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------Original message------ From: John Ashworth <[email protected]> To: "Group" <[email protected]> Date: Sunday, October 2, 2011 2:18:13 PM GMT+0300 Subject: [sudan-john-ashworth] A view from the ground on foreign NGO priorities On 14th September 2011 I circulated on this Google group a paper entitled "Getting it Right from the Start", representing the opinions of 38 foreign NGOs as to the priorities for South Sudan. Below and attached please find a response to that paper by Ydo Jacobs, who has worked on the ground with South Sudan's civil society for more than 25 years. Needless to say, I tend to agree with Ydo. John BEGIN GETTING IT RIGHT FROM THE START ? A VIEW FROM CIVIL SOCIETY. Ydo Jacobs, September 2011 38 South Sudan-based NGOs have put their names under a 'Joint Briefing Paper' that offers ten priority areas to their donors. Following are some observations that may be taken into account by both the donors and NGOs. Though donors in Juba have robust problems to cooperate – witness the co-existence of phenomena like the multi-donor trust fund, the common humanitarian fund, the joint donor team – sometimes they manage to see eye to eye. For example over the last few years they have in unison arrogated the decision how development of an area is to take place, away from NGOs to themselves. If in earlier years donors waited for proposals to come to them from NGOs in the field (that had ideally developed their plans together with the target groups), nowadays donors increasingly decide themselves what is to be done. The mechanism by which they impose their ideas is the call for proposals. Calls for proposals emanate from all the big bi- and multilateral donors: Worldbank, USAID, EU, DFID, UNICEF, UNHCR, UNDP, as also from the less timid embassies. These calls are usually addressed to international NGOs and invite them to apply for funds to implement programmes or projects. In one such call it is said with so many words that “the applicant becomes the beneficiary if a contract is awarded”. Perhaps this permits us to call these donors the ‘benefactors’ while we can also forget about the admittedly paternalistic approach of seeing the target groups as the beneficiaries. When a benefactor issues a call he has decided already on the outlines of the programmes he wants to fund. He is not only prescribing already the type of activities, that for example education but not secondary education is to be promoted; or that the problem of landmines must be addressed as part of any wider programme. But he has also decided already on the methods (e.g. labour-intensive), on the geographical location (e.g. in the State capital, or: this year in County A) and on the time frame. It is up to the potential beneficiary to show in his application how and at what cost he intends to fit this bill. Calls are these days not widely advertised, if ever they were. On the contrary, donors tend to keep their calls so secretive that NGOs not seldom employ a special person to keep track of new calls. To know about them without delay is essential because the time the donors give to develop the proposal is invariably very short, usually not more than a few weeks. A very recent call allowed for only 6 days though it was considerate enough to let the period run up to the close of business of a Monday so that the competing NGOs had a whole weekend to work on their proposal. The amount of money that was at stake at this particular call ran to $ 15 mio. In such circumstances it would not surprise if soon humanitarians will adopt from capitalist financiers the art of insider trading. A donor that really wants to show who is boss will issue his call just before the christmas season. The NGO staff is then made to scurry around during the holiday to put together the required consortium and to collect all the necessary data and information while the donor staff quietly enters the new year in the sure knowledge that proposals will come in after they have finished their well deserved rest. It did not take long for NGOs to discover that to prepare the required elaborate proposal in answer to a call was a risky investment as not seldom it was the competition to win. In response to this the more considerate benefactors introduced the phenomenon of the concept note; the idea was to weed out the worst proposals on the basis of these notes so that full proposals had only to be developed by those who had already a fair chance to win. Meanwhile concept notes are still around but do not differ much any longer from full proposals as the need of paper among benefactors is as voracious as ever. All this does not mean that all donors enjoy finding themselves in a superior position vis-à-vis the NGOs. Some remove themselves from the vulgar realities on the ground by contracting much of their work out to private consultancy firms. E. g. Euroconsult that was earlier part of Arcadis but was recently absorbed by Mott MacDonald, works on behalf of DFID. And KPMG that prides itself on being able to 'cut through complexity' was employed by the MDTF. Once INGOs have entered into the trap of the benefactors they become victims of economic necessities. One economic necessity is connected to the short term interest of the benefactors. They prefer to fund one- or two-year programmes. After the beneficiaries have implemented such a million dollar programme they end up with an expensive base camp, a surplus of staff etc. The natural reaction then is to try and go for another similar funding: the INGO has become addicted. After a few of these exercises the beneficiary ends up with a patchwork of projects without geographic or program unity. Not seldom remnants of earlier projects that have meanwhile run out of fashion are kept going without proper funding. For benefactors it is more attractive to deal with one big programme than with several smaller ones. This