Hand Relief International

The Usurper

2011-11-16T01:42:00.001-08:00

I am the one who changed the password. You can call me The Usurper. And I may change it again, just because I can.

Now that Aldie has retired, the aid blog scene is as boring as a peace-corps party given for the local mormon missionaries. Even this place starts to look more like some retard's tedious myspace (please-please friend-me).

Here is a fact: aid blogs get as much critical thinking as the UN's strategic plan. I have just done a round and for fuck's sake people, have some dignity.

All you get is pretentious wankers writing endlessly about some obscure shit or if not, some other sort of long, tedious, self-important masturbation of people who most certainly perpetuate the sort of inneffective "aid systems" they are busy rationalizing on their stupid blogs. You get categorical statements and pompous attempts to formulate pseudo-scientific principles about "aid", in bullet points. And you get smug, patronizing morons desperate to attract more hits on their shitty websites and please anyone "influential" enough to get them a like and a follower on twitter.

It's like a ride in an UNDPKO elevator, but worse.

You even get people trying to sell their own t-shirts and mugs (Aldie even you are twitter chums with some of them).

Who the fuck reads all this shit, never-mind write it? When do they find the time to "save lives" and apply the higher standards they preach?

What you people need is more beer. And a life.

Piss me off and I'll return with links.

The Usurper

PS - Aldie, if you delete my post you are a shit like the rest of them and I'll change the password again.

Pretty Fucking Please With Sugar on Top

2011-11-15T07:47:00.001-08:00

So here I am enjoying my retirement on a humble golf estate, out of sight/ out of mind of some train-wreck of a slum, with the right mix of good climate, availability of wine and good choice of servants, practicing my swing and lowering my handicap, when "work" catches up with me in the form of an emergency.

As all of yous remember, I have decided to crowd-source this important newsletter to impress donors with HRI's modernity and innovation and to free up some space on my busy agenda for more serious activities, such as the aforementioned improvement of my handicap.

Work catches up, I say, in the form of an emergency, complaints filling my inbox reporting that some asshole changed the password, making crowdsourcing very difficult as it were, putting the whole well-thought strategy at risk, endangering lives and wastuing everyone's time in the process.

So I rushed and responded to this emergency with the sort of speed and efficiency that made HRI famous, and here are the new credentials:

(comic sans forever)

So guys? Pretty fucking please with sugar on top, don't fuck with the password anyomore. OK?

Now, where was my wood?

little kurtz

2011-11-09T19:58:00.000-08:00

I am Aikido Aidworker

2011-10-31T04:13:00.000-07:00

Dr. Kurtz has humiliated me in public long enough.

I am Aikido Aidworker. I am strong. I am peace. I am Zen with my logframe, and business class ticket.

I am here. Next to you on the plane, behind you in the working group, in front of you in the passenger seat of the Land-cruiser as the driver illuminates the past into the present.

I am Aikido Aidworker - the Usurper.

Doctor's Orders

2011-10-21T23:18:00.001-07:00

This is Dr. Peacekeeper. Your friendly "Bones" in an unnamed peacekeeping operation, usually in Africa. Oh Africa, what a gawd awful place, at least its a long way from my ex-wife. No doubt she feels the same.

I am very grateful to HRI for allowing me this space.

Unlike HRI, and Dr. Kurtz, I really do not give much of a toss about stakeholders and you hand-ringing Aid types. However, I am very fond of the fresh volunteers that get off the C-130 every week. The most interesting ones are the alluring HRI interns looking for a way out of country.

One thing that I have discovered is that the lost and earnest EAW and UN Volunteer wants to fly on my UN transport planes. Without a little chit from me they cannot get that all important MOP (Movement of Personnel) form signed on short notice. I have real power, as they desperately want to get out of country.

Why are they so dedicated to the 3 day trip beyond the wire? So they can skype back to Mum and Dad from their shiny iPad telling them how bloody hip it is to be a peacekeeper. All from the edge of a salted pool, with slinky bums parading up and down the pool deck.

The things they will do for that chit. They follow doctor's orders.

I might have to get back to the bar now. I do not blog or tweet much, its just not as satisfying as a Pink Gin.

Who is Dr. Kurtz?

2011-10-21T09:41:00.000-07:00

It's been a while this "electronic newsletter" going - so long that I have lost count of all the interns that passed through and learned the ropes under my visionary leadership.

I have also had my share of constructive feedback, which I duly "actionized" using the appropuiate tool-kit, in order to become a better person:

And obviously, this improvement of the person process has also not gone unnoticed:

But most importantly, during all this this time I have never allowed myself to step out of character, and have generally tried to remain dignified in my bubbly existence.

Like you, at times I have been accused of being "that guy who writes that blog", and like you I have duly denied it. The fact that it may have been me is obviously irrelevant because you knows it: all of yous is just a little bit Dr. Kurtz, just a little bit Hand Relief.

So then, in order to allow Dr. Kurtz all the creative freedom his oversized ego deserves, why not bring this to its logical conclusions and spell it out right here right now, black on white:

Who is Dr. Kurtz?
Well, obviously, it is you, reader.

And if you don't believe me, go to blogger.com and check it out:

(comic sans forever)

And in the unlikely event you are wondering what the angle is, well, I have it from reliable sources that donors these days are suckers for "crowdsourcing", so why not crowdsource the shit out of this "newsletter" and ride the innovations gravy train?

Sure, it may happen that the "newsletter" will turn into a platform for promoting "intimate enhancers" and business opportunities involving Gaddafi's many surviving relatives, but to the right kind of eye that in itself is nothing but a great "PPP" opportunity.

So, see you around the next junket, reader, and do keep up the enabling environment synergies that build capacity and continue to streamline cooperation - those vulnerable people in our calendar pictures will be forever grateful.

UPDATE: here's open source at its best: some despicable character has changed the password, so here is the new one:

comic sans forever 2

And Guys? Do me a favor? Please stop fucking with the password, ok? Think of all the poor children that need our help.

Important Communication to All Aid Bloggers Related to the Urgent Need for Better Coordination in the Sector

2011-09-27T03:42:00.000-07:00

Dear Stakeholders,

It has come to my attention that there really are too many aid blogs out there, aren't there? That's obviously not good for the aid-blog sector, because as you surely agree there is too much "duplication of effort" and lack of "sharing of lessons learned" and "best practices" and "leverage of knowledge" among the different stakeholders.

Obviously what we need is more coordination.

As a self-appointed leader of the sector HRI is hereby suggesting we start focusing on coordination of all aid-blogging activities across the aid-blogging sector. HRI has already helpfully received an award from The Donor to support with this coordination effort (why would it have been competed? better to "sole-source" these things to the coordination experts) and as we speak a reasonably paid consultant is on the way here and should be shortly in touch with some matrix or other.

What you all need to do now is nominate a focal point (for now - you will need more focal points shortly as we expect coordination activities to start branching out across sub-themes and sub-committees).

The plan is we'll start by having weekly meetings at the heads-of-blogging-agency level and there will be weekly focal point meetings in the coordination task force. Various sub-themes will be then identified (aid, development, M&E, snark, etc.) and Lead Blogs will be allocated to each of these themes.

Sub-committees should be in place ("scaled-up") by mid-October and leading agencies should start reporting regularly to the Task Force and Coordination Group regularly. The Coordination Matrix will be filled in by individual blogs and then reviewed by our consultant. Tool-kits shoudl be distributed in January 2012.

In the following phase, a Communication Coordination Sub-Group will be set up that will be tasked with "clearing" any new post in the aid-blogging sector, to ensure coordinated messages and to avoid conflicting communication. We are also expected to agree on geographical priorities and different countries/ continents will be allocated to different blogs to ensure uniform coverage and "bridging of gaps".

Finally, sometime next year, HRI's M&E consultant will be in touch with a strategy that will prove beyond any doubt the added value of a truly coordinated strategy.

Thanks folks for your cooperation - and I have no doubt that together we'll successfully coordinate the shit out of the aid-blogging industry!

PS: costs will be shared across the sector, please ensure you allocate sufficient resources in your 2012 work-plans for this important activity.

The Dilemma that Wasn't

2011-09-16T08:58:00.000-07:00

Straight from the hip, boys: there comes a point in this business when every single one of us has to make a simple choice:

You either go for "impact" (however you choose to define that, let's not get into details); or
You go for pleasing The Donor.

It is the business' oldest trick, all of us will get to this fork in the road sooner or later and do spare a thought for the poor bastards who make the mistake of crossing a donor for the sake of some weak-assed idea that no-one gives a shit about anyway. Spare a thought for them I say, because their days in this business are numbered and few as they are, they sure aren't any fun.

What's this "impact" business about anyway? No-one can define it and it's achievement remains in the realm of opinion, and you know what they say about opinions:

Opinions are like assholes

Anyway, whine the poor bastards as they may, this "impact" vs. pleasing the donor dilemma is not really a dilemma at all and any HRI employee worth their salt knows what to do: it's an easy case of yes-sir-yes-ma'am all the way to "sustainability".

And therefore, since I always wanted to mark the place where Prados are doing u-turns in the reasonably-sized yard of our office in Moroni, around the place where our visibly branded vehicles get expertly washed by our drivers, I am currently having a duly-procured contractor put up a tasteful 3D sculpture of "A Donor's Logo" as a long-lasting testimony to our right order of priorities.

Make sure you come to the "unveiling" - Emma will be there and let's be honest: it will be a great opportunity to network.

Dr. K's Annals of Unsolicited Advice: How to Handle the Hunger in the Horn

2011-08-28T10:34:00.000-07:00

This is probably obvious to those familiar with the business: the nature of our life-saving work in Somalia has subtly changed since last time we spoke about it, on account of several ~~fortunate~~ complex events, the most significant of which being a massive famine in “The Horn” and, of course, the fact that it is easier these days to pop by Mogadishu for a photo opportunity than has ever been since the fateful events of '93. (just a few weeks ago a simple stopover at K50 would be a badge of honor for the field-conscious HRI employee).

Among those in the know, another fact has not remained unnoticed: there is more money flowing in than used to and that, reader, is excellent news.

The shit continues to be real in Nairobi, the dignified hub of any meaningful Somalia project, with necessary field trips to Dadaab, where HRI has quickly set up cutting-edge infrastructure to ferry high-flyers through, complete with up-to-the minute roster of the photogenic fresh arrivals that can be summoned in an instant with their families for that perfect picture, should the visitor require one for the cover of their all-important trip report or their obligatory article in newspaper of choice back home.

A few months ago it was all about “clan complexity” and supporting the right “government” with capacity building and in general organizing logistically complicated but symbolically vital series of life-saving meetings, many of which requiring state-of-the art teleconferencing facilities to accommodate participation on the New York-Geneva-Nairobi-Shithole axis. These days the increased level of emergency and the “comprehensive” nature of the required “response” made it necessary for HRI to “scale up” the extent and nature of the staple life-saving meeting portfolio that defines our “proven approach”: In addition to bi-weekly inter-agency meetings in all relevant locations, we have daily standing briefings in Nairobi, bi-weekly “country team meetings”, task-forces, cluster meetings, NGO coordination groups, technical meetings, action groups and of course emergency coordination initiatives and ad-hoc meetings called to coordinate this or the other situation, incident or VIP visit, all of which require all hands on deck and then some, not to mention a newly energized army of interns, volunteers, consultants and support staff tasked with the all-important job of compiling minutes and reports and having them approved by participants and other “stakeholders”.

Of course we have increased “boots on the ground” by a factor of 100 to the pre-emergency levels and we have rapidly deployed an efficient newsletter creation and dissemination task force, complete with a “new media” wing - efficient in distributing links to pdf versions of the respective newsletters to millions of defenseless twitter and facebook users – and a special calendar creation team, tasked with the development in real-time of calendars containing the best photographs of big-eyed starving children, the staple of any “complex” emergency.

Like best things in life, a good emergency always boils down to money. Raising it (a matter of principle) and spending it fast.

Repeat.

Emergencies are never about subtleties and if you are new to one, here's an advice: spend the shit out of those budgets and ignore your natural tendencies to cringe. Visibility is everything: get your flag in every picture and make sure your logo is on TV, ideally behind the Kevlar-suited anchor.

This, reader, is the time when it's all about triggering emotions in punters – HRI's form of “brand awareness”: no-one on the street cares or understands what can be done “out there”, but everyone wants to “give well” and that's perfectly fine because of a simple fact, proven again and again by HRI:

If you throw money at a catastrophe, it will go away.

And as a bonus, you get to sleep better at night, bless your generous soul.

And soon enough, with all the additional “experience” we are currently acquiring, we will be best placed to handle the next catastrophe, perhaps in Libya?

And in case you wonder how will we approach that I am here to tell you that we are well prepared: don't you worry about the details – we'll just throw some money at it, and this one, too, will go away.

Letter to our Donors

2011-08-15T09:14:00.000-07:00

Dearest Donor,

For a long time now, I have wanted to write you a letter, as yet another opportunity to flatter you and reassure you that you are doing a tremendous job of alleviating the poverty of the miserable lot we are are mandated to help, one prudent coordination initiative at a time, and to thank you one more time for a strong, mutually beneficial partnership.

I said it before: we have also always been delighted about the high complexity of your award procedures. Our reasonably paid consultants do a way better job than those small-timers who try to ~~compete~~ partner with us of putting together a decent application and our roster of "Key Staff" has always been better populated by the sort of degree-flaunting over-achievers that have implemented the shit out of so many other paradigm-shifting projects you have so generously funded in the past, both here and elsewhere.

I should also mention how thankful we have always been to be able to exploit your high interest in stories in the local media reflecting your generosity and support; an interest far superior to your interest in developing an independent media in respective country, if you know what I mean. Sure, as your partner we have always been keen to create an enabling environment for an independent media, where "creating an enabling environment" is an euphemism for inviting the media to residential "trainings" at the Dusit Thani about the universal and inalienable right of any journalist to write positive stories about the programs you are supporting and the partnership between relevant governments.

May I also take the opportunity to commend your commitment to transparency. We love the fact that you choose sometimes to publicize your partners budget on the internet, as that allows us to compete against them with a symbolically lower overhead rate, as a way to ensure we always remain competitive. The fact that your performance indicators are both mind-boggling complicated to define and impossible to measure in any reliable fashion conveniently ensures that evaluating performance remains in the realm of politics where it belongs, a world we naturally navigate much better than any of our ~~competitors~~ partners.

We also need to mention here your brilliant approach to staffing your own presence on the ground. We have always been excited to work with a large team of inexperienced micro-managing bureaucrats, fond of back-stabbing each other while faking cooperation and incapable to take any decision that would threaten our own unwillingness to move away from life-saving meetings as expressions of smart aid. We love to exploit their inability to interpret data, the reassuring comfort they take in a well crafted progress report and their general fondness for the right kind of visibility not to mention their commitment to coordination meetings.

Speaking of progress reports. We love your reports time-lines, always. And the fact that there are the same with all other affiliates, which ensures your overworked staff love a well-edited copy-paste affair, with flash photos featuring the right characters and heart-lifting success stories.

We love also your predictability. The detailed negotiations years before implementation. The difficult procedures involved in revising budgets and strategies. There is nothing HRI loves more than spending millions on irrelevant activities and promoting dated development theories around the world.

In short, you are the best, Donor. Please don't change anytime soon.

Sincerely yours,
Dr. Alden M. Kurtz

Interngate and the efficiency of Class Warfare

2011-07-28T01:34:00.000-07:00

Don't know about you, but I quite enjoyed the intensity of the most recent episode of interngate, fought like all good battles by the forces of good an evil, neatly grouped in easily identifiable formations.

