First of all, the original intention of NGOs is only to refer to organizations that are not government organizations. In Chinese, their essence is the most corresponding to non-governmental organizations. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) not only refer to NGOs recognized and accepted by the United Nations system, but also include various other NGOs, especially those that operate in international venues and have strong international connections. Secondly, although NGOs can express public opinion to a certain extent, they have many limitations in the representation of public opinion. An NGO is an organization of civil society whose stated mission and values may be pro bono or serve a specific group of people. But in real life, it is very uncertain whether NGOs can truly represent the public opinion and how much procedure they can be the representatives of the public opinion.

Three functions:

1.To monitor the conduct of governments and international intergovernmental organizations. Non-governmental organizations can supervise the implementation of treaties, commitments, plans and projects of intergovernmental international organizations. They can also promote the implementation of resolutions and treaties adopted by various intergovernmental international organizations to urge governments to abide by their commitments made in the international community and actively exercise their supervisory functions.

2.Influences the decision-making process of intergovernmental international organizations. Since the end of World War II, it has been inter-governmental international organizations, especially those within the United Nations system, that have played a decisive role in the decision-making process of global development. 

From the examples just mentioned, we can summarise three functions of NGOs. Firstly, it promotes cultural change in some part of the poor areas, for example, the education level of rural children is raised. Secondly, it improves the economic conditions of rural communities, increases agricultural sales, and drives local economic development by helping farmers. Thirdly, it promotes cultural change in some parts of the country. For example, some excellent traditional culture and manners have been brought back to rural areas by NGOs, and the methods of respecting the elderly and helping each other have been widely spread, so that the culture and the spiritual life of villagers in some poor areas have been enhanced.

 

The second point is to help earthquake relief work. Founded in 2007 by Chinese martial arts star Jet Li, One Foundation is the first private public foundation in China. After the April 20 Lushan earthquake, the One Foundation worked with the government, NGOs and other partners to carry out emergency relief, resettlement and post-disaster reconstruction, benefiting a total of 400,536 people. Since 2014, after the end of the emergency relief and transitional resettlement work, the One Foundation has focused its efforts on supporting the reconstruction of the Lushan earthquake area with disaster reduction at its core. The goal is to create a resilient home where everyone is aware of disaster reduction and every family is capable of earthquake resistance.This tells us that NGOs have a certain capacity to help victims of natural disasters by raising public funds.

 

Many NGOs have made great contributions to the environmental protection of the world. For example, the Nature Conservancy (TNC) in the United States is one of the largest international nature conservation organizations in the world. It is committed to protecting the global ecological environment, especially valuable land and water resources. Its ultimate goal is to protect the earth and homeland where mankind lives, and to improve the sustainable development of mankind's living environment.