usually conflicts with the limited absorption capacity of the INGOs. And thus the benefactors tend to insist on several INGOs banding together in a consortium for the occasion. In the process INGOs inevitably have to sacrifice part of their identity. Of course, the benefactor does not like to deal with each member of the consortium. There must be a lead agency that then soon finds itself in a position of trying to control the other members. Not seldom the ensuing set-up reminds one of the old colonial approach in which indirect rule required the appointment of one chief in a society that until then had been ruled by a council of elders. Preferably the lead agency must be sufficiently at ease financially that it can pre-finance the activities. This way the benefactor is no longer plagued by the financial urgencies of the real world but can release its funds in its own good time. And it has the added advantage that the benefactor can refuse to reimburse expenditures it deems unacceptable. This compares somewhat unfavourably with the time of indirect rule when the chief at least did not have to be rich. Often the benefactor insists on a local NGO or CSO joining the consortium. INGOs then can find themselves in the unusual and humiliating position that they have to court one or another local NGO. However, once the latter has succumbed to the proposition she finds herself normally back as a very junior member of the consortium. The formation of consortia can go badly wrong. Some years ago USAID issued a call for proposals for education support all over the South. Only consortia could apply. Two American INGOs started, each on its own, to cobble together a consortium. It so happened that the one which had the least education experience managed to attract NGOs with serious education activities while the one which had some education experience itself ended up with non-entities. It was the latter that won the contract. In a large part of the South a few posters that proudly outlined the organogram of the consortium were the only visible result of the millions of dollars that had been made available. Like most other benefactors donors tend to consider themselves knowledgeable regarding what ails their target groups and which solutions impose themselves. And there is perhaps nothing they appreciate so much as to fund the sharing of this knowledge with the target groups. For that reason trainings, workshops, seminars, campaigns are a prominent line in the budgets they like to approve. Most of the funds thus allotted are spent on short and ultra-short exercises the effects of which, if any, are difficult to measure. In fact for the more cynical among the beneficiaries this budget line is their favoured source of private income. For who can check whether a two-day seminar 'on HIV / AIDS in village X' à raison of $ 8,000 actually took place and transport allowances, sitting indemnities etc were duly paid ? Looking back on six years of multilateral donor intervention in South Sudan it is striking that hardly any investments have been made for proper training of professionals, apart from UNDP's huge police college in Rejaf. The next best type of training has been in the frame of DDR: carpenters, mechanics, cooks etc were 'trained' in 8-week courses. It is perhaps symbolic that this 'training' actually took place in tents, as if to confirm that South Sudan does not need anything long-term when it comes to gaining knowledge. The use of tents is short-term thinking in the extreme but many donors and not a few INGOs – evidently abhorring the idea of tents for themselves -- are six years into the peace still competing with each other on the limited market of housing and hostelry, not only for their own office and housing but also for their many trainings, workshops, seminars and meetings. And thus, rather than investing in permanent housing of their own, they keep paying exorbitant rents to either the small local elite that has emerged since the CPA or to foreign hotel businesses. Meanwhile a new type of consortium has come into existence. It originates from the fact that there are more calls for proposals than the available INGOs can implement. Top managers in the INGOs who have meanwhile learnt how to write the concept notes, project proposals, log frames and budgets sit together to apply. Once they have 'won' they proceed to advertise the entire set of positions that will be needed to implement the project. Such a project will now be still further removed from the normal activities and programs of the member INGOs. And for the founders it becomes a question whether they started this consortium in their function as director of their NGO or rather as kind of independent consultants who developed the proposal on personal title. If this trend continues it would represent a new phase in the undermining of the INGO by the big donors, unfortunately enough once again with the active cooperation of the victim. END ______________________ John Ashworth Sudan Advisor [email protected] +254 725 926 297 (Kenya mobile) +249 919 695 362 (Sudan mobile) +27 82 853 3556 (South Africa mobile) +44 750 304 1790 (UK/international) +88 216 4334 0735 (Thuraya satphone) PO Box 52002 - 00200, Nairobi, Kenya This is a personal e-mail address and the contents do not necessarily reflect the views of any organisation -- The content of this message does not necessarily reflect John Ashworth's views. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, John Ashworth is not the author of the content and the source is always cited. You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sudan-john-ashworth" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.co.za/group/sudan-john-ashworth -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "JFD info" group. 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gettingitright. a view.doc
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