It made me realize that in the tactical arsenal of the discerning theoretician there has rarely been an option more powerful than the Class Warfare. As asymmetric than asymmetric warfare itself but much more reliable, class warfare has a history that is surprisingly similar with the history of this business of hours, in the sense that it has always involved a lot of obfuscation and "coordination" but rarely has it helped the "beneficiaries" on behalf of whom the war is always waged.

Have a good look around - it will be hard to find a place where class warfare is not fought this very moment, be it by a politician temporary adopting the accent of a mortal while campaigning in some shithole full of potential voters or by some visionary leader sacrificing his health to lead his dim-witted people out of the darkness, from the back seat of a Merc S600 doing 100miles an hour past the galaxy's second filthiest slum.

And I'm not making this shit up. I know it because I am often following the Class Warrior's S600's in my HRI branded Land Cruiser and I spend much of my time patting their backs or the lesser backs of their numerous minions.

And why the trouble? Well, I do it for the poor and the vulnerable, me. I am a class warrior.

The truth is I do feel guilt for my privileged upbringing, my liberal art education and my six post-graduate degrees which I earned at six different "respectable" education establishments. And it is indeed this class guilt that has been the foundation of my brilliant career and of my willingness to trade a mediocre job in the private sector complete with small suburban house somewhere in Ohio for a series of dignified residences and the opportunity to slap backs with dignitaries, the world over, on behalf of the poor and vulnerable.

It's hard, but someone's gotta do it.

And I can't be alone in my suffering, because as far as I can tell most HRI employees have a similar background, with the visible exception of the occasional token colleague, usually holding only three degrees themselves rather than six, a convenient detail that will also ensure that we are intellectually aligned and that we have "continuity of ideas".

Of course I never held a real job until I was 36, after which my expectations were quite high, what with my six degrees, so I finally accepted a management position with a HRI affiliate quickly impressed by my pile of degrees, and I learned fast that competence, or the absence thereof, must never be regarded as a limiter in one's own professional growth.

I also learned to make good use of the intern, a skill that continues to served me well in an industry that loves as much free labour as it can get. Of course, some HRI interns get higher stipends than the salaries of their senior "local" colleagues, which is a class warfare in a class of its own, often fought drunkenly over $10 beer at the local night-club, the parking-lot of which comes alive at night with hundreds of drivers waiting in hundreds of vehicles for hundreds of interns to return them safely to their respective accommodation.

The truth is, it's all very complicated. But who am I to miss an opportunity to simplify a complicated reality in order to prove my class warrior credentials on the internet? So, in less than 140 characters, here is my position on interngate:

Now, if you are still concerned with interngate and wonder what you can do, here is a solution: You should start up a charity that fund-raises and puts together pay packages for less privileged people who want to do internships with HRI but can't afford to do unpaid work. Just remember, please, we only accept people with at least two degrees from "respectable" institutions.

On the Significance of Facial Hair

2011-07-26T08:21:00.000-07:00

In our donor-fueled pursuit of grand ideas and grander gestures, it is often too easy to lose sight of the smaller details which, as so often in life, turn out to be more significant than with hidsight.

Take facial hair for example.

More than an individual choice based on personal hygiene and esthetics standards, facial hair is to the keen eye also a pretty reliable sign of character and competence that must not be ignored if one pursues the highest echelons in this business.

Here is some advice:

The humble mustache is a pretty good tell-tale sign of a certain touch for leadership:

You've got the timeless "Hitler"

Or the more tasteful "groomed sheriff"

Then there is "The Cleric", known to give the wearer an air of trustworthyness and maturity

You've got of course the "Wilford Brimley", an excellent compliment to a comb-over

"Did you say something about my mustache?"

And of course, the "Charmeur" a.k.a. the"Paint-job"

Perhaps you never thought about it, but it is a matter of fact that it is rare to see a dictator this days without a mustache and only a fool will ignore the causality in this correlation. Of course, in certain schools of leadership, partiality to 60’s porno shades trumps a mustache any day:

Shades > Mustache

In our business, of course, mustaches are the thing of donor agencies ("The Bart Reynolds” is the second-favourite mustache style there, after the “Ned Flanders”). However, mustaches are also favored by various accountant species and certain “Asia” old-hands who sport them in combination with side-parted hair and self-darkening eyeglasses, a particularly potent combination that helps with the charm factor in seedy karaoke parlors around Manila.

The three-day stubble of course will forever remain the domain of logisticians and certain HQ people who want to flaunt their field cred and/ or “operational” past. It is often sported in combination with "The Skubble”, a combination of bald patch and stubble (you know the one, right?).

The goatee is a more complicated matter. Volunteers favour them (in combination with various hats specially-made for the tropics), but so do M&E types and consultants. It is fair assumption to make that there is a reverse proportionality between the presence of a goatee and decision-making authority, and Mr. Meles Zenawi of course is the exception that confirms this rule (and there are experts who dispute the goatee characteristics of Zenawi's facial hair and prefer to put this to this style in a separate category, known as "The D'artagnan":

The D'artagnan: Is it a goatee or a mustache? Hard to say.

The side-burn, or the mutton-chop is pretty much a non-French-working-for-French-medical-NGO exclusive, very rarely also seen among veterinarians working for small Italian NGOs. A niche.

Finally, "The Sage" is an interesting one as well – it has only been seen among junior aid enthusiasts around their third year internship and, or course, economists:

"The Sage". Or is it a goatee? Hard to say

Finally, from the fine people at visual.ly, here is a more complete and not industry-specific taxonomy of beards, arranged by trustworthiness:

Mistakes? I haven't made a few!

2011-07-14T10:11:00.000-07:00

Reader, I need to go on record once and for all with a clarifying statement:

Unlikely as this may sound, no-one in HRI has ever made a single mistake.

Ever.

Sure there was that fateful excel incident but that was the cock-up of an intern and mistakes made by interns don't count.

Right?

This is not to say that shit doesn't happen. Shit actually happens all the time, but look closer and you will find it is always a problem of:

coordination; or
clan complexity; or
"absorptive capacity"; or
government incompetence; or
lack of local capacity; or
lack of commitment expressed in unwillingness of some stakeholders to attend the right meetings; or
lack of resources (of course);

Indeed, never has there been any known instance where shit happened because HRI made a mistake.

Can't happen.

I dare you, reader to point out to me a single mistake we ever made. Millions of children, women, refugees, poor and vulnerable people will disagree with you. People who know better because their very survival depends on our perfect execution of life-saving workshops. They have a voice too, as one of them sometimes represents them all in the occasional high-profile workshop. The rest are just content to inhabit a world of children happy to receive a "NFI" here, a better education facilitated by an education advisor there. A world of individuals displaced by unspeakable catastrophes who take solaces in an embrace of a rock star. In Emma's understanding smile. In the opportunity to be photographed by a world class artist. A few square meters of tarpaulin.

The stuff of dreams, delivered daily by the fearless individuals who populate life-saving meetings and never rest or take a break.

Or make mistakes.

A world accurately reflected in so many high quality newsletters that our interns tirelessly put together with your money.

Go out an read them if you don't believe me.

And, hey, do me a favour: spread the word, will you? We need all the back-slapping we can get.

Bad News, Good News

2011-07-11T07:35:00.000-07:00

When flying in a Cessna I always insist to sit next to the pilot: aside from making a point of being in the front even where there is no business class, I take pleasure in bantering over the two-way about syncing the torques and tales of Cessnas flying on moonshine and Antonov 24s belly-landing in deserts and mythical Russian pilots walking away from wrecks in their wife-beaters.

That is the least I can do to mitigate the indignity of awkwardly getting my red-faced chino-and-pink-shirt-clad body in and out over the wing of the aircraft.

As we approach, the landscape looks familiar: arid lands scattered with "informal settlements" built out of corrugated iron, cardboard and HRI-branded tarpaulin, surrounded by fences made out of thorn bush and rusty rear axle links cannibalized off who knows what unfortunate trucks. Children forever frolicking nearby along goats and donkeys (a scene also known in the business as a "photo opportunity"). As we approach the camp, we beheld more solid structures and the signs of a lucrative business: people selling building materials, a bizarre and counter-intuitive reality of every respectable refugee camp.

This one here is not just any camp of course, we are about to land nearby Dadaab, the mother of all camps and beloved destination of Hollywood stars and every HRI official worth their salt.

Rule of the thumb is when the construction-materials business is picking up, the seasoned HRI employee knows that fresh refugees are coming in and is moving towards unlocking the necessary sources of "emergency funding" to ensure the HRI presence in the camp grows accordingly. HRI "people on the ground" have done an awesome job out of hijacking every meeting around, cluster or no cluster, and ensuring that HRI is well present in every committee and action group, the better to "leverage" whatever funds are bound to be unlocked by the most recent, highly unfortunate, drought across the border in Somalia, a country few of us actually have visited, but many of us know very well from coordination meetings in Nairobi, field trips right here, in Dadaab and the regular security trainings organized nearby Nairobi to make sure everyone is prepared to talk tough over moccachinos at Doorman's or Java House.

Indeed, bad news are piling up this summer and that is good for business.

Just yesterday I landed in Nairobi all the way from Juba where I was celebrating along other international HRI staff the official independence of Africa's most recent country. Take it from me: these moments must be savored and one must enjoy both the enthusiasm of the masses and the business opportunities while they last.

Sure, the business opportunities always lasts longer than the enthusiasm (shit, sometimes when enthusiasm leads to disappointment which leads to "social unrest", the business gets even better, along with the "hardship pay"), but good news, bad news, we enjoy them all while they last.

Besides there will come a point when someone will ask: "Where were you when so and so happened". Being able to say "I was there" is crucial to both your field cred and the ability to pass as a better "key personnel" in various applications for funding.

That is all good for business.

Of course, like you, I am looking forward to more opportunities to absorb the enthusiasm that comes with a new country, speculate on the new Government's inexperience and monetize on donors' optimism in such situations. In many ways, you will agree, a newly independent country is a perfect storm for HRI.

As of Dadaab and the drought in Somalia? Well, the global tarpaulin experts are here to help! Ka-Ching!

The Man With The Plan

2011-06-08T05:33:00.000-07:00

In khakis, polo shirt, ergonomic boots and special filter shades – the field uniform of any experienced consultant – Samuel “The Excel Sheet” Malone looks comfortable in a sumptuous patent-leather Chinese armchair while savoring his well stirred nescafe fitting right in the landscape among plastic flowers, various generations of HRI-donated computers lined up under a culturally-appropriate cover on a desk nearby, and pictures of the country's top brass, adorned tastefully with a rig that is partly fairy light partly paper garland.

Samuel's job in Moroni is almost completed and he carries the features of man ready to reap the benefits of his hard work. In a folder he carries the latest draft of Comoros' Strategic Plan 2007-2011 for Agriculture and Livelihoods. Samuel is one of HRI's top Technical Advisors, posted here back in 2007 and tasked with “supporting” the government of Comoros with the development and “operationalization” of the mentioned 5-year strategic plan (2007 -2011).

This was very serious business, funded through a global HRI mechanism for Policy Development, yet another area of maximum expertize for HRI. It was a multi-million project, of utmost strategic importance for our donor and this is why we put HRI's finest on the job: Samuel has been cutting his teeth in policy development projects the world over and his archives contain strategic matrices used successfully in other such similar projects. He doesn't like to refer to his work as a copy-paste/ Ctrl+H job, but rather as a job in which he manages to leverage “lessons learned” and “best practices” with fine diplomatic skills.

Once politics were taken care of and the need for a 5 year plan was agreed upon at HRI's strong suggestion (after all, the money was already in the bank), it all started with Sam's very detailed Planing Matrix which got shared with all relevant “focal points” and the “kick-off” in November 2007. At the kick-off meeting – a residential affair in a stately location, to ensure that participants were not tempted to leave the premises to attend who knows what urgent issues on their busy agendas - Sam facilitated several plenary sessions and ensured that sufficient break-out groups are formed to address the various section of the policy, which had to be formulated in the strategic plan and then "operationalized" in various action plans, divided by strategic areas and years.

Names were put forward for the various sub-committees and working groups, timelines were agreed upon and a special group was formed to agree on various indicators. It all run by script and, out of experience, Sam knew that it would take about two years to agree on “strategic objectives” and respective indicators. Once that happend, at the end of 2008, annual action plans started to be developed, and by the end of 2009, the plans for years 2007 and 2008 were finalized and the M&E group kicked in. A consultant was hired to ensure that the performance was in line with the plan.

An extra 100K and 6 months later it turned out that it was. But then, it always is.

We are now halfway through 2011, the last year of the 5 year-plan, and the Strategic Plan is almost finished. The 60 or so various focal points are already well into their routines; the vast groups, sub-groups, working-groups and committees are meeting regularly, emails get sent to all partners to remind them of each meeting, consultants are on the job churning out reports and toolkits. People were hired, cars were bought along with printers, computers, field trips were organized, suppliers contracted - the whole machinery, the works.

Presently, the Plan is a complex document, 46 sheets, each covering one important strategic area of implementation, impossible to print and with a healthy dose of circular formulas, that can only be sent around in .zip format and is occasionally projected on a wall in minuscule characters when the various groups meet (in such situations, Sam often complains about conference facilities that do not have a Mac adaptor. “It's 2011, for fuck's sake” is his signature reaction, muttered half-loud but with a certain note of smugness.)

Time is short though and it was decided that more money must be thrown at the Plan, to ensure it will be finalized before the end of 2011. And indeed it will, with great effort. A meeting is about to get called, the final draft gets presented and then, finally, it will be forwarded to the Cabinet, where it will be expected to be approved within the first quarter of 2012.

Sure, this strategy has its critics, but hey, look at the benefits:
1. Money gets disbursed, keeping HRI's “burn” at a healthy level;
2. The government gets involved, which builds their capacity; What kind of short-term thinking asshole doesn't agree with that?
3. Any plan finalized after the passing of the period it covers benefits from clarity of hindsight - this is a very obvious but crucial benefit, which ensures high scores when judging compliance with the plan;
4. HRI is well placed to support the Government in developing their 2012-2016 Strategic Plan: with more lessons learned and best practices from right here, in Moroni.

And Samuel? Well, Sam will leave – his time is up here, he already accepted the Integrated Policy Support Chief Of Party position in a newly Awarded HRI project in Indonesia.

Which means that the Advisor Job in Moroni is currently vacant so we are welcoming applications. Any experts out there?

What happens in Aid Vegas stays in Aid Vegas

2011-05-23T10:56:00.001-07:00

Here's the best thing about this business:

No one's watching.

It would all be very different indeed, if there would be public opinion, courts or other scrutiny on what does who and what goes where. It would also be a sadder place for me: HRI would be an entirely different entity and, well, Emma would be out of a job.

I'd just hate that!

Think about it: money goes out of coffers to do “something good” and soon enough, it reaches Emma's desk, along with priority areas and guidelines designed to serve a good mix of crowd-pleasing, political agendas and the personal ambitions of this or the other bureaucrat sat stiffly between here and the capital of a Certain Country South of Canada.

Like you or me, Emma has priorities, too, pet causes, feelings. There are people she likes, organizations she respects. There are boxes to tick, agendas to follow. In the complicated map of her decision-making, "the people in need of " out there are an abstract entity, represented in meetings by the impassioned speech of the odd government official and the few pixelized pictures on the walls, filling to the “values” of the Agency.

It's lack of knowledge meets lack of experience meets unchecked authority, The Best Of.

