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Faith-Based Organizations (FBOs) are one of the central actors within the community of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in the developing countries, especially in Africa. To a large extent, they have been busy with development agenda for much longer than most of the other CSOs in that they either came with the Evangelization of African societies in the 19th Century or the Islamization of the East Coast of the continent even much earlier. As defined by Linz and Stepan (1996) civil society is that area of a polity where self-organizing and relatively autonomous groups, movements, and individuals attempt to articulate values, to create associations and solidarities, and to advance interests and occupies the space between an individual and the government. In this wide context, there are, among others, voluntary groups that can be very well organized as well as not-so-well organized, and which assist members to interact in a manner that is beneficial to each – politically, socially, economically, and so on. CSOs in general, can be distinguished between formal and informal, which correspond to the first characteristics on these organizations – being well organized or not that much organized. The former would include such organizations as labour unions, which adhere to codified rules and need governmental sanctions to operate, among other conditions. Informal organizations consist of groups of individuals, who cooperate in different ways for the benefit of their own communities, for collective action, financing, and the provision of services, e.g. neighbourhood vigilante groups, user groups, and informal support groups such as burial solidarity groups. This distinction can correspond to the levels of activity and one organization can be related to. Most of the FBOs in Tanzania belong to the organized category. |
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