed fishy to me. I know that several European governments and the EU Commision help NGOs with funding (the Netherlands particularly springs to mind), but even there I wonder about their independence (willingness to criticize the hand feeding them, when necessary) and the possibilities of corruption. In the DR, I don't wonder at all... :tired:
Anyway, at that time I tried to hunt down the law that governed NGOs and government funding thereof, and to obtain a hardcopy of it (at that time, an electronic version was totally out of the question!), but with little success. I know that the DR government is slowly improving provision online of laws and degrees (most noticeably in the environment field, I am happy to say), but the offerings are still relatively meager, even when compared to other Latin American governments (even many of the Central American governments do a better job)...