Like you or me, Emma will sooner or later take a very bad decision. If this would not be Aid Vegas, someone would call it, she would admit it, become a better person, yadda yadda, no damage done. If there would be damage, she would have a sudden career change, facilitated by the press or a court, or her superior worried about the press or a court.

In Aid Vegas, however, things work differently because the only ones partial to noticing mistakes fit into one of these three categories:

1. The Losers: Trying to blow the whistle or otherwise point out potential flaws in Emma's strategy or her logic. They usually leave the country before term and/ or their unfortunate organizations get de-funded and relegated to the fringes of the business, forever scrambling for a tiny little line of some minor sub-award, and i'm talking best case scenario here;

2. The Insiders – Emma's peers would obviously not get involved. Her superiors will back her up because admitting her failures is admitting their failure. Covering up and going along with it is the best possible strategy;

and of course

3. The Smart ones – Play along, win awards, hire people, run life-saving meetings, thank you very much.

There are no outsiders, no courts, no evidence. We are in the realm of opinions, built by jargony reports no-one reads, cables no-one knows about and the occasional whispered briefing or phone call, all of them apt to present a reality we all can live with.

Success is forever relative, measured by complicated but elusive indicators eventually judged by Emma and HRI jointly. It's a fact that failure, though very fashionable these days, only happens in small doses and thankfully, due the life-saving nature of our work, never has significant consequences.

Meanwhile, more funding our way just makes business sense.

(Bono of course has all the attention and he tends to speak of HRI and our good, selfless work, and our eternal need for more resources, so I am glad you are all buying his music).

10 Remarkable Individuals in Aid

2011-04-12T02:14:00.000-07:00

That guy who, having been an incompetent bureaucrat his whole career, has become an efficient, result-oriented employee after having attended a HRI management training;
The guy who changed his domestic ways to become a loving, caring husband after having been exposed once at a road-crossing to a billboard that said: "Stop GBV Now! (HRI with support from Country South of Canada)";
The underpaid employee of a community-based HRI affiliate who felt a sudden commitment-inducing calling after a brief meeting with a HRI consultant who spoke to him about HRIs "Vision and Mission Statement" during a short field-trip;
The Donor representative who, every month, reads every one of the 76 reports they receive from relevant HRI affiliates and therefore has a very clear idea of what each affiliate is doing and where they need most support;
The refugee-camp dweller whose quality of life has suddenly improved after her camp was visited briefly by Angelina, who successfully "declared" an "end to violence now";
The inhabitant of the village in "Africa" whose life has changed to the better once she received a slightly used pair of shoes from a mythical place South of Canada;
The owner of a yogurt-business in Baltimore who succeeded to "give something back" during his one-month trip to the Philippines, when he gave a free lecture abut yogurt to a group of local entrepreneurs, facilitated by his local church back home;
The government employee who has successfully made the transition from a cynical, underpaid, mis-qualified relative-of-someone-important to a dynamic, modern element of change in the government, after having interacted with a HRI "Technical Advisor" during a capacity building workshop;
The guy who returned part of his per-diem after a trip to Nairobi, claiming that the three meals and tea offered during the training were quite sufficient for his subsistence;
The "social media enthusiast" who learns something from the daily platitudes posted on the HRI official twitter account ("HRI Executive Director mentions importance of right-based approach in speech given at meeting with African Delegates")

Here's to all these remarkable people. The world of aid would just not be the same without you.

Same Same but Different

2011-04-04T12:01:00.000-07:00

After a mildly satisfying mid-morning round on the estate's 19 holes I have retired to the presidential suite where I am currently washing down a complementary ferrero rocher with a glass of new-world bubbly, chilled to the right temperature.

Which is just as well with the scorching heat out there.

The view from the stately terrace is pleasant: generous streams of pulverized water intended to keep the golf course proper allow a rainbow to form over the fake dunes towards the pyramids, a vista almost apt to bring a tear or two to yours truly hardened eyes.

The soundtrack is Lionel Ritchie, straight off an ear-worm acquired during the trip from the airport out of the tin speakers of my driver's cellphone.

The roads were quieter than usual but should you be concerned, I am happy to report that the well publicized changes have not much affected the trim of the golf course and neither have they affected the life-saving work HRI is doing here in the area of capacity building.

Quite to the contrary.

Of course HRI has never struggled to get funded around here - what with the special relationship between Egypt and a certain mythical place south of Canada - but things are getting better by the day, reader, in case you thought they wouldn't. The game is changing naturally. It is the dawn of a new era folks but even new eras need adequate capacity (or was it capacities, plural?) and they need gestures from countries south of Canada that reassures them and keeps everyone sweet.

Mubarak who? Oh, that old crook? That's all from the days of realpolitik, people, the fly-by-night days of gang-ho “middle east politics”. These days it's all about democracy, the poor, the vulnerable and those in desperate need of capacity.

The not-yet-capacitated billion, The People in the Names of...

I am reminded by a hospitality card in the hotel that recently we have marked the International Water Day (where "marked" is an euphemism for "organized dignified functions where discerning individuals of my persuasion pat each-other's back over fingerfood"*). The fine hotel here has done its part by ensuring that the ice-cold water brought by colonial-era dressed staff to the guests on the golf course is bottled in reusable containers and that discerning visitors have an opportunity to leave their spare change in an HRI branded envelope, complete with “award-winning” pictures of starving children taken by star-photographers somewhere in a nasty country not-so-near you and, for your box-ticking pleasure, a practical list of worthy causes your spare change might be used for – an enterprise that surely must be recognized as a cutting edge example of public-private-partnership, another area where HRI excels.

You might have guessed: I am in Egypt to relaunch one of HRI's flagship programs in the region, aimed at “enhancing” the capacity of Egypt's civil society and to “empower” communities to take a “gender-mainstreamed”, “rights-based” approach to development.

As it happens, a funding mechanism has been in place between HRI and a country South of Canada in Egypt for the last three years, and what better way to channel new money, “change money” to the needy masses than this existing mechanism? When lives are at stake and speed of deployment is of essence competing for funds would be an unrealistic, unnecessary distraction. Besides, when funding capacity you want to work with reliable, known entities. The ones that have proven themselves over decades of successes everywhere where aid is needed.

Welcome friends, to a new era.

* In case you wonder, I spent my World Water Day at a dignified function just outside Cape-Town, hosted on a tasteful wine estate, 10 minutes or so from the eye-sore of Khayelitsha, a depressing, miserable, WASH-less place that could very likely be visible from space but not so from the hills nearby, as it has been thankfully fenced off by the authorities, lest the squalor would spread to the dignified suburbs, magically close and yet so far away. At the end of the day, like the city itself, someone's gotta be working for you.

In which Dr. J is answering a Life-Saving Question: "What's it All About?"

2011-03-05T12:04:00.000-08:00

If you've been around a bit in this business, you must have noticed how small this world is. That consultant you dissed when she was writing up a proposal for a ~~competitor~~ partner back in Bogotá shows up just when you are taking the edge off with a vodka tonic in the Emirates lounge and mentions she is on a donor assignment that happens to be very relevant to you; the guy you hired back in Kosovo to make a lame attempt at coordination of distribution of "Non Food Items" turns up in Manila flying high with another HRI affiliate, and yesterday's little green intern is tomorrow's Emma, funding or de-funding an affiliate near you, on a whim.

Speaking of Emma, just the other day, in a moment of lobster-induced introspection she asked, perhaps rhetorically "what's it all about, this business?"

Never the ones to leave a donor wondering, I thought why don't we do her a favour and find out. What with us being cutting edge and all, we thought we find a consultant that can make an assessment for us and answer this simple question with a comprehensive report.

We looked around and, since time was a factor, we "sole-sourced" an old acquaintance, a reliable, known entity, a man with a fair share of assessments under his tasteful white patent leather belt. A busy man of course but who, for the sake of old days, only charged us 60 days consultancy fee plus some change in travel and subsistence while fact-finding in "the field" - a bargain that, yet again confirms HRIs awesome cost-efficiency.

So, without further ado, let's hear it from Dr. J, our old mate from TFH*:

"It’s harder than you think, driving an appropriately rugged SUV (with GPS) between the plate-glass highrise that houses the HQ of a HRI-affiliate and the modestly upscale (and racially monochromatic) suburb of a “Humanitarian Capital”, to stay focused on what is really important in this incredibly important business of ours. Somewhere between facipulating life-saving workshops, supervising interns, and remembering mission-critical details such as which Star Alliance lounges in Europe have the best wet bars, we too easily lose touch with the core of our raison d’etre:

Brown Babies.

Thankfully the leadership of most the most cutting-edge HRI-affiliates frequently roll out different “initiatives” meant to keep us all focused on this central purpose. On the surface such initiatives will involve lots of enlarged glossy photographs of Brown Babies on foam core, mounted or hung at intervals over the warren of cubicles that characterize the HQ and regional offices of the best HRI-affiliates. This way, no matter how many spreadsheet disasters we may be called upon to respond to, all we have to do is look up and be reminded that this is all really about the Brown Babies.

Brown Babies are truly part of the culture and language of any HRI-affiliate worth the day-rate of its’ reasonably-paid consultants. Whenever some poor misguided soul (from, say, the finance department) gets frustrated in a meeting by an insignificant discrepancy (say, on a report that we’re overdue to submit to a donor representing the country just south of Canada) there will usually be someone who, with cat-like mental reflexes, calmly reminds him or her that it’s okay, really. Let’s lower our voices, take some deep breaths, and refocus. Let’s remind ourselves why we’re here. It’s all about the Brown Babies.

Or maybe it’s been a hard day of “negotiating” with HRI HR about whether that 72-hour layover in Singapore qualifies as “work” and so also counts toward “comp days” (already taken). In such an instance, one can always count on a sympathetic colleague to poke his or her head around the cubicle wall and in a voice laden with empathy, say something like: “Tough day? Yeah… just remember, it’s really all about the Brown Babies…”

“It’s all about the Brown Babies”, or some close variant thereof, can be invoked in even the most fraught and charged debates – like a Scotch neat (and make it a double, thank you very much) after a day in “the field” with our respective organizational Emmas – as a way of bringing the universe back into internal self-alignment. Or at least dulling somewhat the pain of obvious dumbassery that is beyond the control of anyone at this paygrade. “Training” retreats at all-expenses-paid resorts in Bali and “monitoring” trips to Cape Town are what make this otherwise thankless job bearable (oh, the hardships we endure). But it is the Brown Babies who give us that higher purity of purpose, so crucial to maintaining unity, morale and also moral high ground with the sacred confines of a HRI-affiliate HQ.

But the concept of Brown Babies is more than just simple industry and organizational culture. Brown Babies are also Big Business.

The value of Brown Babies as a marketing strategy is incontrovertible. Many from within the brotherhood of successful HRI-affiliates have repeatedly proven the viability of Brown Babies in generating that all-important, life-saving revenue (Brown Babies bring in the cash + GIK keeps the overhead low = the consummate “win-win”). I know this will come as a surprise to many who consider themselves “do-ers”, safely distanced from and unconcerned by the messy world of marketing, but the Brown Babies pay their salaries. Imagine a world where HRI-affiliates could only show pictures of latrines or tarps in their glossy, three-fold pamphlets or on their websites (please update your browser so that you can view the flash video)? That would be a dreary world indeed.

Some of us who are a little closer to the cutting edge of sustainable aid marketing are taking things even a step further. We’ve been be able to build Brown Babies in as integral parts of actual programs in the field (imagine!). With Brown Babies as our core programming model, we are able to align every activity (whether direct program or support) and every stream of income (whether cash or GIK) against a specific “Brown Baby Outcome.” The “Brown Baby Outcomes”, are then supported by a discreet set of “Brown Baby Holistic Wellness Indicators.” As a result of this innovative way of integrating programming with marketing, we are able to report to our donors with great precision regarding the specific impacts of their donations on Brown Baby X in community Y, with pages of supporting data on which holistic wellness indicators were measured over what period to help us track success towards Brown Baby Outcome Q.

I’m afraid that I cannot divulge much detail beyond this, as a) our operations research is still very much a work in progress, and b) we don’t want other HRI-affiliates to overtake us on the integration-of-programs-with-marketing front (this is still a competitive business, and I still have a mortgage…). Rest assured, though, that Brown Baby-focused organizations are not merely the wave of the future, but in fact define the future of replicable, sustainable life-saving poverty reduction programming".

*before someone asks, TFH is short for "Tales From the Hood"

Mystical Experiences about Ancestors and T-shirts

2011-02-18T03:20:00.000-08:00

Seeing that it is almost naptime on a Holy Friday, it is only appropriate to retire to the private suite in my humble residence, pour myself a stiff one of Moroni’s best smuggled Malagasy toddy and reminisce a bit over the significant events of the past few weeks.

HRIs more regular readers may have noticed that I have kept silent lately. That has to do with my natural avoidance of taking any position that may harm this organization short to medium term (I am willing to take positions that will harm HRI long term, as long as "long-term" is defined as the time after I have retired with a comfortable pay and the negative consequences will befallen my successor).

Like any self-respecting executive director of a cutting edge life-saving organization, I prefer to avoid taking any position that may put me at odds with the complex world of politics. Post-factum, once significant consequences are obvious for everyone to see I am ready to shout.

I have lost very little sleep over the news from Egypt and Tunisia. Initially I was worried that the disturbances will ruin our hard-earned good relationships with local authorities (built over decades of generously funded life-saving capacity building projects implemented by HRIs affiliates). But then, when it became obvious that some sort of change is unavoidable I instructed our office in Cairo to shred all archives and be reborn as a voice of change, ready to work with whatever system will be in place once the enthusiasm is gone.

Just like old days, in "CIS" (for our younger readers, back in the day "CIS" was a donor euphemism for “former soviet countries that no-one can place on the map”).

I am more worried about ongoing stuff in Bahrain, but then our affiliation with the small Kingdom is mostly related to venues for life-saving meetings, an important but manageable matter, with several plan Bs in the region .

It is my habit to have Nathan the intern walk a few steps behind me and carrying my standard issue I-pad, ready to hand it to me discreetly should I have a need to study something.

That's exactly what i was doing (studying something on my standard issue ipad) when I felt a warm wave entering my Abercrombie & Fitch khakis (my trouser-ware of choice when at the tropics). I immediately understood what was happening - I was having a mystical experience and his most divine of incidents was caused by the following message from far away:

It was finally happening.

Ever since I took over at the helm of HRI, it has always been my ambition to re-create the genealogical tree and the map of all HRI affiliates, the details of which were forever lost in a fateful excel incident years ago (the memory, the horror, the horror). Now, after all these years a first sign that my search may be bearing fruits. While the full list of affiliates may remain impossible to re-create, I discovered the First Affiliate, The One, the Afiliate that Started it All: Noah's Ark International, NAI

I will forever be thankful to Blurred Vision International (BVI - HRIs most sinificant faith-based affiliate) and Mr. Warren (a BVI reasonably paid consultant) for pointing it all out to me. It was there all along but it is so obvious, isn't it? Mr. Noah, NAI's executive director and my professional ancestor has still many a good lesson to teach HRI affiliates. Among them, my favourite three:

Always stay close to the donor, whatever happens and do everything they tell you even if it does not make any sense (imagine Mr. Noah would have ignored the donor's advice about the flood and emergency preparedness);
A good disaster may be bad for some people, but if you play your cards well, it is always good for NAI and the ones close to it;
Take credit even for stuff that is hard to prove; moreover, busy yourself with stuff that is hard to prove and focus on "telling the story", in a compelling, donor-approved way;

However, it is not all rosy in this business and while we're on the subject, I would like to use the opportunity to provide some constructive feedback to BVI about the mentioned Tweet. As i said, i very much appreciate experiencing the heat wave in my khakis and I remain forever thankful for the support with inferring about The First Affiliate and all, but I must point out that the reference to mosquitoes in that tweet could have been dangerous. Here is why:

First of all HRI affiliates make a pretty good living off those mosquitoes, so that's quite obvious there isn't it, don't wanna ruin that;
Then there is the small matter of claiming credit for donor targets. of all the animals, mosquitoes are the hardest to claim credit for, as they are not technically on the ark, right. they are more like hovering above the ark, which may not be in full compliance with donor requirements for claimable indicators; of course everyone interprets these standards to our own benefits but you don't wnat to go out there and yell about it on twitter;

The toddy is running out and the mellow afternoon sleep of the hard worker is upon me but I cannot let Nathan go with my Ipad before I mention this - I have always maintained that t-shirts are a smart way to do development. In any form. Recent events involving BVI have not only confirmed that but they have shown, for the second time, that t-shirts can also create excitement on the web, where everything worth mentioning is happening.

As far as i'm concerned, the Pittsburgh Steelers are the champs. Ask anyone in "Africa".

Dr. K's Diary - Roughing it in Nicaragua

2011-01-19T13:37:00.000-08:00

Compliments of the season all, and I do hope everyone managed to combine their R&R with all that leave accumulated from overtime, for a decent 6 weeks holiday on top of the 10 days during which the HRI affiliate you are working for has closed this time of year, at least for people of a certain status.

Of course, for people above the certain status, such as yours truly, such seasonal strategies make little sense as I rather indulge in the sort of holidays that also pay some DSA and cover my minimum incidentals while I endure the indignities of travel.

For instance, I am presently in Managua and am dictating this dispatch from the Real Metrocentro, one of the very few choices for the discerning aid worker on duty travel to Nicaragua. Back in Comoros, Nathan the intern, reinvigorated after a well deserved holiday spent at the bosom of his family in a mythical country north of Mexico is taking notes off a state-of-the art videoconferencing facility, recently installed at high but well justified cost in every HRI office worldwide.

Like our donors, I love the fact that we have embraced technology innovation so warmly but allow me to go on record with the controversial statement that technology has its down sides as well, including the fact that I can’t dictate this dispatch in my Y-fronts while watching the telly, but have to put on a HRI t-shirt and pretend I actually think about what I am saying.

In case you wonder what I’m doing in Managua, well, on behalf of HRI and in close cooperation with the Nicaraguan Ministry of Justice, I have just signed a 15 year, multi-million award with the funding agency of a country south of Canada, for the joint CVTP program ("Comprehensive Vocational Training Program").

Part of this program, HRI has committed to "coordinate" the cultural orientation and vocational education of thousands of Nicaraguans ~~deported~~ assisted "back home" from the country South of Canada. Most of them fled Nicaragua with their families in the 70s and 80s, when they were toddlers, but hey, that'll teach them to engage in drunk driving while holding the wrong passport.

Once "back home", the ones that do not join the lucrative US/ Nicaragua narco-cooperation head straight for the east coast to work with local fishermen around in the search and rescue of discreetly packaged 45lbs parcels of cocaine, thrown over board by fellow returnees that have fused their love of two countries in the "loggie" business of south-to-north supply chain management, in those rare cases when the technically-advised counter-trafficking police unit reluctantly pretends they try to intercept drug trafficking, to get that photo opportunity that will keep donors happy.

HRIs job will be easy – using our vast experience and expertise, “coordinate” the development of highly participatory courses and training of trainers trainings (TTT) that will “create an enabling environment” for these wayward youth to become carpenters, plumbers, and perhaps even drivers or other "support staff" for HRIs office in La Barra. It’s a sound plan and it will succeed of course. Or else the local partners will need more absorptive capacity building, which we will be happy to provide, at a competitive cost.

Besides, there will be no shortage of ~~summarily deported~~ returnees in need of humanitarian assistance around these parts anytime soon and as long as that is the case, money will keep flowing form the country south of Canada to sugarcoat the whole affair for the benefit of the Nicaraguan authorities. Finally, the whole thing will be presented as “aid” to the sort of critical taxpaying public that dedicate themselves equally to advocating for cycling lanes, encouraging consumption of organic lattes and stopping, like, all the bad stuff in, like, Africa.

And this is how, again, everyone wins – I just hope that HRIs and my personal contribution to this cause will be well reflected in the cables going out to the capital of the country south of Canada.

Continued Success in 2011!

What I Learned from Wikileaks - How to Write a "Cable"

2010-12-13T13:08:00.000-08:00

Whatever you think of Mr. Assange and his leaky crew - and incidentally, thinking can get one into serious trouble in this business, as quite a few HRI former employees can attest - one thing that must have been noticed by anyone worth their salt is the tone of all those "cables" (in case you wonder "cable" is classified code for "email" - an ingenious first line of defense, a diversion: "cables are hardware, not here for hardware, damn they're good").

Anyway, as i was saying it's not WHAT the cables say (although like many of you i was stunned for example to hear that Pfizer, long-standing PPP parter of HRI, was playing dirty in Nigeria - you see like you, I always thought Big Business was dominated by honest, enlightened companies doing the right thing, pillars of decency such as Lehman Brothers or Goldman Sachs).

Nope, it's HOW those cables say what they say that we all notice, a style that comes as close as I have ever seen to shameless bragging, patronizing and not-exactly-refuting-any-possible-assumptions-that-would-give-the-author-more-credit-than-deserved. It is familiar to me because, like I, many successful HRI employees and representatives of important partners and donors master this style and I do not think I am wrong to assume that it is also favored by quite a few readers of this here humble newsletter as well.

Could that be a coincidence?

For the benefit of those who have no idea what i am talking about: imagine an embassy employee that is one day approached with information by a dissident in a country run by an evil, nasty government. He'll hear the story and then choose to send a "cable" - the style options at this employee's disposal can be boiled down to two main ones:

1. the "straight forward": "i have been approached by so and so who told me this or the other" and
2. the "I am fucking awesome, me": "because i am such a skilled diplomat, i have finally managed to obtain access to a very reliable source (i may have put my life in danger as well, but i am fine, thanks for asking) that has confirmed all the suspicions I had after comprehensive and very discreete investigations and complex inferences and deductions - that this or the other thing is happening. Besides i am such an amazing writer I bet you are reading this in awe, can I get a promotion out of this shithole please".

You get it, right?

You may be wondering what this has to do with the important work we are doing here at HRI. Well, don't wonder about it now - wonder about it next time you organize a life-saving workshop about building housing* in Haiti for example, and you notice that your own local Emma is not happy with the "branding" of this initiative. A good guess would be that she probably won't plan to go back to her desk and write "our partner HRI has just implemented a workshop, lives have been saved, good on them".

That's right your failure with the branding has just limited her style options, as good a reason as any other to get your shitty organization de-funded.

* don't you just love the gerund in this? Style options for euphemisms are, like, limitless.

Best Practices in Procurement for Hardship Postings

2010-11-27T07:13:00.000-08:00

Don't know about you but I have chosen to spend this year's Day of the Turkey in Nairobi, sipping overpriced French wine at my temporary residence in Gigiri and passing time exchanging harmless anecdotes with other expats confirming local stereotypes about the people of Kenya, whom we know so well as we often change planes here and sometimes enjoy lattes in the basement of Sarit center.

That, plus the combination of good weather and “affordable help”, which has kept Nairobi at the top of HRIs strategic locations for years.

In spite of what you may have speculated, my long silence of late has nothing to do with the fact that I was completely absorbed by cooking the books to demonstrate ever increased cost efficiency and accountability (that, frankly, is business as usual).

Nope, my silence has to do with the fact that HRIs V-sat connection in Moroni has failed and we had to procure a new one. Our back-up V-sat and the Thuraya data plan were both still functional, but, besides updating our Facebook profiles, we could not be seen making do with just that, as it would have compromised the urgency of the procurement process.

To procure the new V-sat, we first flew in Ian the consultant, a world-class IT expert based in Cape Town and a regional member of HRIs global network of experts maintaining our infrastructure. After three weeks in-depth assessment, his 63 pages report, reviewed and endorsed by HRIs IT department, put forward a surprising finding: the V-Sat is broken, we need a new one and while we are at it we should also “upgrade” our servers and firewall.

Given the urgency we immediately activated our global procurement department based in the New York admin center, a team of experts that have helped many a HRI office and affiliate to procure similar equipment in the past. Being 100% committed to procedure, they went ahead and collected quotes, a process that only took three weeks or so, at the end of which they could share three comprehensive quotes that were closest to the required specifications.

Since neither I nor Nathan the Intern know anything about technology, we added a few extra days of pay to Ian in Cape-Town, who promptly suggested that the best company is actually not on the list, but a company he knows and trust in Cape-Town. He made some solid arguments so we went head with his recommendation and hired this company in Cape-Town, which may have been ever so slightly more expensive than the ones on the list, but Ian assured us they are small and nimble, which is always worth paying for on a market dominated by slow, monstrous, inefficient mega-companies.

Another argument in their favour was the fact that they actually import the equipment from a company based in Dubai (this one happened to be on the list of quotes), and ensure a “thorough quality check” before delivery – an important detail given my and Nathan’s technical hopelessness. Additional costs also include the transport and custom clearance for the equipment to Cape-Town, pre-assembly and transport to Moroni.

Of course there were additional “hidden” costs, but it’s all money well spent as these are the realities of procurement in Hardship Postings. And to be fair to them, the fact that they eventually shipped the V-sat with a wrongly sized dish was not their fault. As it could happen to anyone, Ian forgot to compensate with dish size for difference in latitude when he “adapted” the assessment he has done for HRI in Sudan back in 2008. (“Adapted “ is an euphemism for “Ctrl+R” in MS Word (or “Find and Replace all ‘Sudan’ with ‘Comoros’).

At a reasonable additional cost, plus travel for “technicians”, the new dish arrived last week and, as you see, we are back online. This sort of rapid reaction combined with cutting edge technology has kept us on the top for all these years.

And, in case you wonder how come, from the relative comforts of Gigiri, Nairobi, I am affected by these technical challenges in Moroni, well the answer is actually two answers:

HRI takes security very seriously – we only connect through a VPN that runs behind the firewall in Moroni; and
Don’t you just hate typing on your I-pad;

How to land a HRI job and survive savage attacks on the industry

2010-11-08T03:04:00.000-08:00

Despite spending more than half of my life in "geographically intriguing and historically fascinating" locations (euphemism for "shitholes"), I have retained a strong desire for recognition and acceptance in more conventional, home-based circles and for these reasons I maintain subscriptions to several high-brow publications that reach me regularly through complicated and expensive systems involving document delivery companies and forwarding rules at HRI's various "administrative centers".
Sure, these days I could easily have these publications delivered on my standard issue I-pad, but that would deprive me for one of the most important uses of high brow magazines: conspicious reading in planes, generating thoughts of "cultured, thoughtful individual, in spite of rough life in hardship postings" in nearby passengers. With an I-pad I would just be another aging hipster on a plane.

It is all about the image in this business.

Think about it: sooner or later in most jobs, there comes a point where the results of your work are more or less visible, for everyone to see. Not in this business, though, and not at HRI, where success is defined in "burn rates", "leadership of past complex projects involving cross-sectoral cooperation" and "commitment to capacity building" often defined by the statement that someone's "local assistant" was "exposed to learning opportunities". Short of an unlikely scandal, feud or fall-out with the wrong guy there are few tell-tale signs to give away the good candidate from the bad one.

But then it doesn't really matter, as the new job will be all about "strong leadership of dynamic team" and "delivering against indicators", which is another way of saying print t-shirts and organize workshops with people paid to attend and not likely inclined to rock any boats.

Which leaves an important question open: as an employer, how does HRI decide who gets what job, when going through thousands and thousands of applications?

First of course, there is the degree. You gotta have the right degree, otherwise any HRI employer will understandably feel nervous about allowing a young and unexperienced "westerner" to lead a team of "locals" many of which have 10-15 years hard-core experience (known in HRI interview jargon as a "diverse team"). This degree must also be from a "reputable institution", which not only ensures a comfortable intellectual inbreeding so necessary to a business that has been implementing the same strategies for decades with no significant results (except vast collections of "lessons learned" and many, many 300-words success stories), but it also keeps present and future decision-making among the ones for whom such degree at reputable institutions is within reach for solid reasons mostly involving the accident of birth. This fact has naturally generated further growth in expensive degrees offered by some of the worlds leading institutions, in "poverty alleviation" and "aid and development" and if you will take one single advice from me, here it is: fucking get one, whatever it costs.

Then there is the experience. You can't run a "complex project" without "significant experience" can you? Which creates an excellent opportunity for well-educated young people with some resources to their name and some time to spare, to bob about for a year or two, in "Africa", gaining the necessary experience to land them the dream HRI job in the future.[**] During this time they learn all the good habits from their supervisors, ensuring what we like to call "continuity of ideas".

These two criteria alone will ensure a vigorous initial selection and the reduction of applications from thousands to merely tenth, most of them solid-looking candidates of familiar socio-economic backgrounds. But then what? Now comes the point where the instincts of the interviewer and their extensive network of contacts kick in to ensure the ultimate success of the recruitment:

"You were in sudan, were you? have you met my friend Pat from OCHA?" or
"You're into livelihoods, what do you think of Margaret from FAO HQ?

Their responses to these hard questions should pretty much clarify what they're made of and how effective they were in their previous jobs in meeting the right people - another undisputed sign of success.

What you do next is you ask them about how they will "lead and inspire" their team. The successful candidate will speak with humility about how important it is to "listen and learn" - a theoretical concept learned during their "povery allleviation" degree - after which they will hopefully drop an anecdote or two about how they learned a few words in Lingala during their previous posting, an objective, telling achievement.

Finally, it really helps if their references are from people i know personally, so i can call them up and be like "really between you and me how is this guy" - the ultimate test.

And so, reader, have we built the cutting-edge organization that we are today, on the shoulders and commitment of our excellent employees that have taken us all the way to the top of the industry.

Which brings me back to the high-brow literature i mentioned. Just recently in a plane, i happened to sit next to the representative of an HRI ~~competitor~~ partner in the Emirates business class headed for Nairobi. She started talking about some article, which i haven't personally read but according to her was a savage and entirely unjustified attack on our whole industry. I couldn't but agree of course and we continued our conversation over vodka tonics at the Northfolk (which will surely lead to closer partnership among our organizations).

In this business you must develop a hard skin and live with the fact that that's what you get for sacrificing yourself for the wellbeing of the poor and the vulnerable. Rabid critiques from high-brow magazines (how would they cope with all the hardship?) is just one small extra adversity we have to put up with in this hard but spiritually rewarding job.

[**] the ultimate trump in "past experience" if of course experience with that or the other donor, a detail that may just help propel you all the way to the final step of the recruitment process).

Patricia and The Horse

2010-10-29T08:48:00.000-07:00

Somewhere not far from Bredjing, "Africa", a fleet of white HRI-branded landcruiser and escort vehicles slowly negotiate the preciously little space between the dusty huts that collectively form “the village”, coming at a halt in a spot of shadow next to a trip of goats munching on green plastic bags.

The occasion is a strategic meeting between HRI’s Livelihoods Team and Abdulshafi “the Horse” El Noor, a reformed rebel leader and local dignitary whose “community” needs to be included in a “livelihood mapping exercise” completed by HRI, on behalf of “the country team”.

The HRI delegation is led by Patricia, nutritionist, yoga enthusiast and HRI Regional Livelihoods Program Manager who, as always when “in the field” is wearing her shalwar kameez kit acquired from an “ethnic” shop in Columbius, Ohio, offset with a cotton head-scarf bought en route in Nairobi Airport. She’s carrying her trusty Nalgene flask and a recently acquired SLR camera and has managed to re-composed herself after an unpleasant argument in the car over the intensity of the air-conditioning.

She doesn’t know it yet but this meeting will define her from now on. It will influence her career and be forever re-lived in her memory in increasingly romanticized terms. For years to come, in conversations there will be a point when she will say something along the lines of “when I was dealing with the warlords in Africa…” either impressing people or making them cringe, depending who you ask.

It wasn’t hard to get The Horse to agree to have this meeting. Khaled, HRIs ~~fixer~~ Liaison Officer, arranged it by means of “technical expenses”, further sweetend with promises of “capacity building” involving Khaled’s men.

What Patricia doesn’t know is that Khaled is one of the Horse’s men. As a matter of fact, all HRI employees in Bredjing are, but that’s another matter.

The meeting takes place in the “community center” – a rundown structure built by Blurred Vision (HRI affiliate) that is used daily to shelter goats from the mid-day sun. The horse has a spacious house of course, fully air-conditioned (with electivity produced by a generator “capacitated” by HRI as part of another project), but Khaled advised him it would be better to “keep it real” for Patricia. A few kids playing in the dust with a few donkeys nearby completed the perfect picture.

And it was the perfect meeting as well as that most unlikely intersection of two very different worlds. To Patricia “the Horse” was the stereotype of the "african warlord" and to The Horse Patricia was the stereotype of the "clueless westerner", lost in an unfamiliar reality, too young and inexperienced to matter. The discussion never went past niceties plus one awkward joke each, both lost in translation (although Patricia thought the horse was ever so slightly hitting on her).

At the end it was an “amazing experience” and a photo opportunity. But it was also a significant HRI success (the "mapping" will be completed, reports will be written, backs will be patted, further funds will be raised) and ultimately a confirmation that the good order of things around Bredjing, Africa will be preserved: The Horse and his people will continue to pretend they are "cooperating", and HRI will continue to pretend money doesn't change hands.

And, just in case you are wondering, that stock constantly disappearing from the warehouse is nothing but normal “shrinkage”, really.

Protecting Children - All the Way to Easy Streets

2010-10-21T02:07:00.000-07:00

Saving lives here, there, everywhere is what HRI does, but we really shine when it comes to protecting children and women. I mean, who would disagree that children need more protection and care than everybody else, even more so in emergencies. Not the donors, that’s for sure, and therefore not us.

First thing you want to do when you are in the business of protecting children is find a nice location and make sure you get it properly re-enforced – we’re talking high, blastproof walls, boom-gates, shatterproof film, the works. Once you enter the main gate, you are in the parking lot, secured with extra ram-proof structures and tire-cutters and packed with ballistic-blanketed, well branded vehicles (“HRI – our children are our future”). Then you walk through the second gate, past the admin office, the radio room, support service, through third gate into the programs compound, where, in a windowless office-container surrounded by green patches of flowers, sits the “Manager of the Protection Unit”, a highly qualified HRI old-hander, distinguished among other desirable qualities by an astounding ability to speak and write volumes without giving away any hint of practicality, all while appearing earnest and very articulate. Much of his speech is a random combination of “Effective protection”, “societal structures”, “social support systems”, along with “increased capacity” and “safety and wellbeing”, put together by an advanced algorithm hardwired in the head of any successful child protection expert.

The distance between this section of the compound and the main gate is not accidental, as the protection program team do very important creative, intellectual work the quality of which depends on a quiet, professional environment, impossible to achieve anywhere near the main entrance, where hundreds of women and children are crowding up by the gate day in day out, out of some bizarre instinct that remains unshaken in spite of the regular yelling sessions with the security officers who try to "create a secure corridor" for this or the other vehicle driving important people in or out of the compound, to and from life-saving meetings.

This quiet environment does get occasionally perturbed by some drivers’ insufferable habit to reverse through the alternative gate in the back, aiming for the water-pipe, where they proceed to washing the vehicles. The combined sound of the hose, idling engines and the driver’s banter has been known to break the manager’s calm and his habit of coming at the container door yelling when that happens earned him the nickname “The Wife” among the drivers. Two things drive him particularly mad:

The fact that, during draught, they waste water that is otherwise intended for the precarious green sections between the containers (it’s the small things); and
The fact that they allow unauthorized children into the compound, compromising important security protocols (some drivers “delegate” the washing to children);

The next thing to do once you have the compound set up is find a hipster photographer and fly them in regularly to take the sort of pictures that increase the quality of any report, website or calendar. Good pictures are matters of the soul, and the idea here is to offer the photographer an opportunity for “an amazing experience”, which means that trips will be taken to “the field”, as represented mostly by the “informal” squatting camps that spring in the vicinity of any HRI child protection compound, where women and children rest and cook when they are not being yelled at for queuing in front of the main gate.

Finally, and crucially, find some local partners. This serves at least three important purposes:

You ensure you can channel efforts into “building local capacity”, the cornerstone of any successful child protection enterprise;
You increase your chances for continuous future funding, by using the absorptive capacity strategy (in combination with those pictures); and
You have someone to blame in the unlikely event that somebody will ever question what children were protected and how.

The rest is pretty straight forward – engage in “Technical Advice” and workshops on anything from school curricula to PTSD and before you know it you have a solid child protection portfolio that will keep this part of HRI on easy streets in years to come.

Dennis The Malaria Expert

2010-10-12T03:44:00.000-07:00

On the fourth floor of a building somewhere on the north upper teens in Washington DC, a man in a striped suit is lost in his thoughts, confortable in his orange ergonomic chair. His desk is cluttered with highlighted email print-outs, brochures, newsletters and info-sheets from all over the world and a sizeable number of rubber balls, plasticine and overpriced toys, distributed at one of the recent management courses he attended, along with advice on using them to boost creativity.

His office walls are covered with malaria campaign posters and his shelves are stacked with campaign mugs, key-chains, bumper stickers, lanyards and other time-proven anti-malaria weapons, perfected by this business over decades of successful life-saving work.

His name is Dennis and he is the man in charge of HRIs “Administrative Center” in Washington, DC, an important outpost in the HRI universe and a center of excellence for “global technical assistance and advocacy”. Dennis landed this HRI job after a successful career working as an “advisor” for USAID, a time in which he developed significant knowledge of internal dynamics in USAID, as well as a global informal network of contacts in the US government, all crucially relevant to anyone who wants to make it above a certain level in this business.

It’s called “expertise” and it is at the heart of HRIs meritocratic DNA.

Dennis just got off the phone “with Geneva”, as represented this time by a fellow member and co-chair of the Global Malaria Task Force (GMTF), a forum of experts from the US and several Northern European countries, very active force in the development of cutting edge malaria strategies and of course, very influential in donor circles. The GMTF has been pioneered by HRI and a few like-minded affiliates and donors and it has grown into a force to be reckoned with, addressing crucial issues that range from “lack of leadership” and “absorptive capacity”, to global procurement of treated nets, distribution of ACTs and of course identification and assessment of implementation partners “in the field”.

The call “with Geneva” was disappointing, as two main fractions in the GMTF seem to fail finding an agreement on a crucial point in the current work plan: should the upcoming task force meeting be held in Maputo or Mombasa? There are of course solid arguments for both ("The Maputo Consensus" sounds just as good as "the Mombasa Consensus") and a compromise needs to be found. With the recent re-opening of the Polana, Dennis feels that the arguments are slightly stronger for Maputo, but he is loath to be perceived as pushing on this sensitive issue too hard, as that will diminish his ability to weigh in on other, admittedly more trivial, matters during the meeting itself. Years of experience have taught him that sometimes the sum of many small victories can balance one big loss and he is therefore ready to compromise if it is suggested that they meet in Mombasa.

Indeed, fighting malaria at this level is all about psychology. And of course, the ability to navigate the politics of all the partners involved and leverage strong informal networks to mitigate worthy goals: ~~bashing HRI competitors~~ pointing out HRI’s comparative advantages and ensuring “strategic partnerships” with donors.

Dennis is able to communicate in French as well (after a stint with the USAID mission in Gabon back in the late 90s, where he also met his wife at a peace corps volunteer function), but his language of choice is obviously “Metaphor”, the lingo for any expert with a full plate and a tough job:

Thanks Dennis, for keeping our backs out there and doing your part in the global fight against Malaria.

Workshop Season

2010-09-24T02:34:00.000-07:00

I don’t know what season you’ve got going in your part of the world at the moment, but if you are in our ~~business~~ sector you are probably well aware that we are in the middle of Workshop Season – a cyclical occurrence completely unaffected by the complexity of hemispheres, climate zones or climate change.

Once Summer gently turns to “Fall” in the Northern Hemisphere (a mythical place where seasons are made), armies of Emmas and their vast entourage of consultants, experts, assessors and interns descend on every “field” location there is, animated by traditional post-labour-day energy, conditioned in inhabitants of that mythical land by hundreds of years of well organized, protestant ethics.

As a cutting-edge humanitarian organization fully committed to saving lives everywhere the donor penny is available, HRI is of course highly tuned to this natural rhythm and is innovating as usual in forever finding new ways to organize workshops and meetings, the meat and potatoes of any respectable life-saving enterprise.

There is no escaping the natural rhythm of things, and life-saving workshops are keeping us all busy this time of year, from the tastefully decorated Tejarat Hotel in Heart, for example, where conference facilities have been booked ahead all the way to end November, to the slightly splashier junkets and summits where organic-free-trade-mohair-tailor-made suits rub hand-made stitches with organic-free-trade-virgin-wool-tailor-made suits and where the grinning musician of yesteryear shares pats on backs with yesteryear’s grinning politician over designer finger-food and superior beverages, united by the strong bond of blah-derhood.

Besides the human need to overcompensate for the well deserved inactivity during “home leave” (“I was burnt out and tried to disconnect, me, didn’t read my emails, etc”) with a burst of demonstrative energy and desire to show action, the Workshop Season is also factor of another cyclical reality – the Reporting Period.

Somewhere, in a mythical country South of Canada, financial years are “tuned in” with this natural rhythm of holiday/ work which means that current Reporting Periods are ending – a matter that absolutely must be marked by “a series of workshops”, also because remaining money must be spent out of this year’s budget (returning money to donors is poor form) – while new ones are beginning – a matter that mast be marked by a series of workshops, to “show activity” but also to create the illusion of “coordination”, a detail that will prove handy in so many future life-saving reports, not to mention applications for funding.

This shift in Reporting Periods is also particularly good to the reasonably paid Report-Writing Consultant (RWC), a species endemic in any airport lounges near you, this time of year.

Also time of year, in hundreds of “field locations” hundreds of project managers realize that hundreds of project periods are coming close to an end and thousands of “line items” remain unspent. Hundreds of workshops are immediately organized to come up with “accelerated plans” and set up “ambitious targets” for those partners that, as always, suffer from “absorptive capacity”.

Meanwhile, as a clear sign of development there for all to see, sumptuous conference locations are been built everywhere from Hargeisa to Port Moresby, catering to the lucrative workshop and weddings markets, ("plastic chair condoms" and bottled water stock anyone?) leaving just one question open: How come they don't have a MDG for that?

Before I finish and return to my ongoing life-saving workshop, I really cannot let this one go. The other day, HRI has organized a life-saving workshop about “communication” – a matter at the heart of any HRI project (premise: “we do all this good work and no-one gives us credit, we must become better at communication”). As always, this ground-breaking workshop has provided a unique opportunities for people across agencies to pocket allowances while winging, and one of the most important “findings” of the workshop was:

“Newspapers don’t care about our successes, they only want to publish negative, sensationalist stories, to sell papers”

While I was taking this cruel fact in, I allowed my thoughts to wander only for a moment, along with my fingers on the standard-issue Ipad, and came across this fascinating post, written by former HRI employee and skepticism enthusiast, Prof. William Easterly. In it, the good professor (who to his credit does not receive sitting allowance and favours winging for free) reports on a finding he had (professors don’t need workshops to obtain findings, they just pull them out of their superior thinking processes), which more or less was:

“Newspapers don’t care about skeptical questioning that implies more work, they only want to publish inspirational stories with a happy ending, to sell papers”.

And then I realized – what we all need is a global workshop with members of the academia and the press (and maybe business, why not, and "decision-makers" as well) to sort out this apparent “overlap”, once and for all.

Absorptive Capacity

2010-09-22T12:35:00.000-07:00

Virtues of Micro-Management: Dr K’s Reverse Pyramid of Aid Project Management

2010-09-02T09:37:00.000-07:00

Don’t know about you, but I love micro-management, me. It is one of those things, halfway between art and science that, if applied correctly, can yield amazing results in line with the objectives of our work and become the source of endless personal and professional satisfaction to the humble aid worker.

Done properly, it requires the correct bureaucrat to implementer ratio (B:I), best achieved by a reverse pyramid approach to “coordination”, in which the upper part (the reversed base) all the way down to the bottom-tip are packed to the rafters with countless coordination and advisory mechanisms, staffed by reasonably paid HRI consultants, advisors, government representatives and, of course, Emma, all united by a blatant lack of understanding of matters of implementation and an affinity for knee-jerk overblown reactions to any “feedback from the field”, in particularly if the feedback has to do with life-and-death matters such as the “inappropriate use of communication channels” and the use of the wrong word in the acknowledgement section of reports.

We call this "Dr. K's Reverse Pyramid of Aid Project Management (tm)/ RPAPM":

Besides the fact that it allows for a fairly consistent and predictable “burn” on the budget and an equitable allocation of resources among “partners”, the reverse pyramid approach creates an ideal environment for implementing aid projects for reasons that include but are not limited to:

It allows plenty opportunity for unsolicited advice in the planning phase. Additionally, given the impossible-to-define dynamic between various coordination mechanisms, it is relatively easy to pretend one was not aware of a discussion happened in one committee, for example, and demand changes well beyond the time when implementing such changes would be possible or reasoonable, with the added benefit of plenty opportunity for subsequent passive-aggression;
It allows the same people to “wear different hats” as members of different committees and, as a consequence, disagree with their different-hat-wearing-persona ("this matter must be brought in front of us as members of the other committee; Oh, the other committee only meets two months from now, on Tuesday morning").
It allows for repeated invitations for “implementers” to attend meetings that never achieve a quorum and then get forever rescheduled; if they once don't show up, the quorum is met and crucial implementation decisions are taken;
It allows for free interpretation of “conclusions” reached by various committees that no-one knew were meeting, in order to play highly satisfying power games with ~~competitors~~ other partners and stakeholders;
It allows all of us an opportunity to share our wisdom and advice in areas we nothing about, providing, as it were, an opportunity for “fresh perspectives” and “thinking outside the box”; We like to call that innovation;
It allows creative decisions of the lowest-common-denominator variety - the only golden standard in our sector;
It allows for an ideal and equitable flow of credit and blame: blame is always flowing down the reverse pyramid, towards the tip (in particular for decisions taken by committees in which implementers were not present), and credit for success is always flowing up towards the base:

(The correct flow of blame and credit in Aid)

UPDATE: seeing that it is in fashion to update and review iconic pyramids i thought i should use the opportunity that I had to correct some typos made by Nathan the intern in the illustrations above to also make some content changes to dr.K's RPAPM. I have noticed that in my academic fervor yesterday I seem to have forgotten about the 6 or so "Poor and Vulnerable" people, who of course have a well-deserved place on the reverse pyramid (tm):

In which We Learn About the Healing Effects of the Arts

2010-08-28T11:02:00.000-07:00

As we go about our cynicysm-inducing business in this brutal post-conflict world, there are moments when even the most hardened of us must ask:

But what about the arts? What of the culture?

Funny you are mentioning it. As it happens, HRI actually is very much "into" arts and culture, as long as it serves our interest. For example, many of our innovative "awareness raising" campaigns all over the world involve some sort of "edutainment" based on the time-honored belief that the muses must be slaves to the political agenda, useful tools in getting the message across to people who - between you and me - do not have the sophistication to understand art anyway. Besides, these sort of activities keep youth in the communities away from trouble, provide an opportunity for Peace Corps volunteers with self-perceived artistic inclination to have a go at "directing" and all for a good cause: a 300 words "innovative" textbox in a report plus pictures, apt to put a tear on Emma's keyboard, when she receives the pdf.

What keeps me going though is the satisfaction one gets from imposing one's own artistic mediocrity on others.

We also encourage children off the dump or off the street to paint and, like, be creative? And, as long as their painting talks about peace or lionizes HRI, they often get exposed at the local expat-cafe-that-sells-latte-and-mojito where they even get auctioned. Sometimes, in places such as Mozambique or Cambodia, where the superficially-perceived recent history to number of hipsters ratio is pretty good we thrive in creating sculptures out of weapons under the strict guidance of a HRI endorsed artist/ guru who then sometimes gets "profiles" in glossy magazines where he can speak with humility about "these people's ability to get over their miserable past". Every now and then, we take a liking to one local artist and we do send her to this or the other workshop in New York or Bruxelles, where people get to patronize her and feel good about it at the same time.

Sure one could whine endlessly about this whole thing being a bit dogmatic, what with only encouraging artistic expression of the sort that is endorsed by donors' agenda, but hey, these people are so poor they wouldn't have time to develop their own art anyway. Besides, isn't a painting of a sunset with coconut-palms and fishermen returning in harbor something exotic? Wouldn't you want it in on your wall, next to that lizard made out of recycled rice-bags looking at the Congolese tapestry, an arrangement that is after all a more acceptable modern alternative to the "been there done that" T-shirt?

And how about those beautiful paintings honouring a complex and dignified culture from centuries ago: temples, gods, ancestors? In my tastefully decorated office, i actually have some paintings that combine more of these themes in one: an idyllic, simple peasant landscape (buffaloes and rice-farmers against the rising sun) juxtaposed over a sky where benevolent divinities help erasing the memories of cruelty that country has experienced recently. And how about that charming primitively carved crocodile from Timor, that gets to be the anthropological prop for any small talk in my office: "In Tetum", i say knowingly, "Grandfather and crocodile are homonyms, ain't that cute?".

Presently, one of HRI's for-profit affiliates has perfected a toolkit for the "development of a cultural policy", put together on account of extensive "best practices" acquired in many countries where we work. Often we even place a "Technical Advisor" at the Ministry of Culture (Or "Culture & Youth" or "Culture & Tourism"), who is usually someone with vague artistic ambitions that have never materialized and who has therefore pursued a "Masters in Art History" at a good school and, as a Technical Advisor can become a convenient agent in pursuing both her idealized perception of "exotic" art as well as the more eccentric tastes of the minister, or principal secretary (or their daughter, always a gifted local artist).

Subject like everyone else to Parkinson's Law, the technical advisor will further ensure that a committee will be swiftly formed (sometimes inter-ministerial), as part of HRI's "system strenthening" agenda, that gets to decide whether or not any artistic enterprise is culturally appropriate with direct consequences in that artist's baility to get supported in any way. This committee will be referred to as a "clearing house", a concept much to Emma's liking and consequently warmly embraced by HRI. We sometimnes even expand their portfolio, requiring them to approve any message developed by "the government" (where "the government" is an euphemism for any NGO that works "on behalf" of the government, as we all do). Given that the technical advisor is a HRI person, we happen to have an edge over any other ~~competitor~~ partner, giving us what can be safely described as "domination" of the message agenda - we make good use of that by churning out messages that Emma loves but no-one else understands.

Then, in the sort of restaurants that create a superficial projection of whatever it is perceived as "national symbol" by some British entrepreneur, aptly named and where only expats ever set foot, the technical advisor from the ministry of culture gets to bond with Emma and a junior HRI Program Officer (it's not customary in our world to allow a senior officer to deal with a cultural project; actually, it must be a young female) over "traditional" dishes (not very spicy of course) and the obligatory shared anecdote over the locals' lack of cultural sensitivity, justifiable of course by the brutal recent past.

But how about that French heritage, eh? Well, thank god for that!

Emma from the Funding Agency of a Country South of Canada

2010-08-25T09:02:00.000-07:00

Emma has been with the donor agency of a country south of Canada for a bit over one year now, and although she really hates her life here in Moroni, she is determined to see her contract through, as she sees this dump as a career maker. She can put up with hardship also because she has gained her experience and field credentials with a stint in the Peace Corps, a formative period in her life that she makes daily reference too, often when providing unsolicited advice to "implementing partners" about areas she doesn’t understand.

Her name is actually Emily, but she prefers to be called Emma as she thinks that sounds more mature. She has been known to give very negative “technical reviews” to organizations whose “chief of party” referred to her as Emily once. Her surname is vaguely French and that contributes to her being even more of a social bore as she always makes reference to her “European heritage”, at dinner parties implying that cooking soufflés is somehow imbedded in her DNA and no soufflés cooked by anybody else is ever good enough. She doesn’t speak any French, although “she used to be fluent when she was in the Peace Corps” – Emma has the distinction of completely having forgotten a language in two years “because of lack of practice”, being busy with her job and all, in spite of the three months spent in Paris “for language training” before taking up her job with the donor agency, in what is after all a francophone country. The two years between her peace corps stint and this job were spent in “grad school”, the destination of choice for any unemployable, skill-les overachiever who never had a proper job although they are well in their thirties.

On account of the combination of her masters’ degree from a very good school and her overwhelming practical experience in the peace corps, she fancies herself as both a strong technical expert and someone who knows the ins and outs of “community-based” implementation. She has also attended a training on communication once, which makes her a communications expert, having a specific expertise in the benign impact of logos on larger communication strategies. Given that in her world Moroni is not exactly a desirable destination she gets the big fish in the small pond benefit, which effectively puts more responsibilities in her hand that she can handle.

She never left the city (except on a PR visit when she escorted the ambassador to see a HRI "Launch") and spends all her time with the Embassy staff at the compound. She drives around in a white Rav4 (the car of choice for any discerning expat) and has no friends in town. Like many of us she has impeded her ability to operate machinery several times at the usual Thursday night parties-that-only-expats-attend, which made her even more bitter and secluded. She does not attend the parties anymore and when asked why she blames it on “too much work” and on the fact that, given her position, she needs to be always careful to separate her private life from her work.

In grad school she once sat through a case-study on HRI, which makes her a knowledgeable friend. That and the fact that during her peace corps days she was used as a community contact by a HRI affiliate partial to selling American college kids as community credentials to donors. She also really appreciates having a genuine friend in Nathan the intern whom she managed to bond with over similar peace corps experiences – she particularly likes calling him up and treating him like the minion he is. She genuinely appreciates the “comprehensive” approach HRI has to our work, and the consistency with which we give credit to her agency for their generous support. She understands that our NICRA rates and overheads can be a bit too high and that, in a difficult environment, one has to rely on outside consultants all too often, and she definitely understands "capacity challenges" we are encountering working in such a difficult environment and our reluctance to measure impact, neatly formulated as “not wasting money on research”, which is somebody else’s business. She keeps saying she is “an implementer at heart” and she is very pleased to hear me say that she would do a great job working for HRI.

Emma thinks in 300 words snippets. She can never mention Uganda without making reference to a “that successful campaign” and she could never mention Sierra Leone without mentioning the “amputee soccer club”. She has a good feel for fashionable ("trending?") topics and reacts positively when stimulated with empty talk of “innovation” and “using modern technology, such as cell phones”. This is why, in her head she equates HRI with innovation which goes to show that she really is the right person on the right job.

Her massive professional insecurity is actually a significant advantage as she takes easy offence from ~~competitors~~ other partners who, foolishly, are a bit more outspoken in their technical and programmatic disagreements with her, sometimes even implying that their job is to achieve some sort of “impact” that no-one ever asked from them. In their ignorance, these amateurs don’t realize that this business is about pleasing donors (in this case Emma), and that a neatly printed calendar with the right logos, plus an old fashioned t-shirts and caps project along with sustained sessions of lifesaving workshops and trainings go a long way to achieving that. You throw a “sms campaign” into the mix and Emma loves you like the fat kid loves cake. The "impact" thingy should be the concern of underfunded “subs”, and that’s the way things work. Protesting against that may be “innovative” but will lead to a decrease of funding and control, all smoothly transferred to HRI where they belong.

So here’s to Emma, you rock!

What Malaria?

2010-08-23T07:45:00.000-07:00

Earlier today, as i was walking out of my favourite establishment in Moroni, toothpick in mouth and stomach full of lobster, I beheld a man with a laptop in the lobby, staring at an MS Outlook screen with no unread messages and regularly hitting F9 ("retrieve mail") with the face of someone used to work on life/death projects. I gathered by the sureness of his demeanor that this is a man who knows about lonely lunches in the best places a hardship location has to offer and sure enough, the collar of his polo shirt was showing the familiar purple lanyard of the initiated ("Just Saving Lives") so i approached him: "You work for an HRI affiliate don't you?" "I do indeed" he answered, "I work in malaria", "Have we met before?", "No we haven't but i heard much about you".

Turns out he was hired by one of our affiliates not yet established here to write an assessment about malaria programs in the Comoros - the affiliate is considering opening operations in Moroni, funded by a global mechanism they have set-up with the Aid agency of a large country south of Canada, known in the business for its flexible and very competent operatives and for its very streamlined processes. Of course every NGO (and quite a a few for-profit HRI affiliates) in Comoros work in malaria, most of them successfully "burning" through significant funds, and it is just sound logic to squeeze another player in: there's innovation in numbers my friends, and we do like to keep each other on our tasseled-shoed toes.

My ego tells me I should have been informed about this, but my reason argues that in the heat of things coordination sometimes may suffer and that's fair enough, also because i haven't really read my emails in six weeks (I have asked Nathan the intern to scan them every other day or so and call me if there is anything urgent, where "urgent" is another word for "donors wanting to give us money").

In true HRI fashion, this particular TLA (Three Letter Affiliate) is been funded for work that has been done by ~~a competitor~~ another organization, established here over the last 10 or so years, that i have recently enjoyed watching falling out of grace with the very competent representative of the respective donor, over the crucial matter of the size of the logos printed on their mosquito nets. As a consequence, the TLA was predictably asked in to "help with coordination", inviting also another HRI affiliate from the private sector to help out with developing the coordination systems needed to ensure a "consistent use of Logos that will guarantee sufficient visibility" for the funding agency, and hence another striking victory in the fight against malaria.

Never the one to argue with sound, straight-forward strategies, I took a liking in this consultant and decided to invite him over for dinner, to alleviate his loneliness and provide an opportunity for further internal coordination. I am also considering offering him one of my 12 in-suite guestrooms for the rest of his time here - no-one understands better than me how important it can be when traveling to enjoy the unaltered comfort of a home.

We can then bond over this shared intimacy and spice our malaria small talk with anecdotes about how only in the field people are so generous as to offer you a place at their table and a fully serviced room. Then, next time i'm in Geneva he can pretend he would love to have me stay, would his only guestroom not be full with his collection of african art ("i really need to find some time to nest"). That will suit me just fine actually, as to be honest, when in Geneva i am rather partial to staying at the dignified and conveniently located Mandarin Oriental du Rhone, and would never trade that for a mattress in some consultant's livingroom complete with creep access to the shared micro-sized family bathroom, always a very dingy affair, wall-to-wall carpeted and never with a shower curtain.

As you can probably imagine, malaria is big business in the Comoros and the well-afflicted people of these islands have more options than most to enjoy being the subjects of a diverse package of life-saving interventions. Not only do they have access to the whole traditional HRI-centered, cutting edge package (that would work better than it does, would the Comorians be just a bit more cooperative) but they have been also privileged enough to stir the interest of a Chinese research/ development outfit that has "sole sourced" WHOs support for an innovative project: given the remoteness of the island of Moheli, the whole population was put on compulsory arthemisinin prophylaxis and prevented from interaction with non-islanders for, like, three years. No-one knows exactly what the research showed (aside from the "success" declared by the implementers) but it was a too-rare example of old school public health of the isolate-put-on-drugs-and-see-what-happens variety.

Seeing an opportunity for innovation, the donor agency of the country south of Canada is trying to pull out a simple strategy: if it works get all credit, if it doesn't, blame the Chinese.

Motivated by such noble objectives, we are entering familiar HRI territory and in close cooperation with the TLA we are really looking forward to coordinating the efforts on the island using a mix of time-proven strategies for success while also ~~diminishing our competitors's share of the donor market~~ creating closer cooperation opportunities with partners in the sector.

Will keep you updated.

Inside Innovation - Bring it On!

2010-08-17T04:49:00.000-07:00

As expected, I landed in Moroni this morning to a dignified welcome organized by my loyal team who one by one expressed their gratitude for my safe return in verse (being an ex French colony, Comorians have learned to appreciate poetry along with quality bread), as part of a spontaneous ceremony organized at the VIP lounge, complete with A0 photographs of yours truly and banners reading “HRI – 100% commitment to saving lives, one workshop at a time”.

The way from the airport to my humble residence was lined out with children experiencing genuine joy, neatly organized along the roads in their little uniforms, waving in the general direction of my convoy what looked like green branches taken off the few trees that still survive on the island. Although my landcruiser was going rather fast (HRI flag to HF aerial) and the windows were tightly shut - better to prevent the savage heat creeping inside my airconditioned space, my driver politely assures me they were singing, in one voice, a song about HRI and our donors, apparently learned spontaneously in school.

It is always reassuring to see that one’s work makes a difference in the life of a child (not sure about you, but this stuff keeps me going) and I do take pride in being a man of the people. I waved a dignified salute through the steaming windows, before returning to my data-enabled thuraya to update my facebook account (“status: back in moroni - hot”).

I found my residence in good shape and I asked my “help” to prepare me a double espresso, but without burning it like last time – I take pride in doing my share of capacity building even outside the office – and sipping it slowly I sat back in my study, thinking about how I really would like to pay the “help” a bit higher than 50$/ month, but as a member of the expat community I could not possibly do that as that would unbalance the market with unimaginable consequences. That’s me right there – a man of the people and a long-term thinker of the big picture.

Speaking about thinking – I have been thinking about “innovation” a lot lately, as I noticed the word is all the rage these days. The challenge in our sector is how to “integrate innovation” in our language without changing much about the way things work. First step is to create the inter-agency “innovation committee” and invite members of partner organizations to participate, ticking both “inclusiveness” and “innovation” off the list of words no donor can resist. Making this a senior level committee will insure the right combination of in-disposition to change and generous sitting allowances – ideal when concerned with “burn rates” and the importance of attendance lists to show to donors as a sign of success.

Passing innovation is a world dominated by career professionals with many years in the business and certain ways of doing things is a pretty tall order but then donor’s don’t really want to see much rocking of the boat happening either – that would force them to change their ways, which always makes them uncomfortable – they want to see the word used a lot, and they want to hear the occasional 300-words story about it, that can be put in a neat textbox in a report.

And this is why they love HRI – we give them what they want, using bullet-proof, time-proven methods.

As we speak, Nathan the intern is putting the finishing touches on HRIs latest publication – a newsletter dedicated to innovation in our sector called “Inside HRI Innovation” - printed on glossy, high density paper and (money well spent) also distributed in PDF format (as another nod to innovation, we are going digital). The best part about this publication is that it is not a formal donor commitment but rather an innovative, pro-active activity, bearing proof of our dedication to embracing modern means of communication that no-one ever reads, aimed at impressing donors. In another cutting-edge step, we are using SMS to inform our readers about the publication of this newsletter, which is another way of saying that Nathan will text the donors off his pre-paid phone.

It does take a lot of creativity to sell innovation while resisting change, but we are known in the business for getting the job done and do like a challenge. Bring it on!

Of Tenants and Landlords

2010-08-14T19:49:00.000-07:00

Should you find yourself on a plane next to a grumpy person in chinos, tasseled shoes and polo shirt looking busy over spreadsheets on a laptop supported by a large letter sized folder, it is safe to assume that you are sitting next to a HRI consultant, in his “field” uniform. Except of course if the plane goes to Juba, in which case the chinos are replaced by cargo pants and the tasseled shoes by hiking boots, all rounded up with a brown, thin belt conferring the wearer a dignified air while keeping him prepared for the rough landcruiser ride from the airport to logali house and back).

This time of the year, donors issue requests for proposals just before heading out for holidays, ensuring a certain equilibrium: flights out are populated by donor representatives on their way to vacation, while flights in are filled with proposal-writing experts headed for their African destinations where they hope their organizations will score the next big award with no small contribution from them.

Being the executive director of a well respected humanitarian organization, I am little affected by this movement, in spite of the sizeable collective of HRI proposal writers that are transiting as we speak towards or from respective development destinations, some of them transporting letter-sized 3-hole folders and corresponding paper packs (you don’t mess with donor requirements). While that happens, I am flying around making deals on the side and ensuring that development money keeps flying towards HRI, where it belongs, and it does not get grabbed by some unrealistic organization loyal to the falacy that sound ideas get funded. Sure, if they have sound ideas and whatever we are ready to listen, but once wew "prime" the award (which we always do), the budgets get smaller (what with all those fees and expatrate postion absolutely necessary for the "coordination" of activities) and such unrealistic organizations will simply have to prove that they are cost-efficient enough to be worth it of any funding. At the end of it all, we will ensure they get thanked in the footnotes for their "invaluable contribution" to the success of the project and everybody should be happy.

That would also explain why I have been silent all these weeks, busy as I was covering three continents, and, in case you are wondering whether my endeavors were successful, let’s just say that I am really enjoying the complimentary champagne in this Heathrow airport BA Lounge, in spite of the early hour.

And not only have I secured significant growth for this most humanitarian of organizations, but I have also managed to check on certain personal investments of mine which as it happens, are doing well, thank you very much. One of them is a charming art-deco house with significant garden in Panama City, which I have acquired at no cost to me years ago, not far from Casco Antigu, a very dignified part of town. The house was my residence back in the day when I was enjoying a particularly hardship posting in Panama and I procured it by applying the old strategy of using the generous HRI housing allowance to purchase the house rather than paying rent. There are several ways to do that, depending on the availability of mortgage at different locations and some strategies involve the use of a straw-man landlord, but what they all have in common is that one is always well-advised to use the highest allowable rate for rent in the official contract while being posted there and ensure that HRI takes over the contract for the residence at one’s departure, at highest allowable rate and on base of very positive reviews the landlord received from the departing party. After all, any departing expatriate is forever replaced by other incoming expatriates and there is nothing quite as pleasant as consistent access to dignified housing while on a hardship posting, pool, lush tropical garden, servants and all.

I must confess I have acquired quite a bit of real estate over the years using these strategies (highly diversified geographically in case you worry about volatile real estate markets) and I am currently enjoying a certain level of income, to supplement my generous paycheck from HRI.

And so, reader, my mood is high in spite of the grim state of this Lounge (here's another sign that the world as we know it is going to the dogs - BA could learn a thing or two from their colleagues in Dubai) and it is further elevated by the fact that I am on my way back to Moroni, after a long, long absence. Two days from now, I will be finally reunited with my trusty team in Moroni (i carry quality duty free chocolates) and receive an executive director's welcome before returning to my routine of lobster lunch and a humble existence in my house on the beach, which HRI is currently renting for me at the highest allowable rate from a very trusted landlord.

How i Pulled a "Harry Kellar" in Vienna on behalf of Poor and Vulnerable people in Central Asia

2010-07-25T12:06:00.000-07:00

I am glad to say that the week in Vienna, at the mother of all junkets, was time well spent, mostly because I managed to facilitate a few “sole sources” with several high-profile donors and sorted out a few “strategic partnerships" (as reported recently), all over dignified fair at the Danube Hilton, the destination of choice for the discerning participant at AIDS2010.

Funding comfort in the world of HIV/ AIDS, reader, lives and dies on chance encounters, which is why I was on the list of invitees to all relevant “receptions” organized during the week, including those hosted by our ~~competitors~~ partners.

In one of the days I even took advantage of the fact that all “stakeholders” needed to approve our involvement in a complex project in Central Asia (where “complex” is an euphemism for “generously funded but in an area that HRI has no previous knowledge of or experience in and shouldn't really be involved with”) were around and I invited them all in for a strategic meeting, timed towards the end of a very hot day, in a non-air-conditioned venue, the ideal place to pull a “Harry Kellar”, also known as “The Ride”.

The Harry Kellar (named in honor of the man who first brought us misdirection) is a favorite of mine from the vast arsenal of HRI meeting techniques, so useful in the break-neck world of international aid and development that arguably HRI's enviable global reputation for deal-making and cooperation pretty much rests on our staff's ability to pull one at the right time.

Essentially, the "Harry Keller" is a technique designed to facilitate consensus on topics that would otherwise be controversial, by ensuring that the fundamentally finite energy of any meeting participant is wasted on irrelevant but time-consuming discussions, allowing little energy or time for the important topics, which are timed towards the end of the meeting, only better to be rushed in without a real discussion.

In the specific case I mentioned ("The Central Asia Coordination Project" - CACP), HRI has managed to obtain a “sole source” award from a very respectable donor (leveraging just the right mix of greed and insecurity on the side of the donor representative with a generous dose of unrealistic promises and reassurances of credit from our side), that secured HRI's place at the helm of coordinating regional HIV/AIDS activities in central asia over the coming 5 years, “on behalf of the respective governments”, to the envy of “implementation partners” on the ground who, short-sighted, started feeling threatened by our assertiveness in the region and expressed unfounded concerns that our high NICRA rates, overheads and commitment to working with armies of reasonably paid expatriats will further diminish the already shrinking amounts of donor funding available to fight the epidemic in that part of the world.

In short, a situation that risked back-firing as you must agree - it is not easy to coordinate stuff you don't really understand with people that don't really like you. A challenge to anybody else, but nothing unusual to us, an organizationm so well versed in the finer points of coordination.

Enter the non-air-conditioned venue, for a 2h meeting at the end of a hot day. The invitation went out and all “partners” showed up knowing well that not pitching would have given us an oportunity to complain to the donor that so-and-so organization is non-cooperative and not a team player, a fact that would surely affect their future funding from this particular donor in a negative fashion.

As they entered the room, all participants found a 48-pages document in front of them, aptly titled:

“5-year Action Plan for the Coordination of HIV/AIDS Interventions in Central Asia”

with the pixelized logos of all respective governments (downloaded off the net by Nathan the intern) as well as, more prominent, the logos of the donor and HRI. The meeting was called on behalf of the respective governments, all of them represented by HRI technical advisors, conveniently seconded to the respective ministries as part of other life-saving technical cooperation projects in implementation all around the region (that's what we here at HRI call "project integration").

Participants were told that we are pressed by time and this document has to be finalized and submitted for approval with all respective governments next week - failure to do so would geopaardize our funding, a situation that would have negative consequences to anybody. It was proposed that we all go through it paragraph by paragraph and suggest changes that will immediately be operated by Nathan the intern, set in front of a laptop connected to the over-head projector, all business.

The first 42 pages of the document were of course elaborate studies in the use of wankwords, with the occasional reference to details that may or may not be controversial to our esteemed participants (hint: they mostly are), always reliably quick to react to such nonsense. Pages 43-45 were the only ones HRI really cared about, as, in a nutshell, they pretty much allocated implementation responsibility to partners and “coordination” (and credit) to HR, along with the majority of resources.

On cue, at around 8.30pm, as we just found agreement on Acknowledgments and the Executive Summary, Nathan interrupted discussions with a quick “process check”, reminding participants that the document must be finalized today, and from there it all went by script – attention span decreased with the passing of time along with energy levels, and every time someone would attempt to raise a question related to fundamentals, a HRI technical advisor would start a debate about the grammatical merits of this or the other formulation, triggering intense exchanges among the learned participants that would further wear everyone's attention.

By 10pm, after an apparent spontaneous invitation to dinner (“let's finish this and we'll all go for a Schnitzel to celebrate”), Nathan the intern recorded in the minutes that the participants unanimously agreed on the plan, as modified during the session, and hands were shaken, promises were made to share minutes for approval and we all walked together into the sunset, fixing to neck the proverbial Schnitzel of celebration.

The Ride was successful. Nathan has learned something. The donor was relieved that everyone agreed to play ball. I am writing this from Istanbul Airport, en route to Almaty.

Everybody wins.

I love my job.

Report from the Field: microbicide gel is circumcision 2.0

2010-07-20T07:20:00.000-07:00

As i make my way from the dignified merc taxii to this or the other venue in the German city of Vienna, i am reminded again why i am paid so generously: it isn't easy being the most senior HRI representative at the mother of all junkets and I barely found some time today to sit down and share my thoughts with you, between shady deals brokered behind the scenes, smiley meetings in which I deny that the those deals exist and touching moments of joy at the sight of so many old friends i haven't seen it like at least two years (remember Mexico?).

The though that people actually attend the various sessions, posters and presentation is very amusing and in my busy schedule I do find time to stop for a sip of coffee and marvel at the earnestness of it all. Even by the generous standards of our business, if these junkets were merely meant to provide a forum for thousands of “abstracts”, they would be money unwell spent, and believe me i know money unwell spent when i see it.

Speaking about money, I did attend a “plenary” yesterday, to watch technology enthusiast and hobby philanthropist Bill “Let Me Bing That” Gates giving the world a piece of his mind and being charmingly introduced to the stage by a group of Wilhelm Tell enthusiast, seeing that we are in Germany, the home of elevated culture:

Being a technology enthusiast, Mr. Gates then proceeded to show a few movies himself, including one of a young man being circumcised in a Hermite kingdom that I just so happen to have visited recently:

Now, circumcision for hiv prevention was the big news at the mother of all junkets a few years ago (was it Toronto? Nathan wasn't around then so can't help this aging aidworker remember), very much like the microbicide is the big news this time around, but in specific HRI fashion, while everyone will pay attention to the noise around the microbicide story we'll grab a hold of the global circumcision donor "resources", with just the right mixture of “strategic partnerships”, “sole sources” and backhanders, most of them sealed and sorted in the coffee shops of Vienna, over fairly average fair (what was that cabbage thing today, for bing's sake?)

So, in the close future expect tons of cutting edge glossy HRI reports and newsletters on circumcision, as well as plenty meetings across all levels of "stakeholders", lifesaving workshops, seminars and capacity building initiatives – enough to keep us busy, along with a reasonable group of affiliates, from the public and private sectors. Also expect armies of reasonably paid experts to descend on unsuspecting small and medium-sized African countries, all in the name of HRIs vision to acquire any available funding for the sake of the people we serve.

What will happen to the microbicides? I hear you ask. Well do not worry, we have our people on the job, and experience tells us that the big microbicide money will start flowing in a year or two, just in time for us to close up our circumcision work, with a final, tasteful launch of a last report (about the failure of local partners to circumcise the people, i would risk to say) and to unleash our “experts” on the unsuspecting world of microbicides.

And with that i'm off to my next meeting in the coffee shop. Here's to many years of groundbreaking successes and really, Bill shouldn't worry about nothing, the whole thing is as always in best hands.

The Mother of All Junkets

2010-07-07T02:49:00.000-07:00

Barely have I had any time to recover from the grueling work done around trafficking at the world cup, and I am already preparing for the next epic trip, attending the mother of all life-saving activities – the biggest-ass bi-annual HIV/ AIDS mega-junket, organized this year around in the German city of Vienna, a cultural hot-spot for the dubious immigration policy enthusiast.

An ideal place in other words to organize this most comprehensive of life-saving meetings about a disease that mostly affects people with the wrong kind of passport, and I am thrilled by the prospect of catching up with my fellow Africa and development experts, some of whom I haven’t been in touch with snice “back in the day” in Mexico.

Unfortunately, La Negresse, who in her capacity of HRIs Director of Diversity (DoD) is among the most trusted of my executives (where “trusted” is another word for “eager to have around for corporate photo opportunities”) will not be part of my entourage for this European journey, although her name has been added in smaller script as co-author to several of HRIs submitted abstracts authored by me and put together by Nathan the intern out of recycled USAID “success stories” and some unverifiable stuff made up to fit the audience. Some of these abstracts were “accepted” which means that HRI staff will be busy delivering “presentations” and “posters” while the main author (me) will be busy “networking”.

I expect the week in Vienna to also allow me some time to reflect on my the weeks in which I have been using the little free time I had between ~~games~~ counter-trafficking activities in South Africa to visit HRI programs in neighboring countries, including the hermit kingdoms of Lesotho and Swaziland as well as "Zim", up there with the best of HRIs favorite locations due to its ideal comfort of living : hardship allowance ratio.

HRI’s work in the two hermit kingdoms alone would deserve their own “newsletter” (Nathan is already working on the “concept paper”) but suffice to say that due to their interesting combination of size, HIV prevalence, good infrastructure, as well as a relatively uniform devotion to the right sort of religion as far as some of our donors are concerned, these two countries are well on their way to becoming HRI favorites. The hype (which is another word for $$) around Male Circumcision also helps and, as a result of my recent visit, I can already tell you that HRI will play a very important role in “creating an enabling environment”, by implementing a package containing just the right mix of “Lima Bravo Sierras”, “Avalanches”, “Hulk Hogans” and “Diegos”, with a few “Trojans” and “Weasel Hold’ems” thrown in for good measure, all topped up with a glorified “High Five” few years down the ~~drain~~ line.

I expect the strategy for the hermit kingdoms will be sealed and sorted during “networking sessions” Vienna, but meanwhile let’s not forget that the battle against trafficking at the world cup is not yet completed. Apparently, HRI & affiliates vigilance has also paid off so far and countless cases of trafficking have been successfully avoided at this world cup as well. But we can’t drop our vigilance now, not before the last three games are over.

As I have been walking in and out of dignified hospitality suites, past strategically placed crowd-control vehicles (the sort designed after extensive R&D “in the old days”) at various world cup stadiums, I could not but be repeatedly impressed by the diligence of the organizers who have spared no effort in ensuring that every street peddler and hawker is dealt with swiftly, lest they compromise the purity of handing loads of money in exchange for sponsor-approved shit around the stadium, the ultimate experience of any global sporting event.

Ayoba to that, as they say, and see the ones of you with the right passport in Vienna!

Report From The Field - Dr. K's World Cup Diary

2010-06-19T07:48:00.000-07:00

Regular readers of this “newsletter” (all three of them) are aware that I am in South Africa at the moment, commuting between Johannesburg, Cape-Town and Durban attending life-saving meetings about trafficking that also happen to coincide with some of the more interesting games in the World Cup. I am also attending the odd meeting in Rastenberg (the proximity to Sun City, a nearby monument of tastefulness, is reassuring) but I do try to stay away from Blumfontein and Nelspruit, where driving around in a white landcruiser among the millions BMWs gracing the roads of South Africa makes one liable to be mistaken for a farmer, an indignity no man in my position could risk.

The fortunate timing allows me to make use of my WorldCup VIP tickets - graciously offered by the organizers as a token of their commitment to oppose trafficking, extracted with well designed guilt trips - and watch some of the games from obligatory "Hospitality Suites" where I not only find shelter from the nasty elements, but also afford a good view of the game, along with complementary snacks and beverages.

A man of my status has little time for frivolous games involving uneducated people running after a ball but I wouldn’t want to offend the organizers. Besides, someone needs to keep an eye out for the traffickers, who will surely make use of this event to ply their unspeakable trade.

Speaking of trade – at one of the games last week I was positively impressed by the swiftness with which officials have apprehended and ever so slightly slapped around a lowly criminal attempting to sell coffee during the game. Sponsors and organizers cannot afford to lose potential business by allowing the competition of small-time entrepreneurs spoiling a perfect opportunity to rip people off shamelessly.

As an enthusiast myself, I cannot but marvel at the beautiful act of creating a solid fallacy for the masses to believe that it is all about the game, in order to lock-in an average of 30,000 wallets in a confined area the size of a small city, 3 times a day, for 3-4 hours at a time and shove expensive shit down their throats. And I can only sympathize with the strategic geniuses behind this scheme who see their plans threatened by some dude selling coffee out of 5 liter flasks, not to mention the terrorist-like criminals trying to flog wire-and-beads souvenirs to the masses, thinning out the demand for sponsored-approved vuvuzelas.

Once arrived at the hospitality suite, I fortified myself with a few shots of free beverage (the sponsor-approved vintage of course) after which I took to the galleries, trying to get some street cred – nothing like rubbing shoulders with the commoners. The fine people manning the divide between dignified people like me and scum warned me that once stepping on the other side I will be lost unless I keep my lanyarded pass visible. Then they stepped aside and I was by myself among the masses:

(Hic Sunt Leones)

It was a viciously cold night (what? cold in "africa"?) and my hand-tailored silk shirt and beige Gucci 3-piece, specially tailored for Africa, was not doing me any justice. I looked around and I realized that the locals have developed truly innovative ways to protect themselves from the cold, such as applying a randomly colored substance to their skin, hugging stuffed animals and jumping around in crowded groups:

(The Local Solution: a right mix of face-paint, stuffed lions and traditional, elaborate "moves")

Like everything else in life, football thrives on competition and in this particular instance the competition was between people favouring yellow and green:

And some favouring blue, vastly outnumbered but not less loud:

Check out the odd-dude-out, supporting red, which can only be the color of the referee. My kind of guy:

(me, i support the referee)

With my street-cred reinforced by the short walk among the masses, I rushed back in the warmed hospitality suite, where, further fortified by the free beverage deal, I proceeded to watch the game. Here is the view from the suite:

(at least i didn't pay for the view)

Not being able to see much, plus the comparative quietness of the suite, the warmth and the right mix of full stomach, comfortable arm-chair and free-flowing beverages have induced a heavy sleep in this over-worked aid professional, causing me to awaken to the gentle poking of a hospitality hostess, pointing out an empty stadium and a pitch populated by people with rakes fixing the turf. I asked her what the score was, and it turns out the wrong team won, i just forgot which one that was.

Well, them and the referee of course - there is a lesson right there for everyone in our ~~business~~ sector.
One detail that needs mentioning is that unlike the masses outside, queing in the cold for the luxury of urination, I had readily access to a toilet facility right there in the suite. And that toilet, very much like similar facilities I have visited in other hospitality suites at this wold cup (as well as in some of the choicer hotels I have been accommodated in) had the extra touch of being fitted with speakers continuously playing that cheesy song with the flag, while silent LCD Screens incorporated in the walls continuously showed Shakira in her hybrid Mobutu-Tahiti-school-of-fashion outfit (everyone knows you cannot go wrong when combining zebra patterns with waguely Polynesian-looking dress when attempting to nail an "african" visual), doing her part in promoting the event.

Is that a coincidence? I think what happened is it was a competition between the two favourite songs and a wise peace-maker among the organizers proposed to show the more pleasing image on the screens (skin sells, stupid), while playing the other song as a soundtrack. everybody happy and my instincts immediately recognized the familiar Win-Win, and as we speak I am trying to track down the person who came up with this idea for a swift head-hunting.

HRI needs people like that to keep the edge.

The Sound of a Million Vuvuzelas: More Trafficking Work at The World Cup and A Journey Down Memory Lane, to Kinder Times And Places

2010-06-14T07:30:00.000-07:00

As mentioned earlier “trafficking” has been good to us this World Cup, which is why this post will be a short one, typed during a Trafficking Working Group, where I kill time between good matches “facilitating” discussions around our need as stakeholders to coordinate our “response”.

The meeting should finish just in time for me to attend the Italy-Paraguay game tonight, allowing of course enough leeway to make my way from the Radisson Blu in Sandton to the VIP section of the stadium, where I have a HRI sponsored ticket, as part of our campaign to fight trafficking during the world cup (as always when in South Africa, I will take the route less beaten, in this case sticking to the back-roads of the mock-European suburbs reassuringly surrounded by massive electrified walls, behind which discreet servants mend the lush tropical gardens around pools and tennis courts).

The more inexperienced of you may wonder how come my attending games out of the VIP section is related to fighting trafficking. well, it is our obligation as “counter-trafficking stakeholders” to approach the organizers of any large event with a well-designed guilt trips and that’s exactly what we have done both with FIFA as well as with the relevant South African authorities. They need to be aware of the dangers of Trafficking and they need to be seen as doing something about it – it’s just good business in the 21st century. And what better way to show commitment than to make tickets available to dignified representatives of important “partners”, such as yours truly.

While at games I will of course keep my eyes open for any sign of trafficking and will take the opportunity to snap a few pictures of the crowd, which Nathan the intern can then put in our project report and newsletter with a random, ophraesque capture:

(while the world celebrates the world cup, thousands of vulnerable women and children are exploited by internationally networked ruthless hooligans)

As I was sipping Savanna Dry during the Ghana-Serbia game yesterday, in the ear-blasting sound of millions of vuvuzelas, I had a moment of nostalgia for the early days of trafficking and my formative years in what in those days we called “The Balkans”. Like so many other ~~competitors~~ partners in the sector, HRI had a sizeable presence all over the Balkans and up until today continues to have a significant involvement in the region, with offices everywhere from Croatia to Macedonia and everything in-between, much of it funded by trafficking-related grants, but also by “Governance” as well as various European Commission mechanisms, all of them fitting HRI’s business model like a glove.

The transitions from UNPROFOR to IFOR to EUFOR with KFOR and 26 different other “FORS” in-between were all useful opportunities for hundreds of inexperienced HRI staff to become today’s experts in fields as diverse as refugee protection and public health. There were also unique circumstances for bonding and networking, that remain beneficial until today. My old mate Gianluca for example, used to be our official supplier of Italian toilet-paper, vastly superior to the Yugoslav one, shipped in 20foot containers with the diplomatic currier straight out of Rome, with vacuum sealed packages of Parma ham in-between. He remains a close collaborator for HRI and, in exchange for reasonable fees, often produces “counter-trafficking manuals” for our affiliates, based on his experience in “The Balkans” - the world’s trafficking capital.

His expertise was developed over many a “field research” in Pristina’s and Belgrade’s seedier strip-joints (further enriched by subsequent HRI assignements in SouthEast Asia, West Africa and Central America), as well as in several useful interaction with Montenegrin fake-cigarettes suppliers, a community often referred to in those days as “the only reliable people in the Balkans”. With the help of a certain HRI affiliate based out of Vienna (HRIs official R&R location for “the Balkans”), we have established the absolute and universal assumption that all organized crime is inter-linked, which helped not only with “transferrable skills” in experts such as Gianluca, but also with the fear factor when fundraising – insinuating to potential donors that not doing anything about trafficking is the same thing with essentially supporting the illegal arms trade is a very effective fundraising strategy, we found.

This association remains relevant today, which is why HRI continues to be the recipient of very generous trafficking funding in places from Afghanistan to Brazil, Iceland to South Africa.

The failures of all these efforts to make even a visible dent in the world of organized trafficking, should not discourage anybody - it is not a symptom that our approach is wrong, but merely a sign that the respective crime cartels are very cunning and have access to modern technology, which is why our associates need more money for life-saving workshops, “toolkits” and “awareness raising campaigns” – all time-proven strategies to “address” not only trafficking, but pretty much any other “scourge”, from HIV/ AIDS to poverty, child exploitation and environmental degradation.

Meanwhile, I am happy to hear that Holland has won the game against Denmark – tomorrow I do have a fundraising meeting with the EC Head of Delegation in South Africa, and he just happens to be Dutch, a detail that will probably make the meeting more pleasant. Along the same lines, I will root for Italy tonight – not only in honour of my friend Gianluca, but also because it has been a while since Paraguay has funded HRI to do anything.

And as we are talking about funding, i would like to encourage everyone to go here and buy a Talibannosaurus Rex poster - it is for a good cause, as 10% of all proceeds will go towards a worthy HRI cause (either overhead or admin fees, i am not decided yet).

"Working in Trafficking" at the World Cup

2010-06-08T05:44:00.000-07:00

Turns out the world cup starts friday. I didn’t know that, me, and the fact that my several trips to South Africa, for life-saving workshops and other meetings, coincide with some of the better games is just how it happens.

That’s right.

In small-talk sessions with fellow travelers i am planning to pull the above line often, for sport. I expect the usual business class crowd on the Joburg route to diversify over the next month, to include the grumpy guy who had to buy a very expensive ticket not to miss that business meeting and that other guy who forked out for business (half miles half cash) when there were no more places in couch as he didn’t want to miss that game to which his wife got him surprise tickets without bothering to book a flight.

The good news is that trafficking is back on the agenda and HRI is as ever the leading agency with an expertise developed over the last 12 years or so, in the “golden era of trafficking”, when hapless donors were scrambling over ben seen as funding very simplistic visions of the world of trafficking, as presented to them by HRI & affiliates, so they can please an Oprah educated constituency.

In Moldova, Cambodia, Ukraine, Indonesia, Panama, Costa Rica and elsewhere where a HRI expat may find it comfortable to settle for a while, trafficking has been combated with workshops and trainings, which also created a lucrative market for the counter-trafficking expert, a HRI specialty represented in particular by the dodgy ex-policemen with the 80s chauvinist jokes, the hysterical “case worker” providing technical input in “legal drafting processes” and the former DA, always a training expert in legal definitions inspired by the Arizona Counter Trafficking Act, particularly relevant in the Philippines and Vietnam.

Armies of HRI experts descended on every imaginable “shelter”, to make it more secure, more gender integrated, more child-friendly and more donor-compliant, all expensive processes that helped us better count “targets” and deliver successful projects.

Awareness campaigns were launched (best practices included “The Beaver and the Crocodile” edutainment strategy in Indonesia and the “I am empowered, I Know the Difference between Smuggling and Trafficking” t-shirt campaign in Guatemala), training curricula were developed, law-enforcement handbooks, press handbooks and hand-books for the military were printed, films were made and broadcasted, relevant fables were included in pre-school curricula. The link to migration was immediately explored which has been good to our refugee/ migration portfolios.

Additionally, to please our most eager donor during the “golden era”, HRI has pursued the useful assumption that all women in the sex trade are victims who need urgent saving, a matter in which our experts could provide cutting edge training to the police forces of relevant countries.

Often the bond between trainer and trainees would be sealed with a glorious night at the karaoke parlor (just indulging in a cultural experience) and the few cases when HRI consultants were involved in unspeakable acts with teenagers were always handled swiftly with the respective offender promptly transferred to another country where they would be tasked with presenting “lessons learned” and “best practices”. (If this sounds familiar, our methods in those days were guided by the church of course, a solid and strategically important HRI partner, also in matters of trafficking.

I assume you already saw the signature HRI Win-Win: HRI & affiliates get the cash and the kudos, government officials can continue getting backhanders from their dodgy business partners while showing the world their counter-trafficking credentials and the donors can get an Oprah tear, convertible in whatever political currency floats their boat.

Everybody happy.
Meanwhile women and children continue to be abused, which will ensure future work for all of us, so all should be ok. That no real trafficker was ever successfully convicted is another matter, which is easily explained away by the “lack of precise legal definitions defense”, a matter that must be addressed by a series of complex cross-border and regional activities conducted by a team of HRI experts. Among other things of course.

It may strike some as strange that countries with no legal system to speak of, no constitution and no courts would have a highly precise definition of "trafficking", inspired by the legal literature of Arizona, as part of a 600+ sections Counter-Trafficking Act, “operationalized” by a vast package of guidelines, by-laws and “SOPs” (ok I’ll tell you: Standard Operating Procedures”), but I say at least this “framework” has benefitted from the input of people with no legal background at all, who have ensured that no due process will be necessary when prosecuting a trafficker.

In other words, Trafficking is the new Terrorism, and I am taking back that thing about no trafficker having ever being convicted – it has happened that this opposition leaders or the other reactionary character have been found involved in trafficking, usually around election time, their prompt imprisonment always ensuring a better “tier ranking” a matter that leads to an increase in “trafficking” funding to HRI.

Did anyone say win-win? Thank you.

But that was the golden era. These days even Oprah has changed her business model and trafficking has been pushed ever so slightly towards the fringe.

Except every four years, during world cup or the Olympics. HRI & affiliates have already secured funding, got the story in every paper, launched campaigns and issued statements about expectations of significant increases in trafficking and exploitation during the world cup, all based of course on following precedents:

(whole thing here in pdf)

Part of us feels it is our duty to make some noise out of principle - after all, this is Africa and just because it didn’t really happen elsewhere doesn’t mean it won’t happen here. But also, there is another small matter – don’t know about you, but every cup is different and I for one want to make sure i can say: “I was there” (as well).

Bibi is a Twat! and Life-saving Global Fund work in Kinshasa

2010-06-01T03:23:00.000-07:00

I’ve been silent for a while, mostly putting up with the indignities of travelling around Africa, and, over the last two days, sitting silently in my room at the Inter in Kinshasa, watching Bibi being a twat, with French translation.

Bibi reminds me of many a former collaborator of HRI, men who always end up finding true love in the seedy underbelly of Manila, Phnom Penh or Kinshasa and whom you would run into on a Tuesday evening - sweaty, red-faced and slightly inebriated - comb-over a mess, always in too young a company, always a bit too proud of it. You look at them knowing they belong somewhere in a tin, preferably in solitary confinement and on strong medication, but given the landscape, you tolerate them as just a mild annoyance and yet another drunken bore before ordering another round.

That’s how it is with Bibi as well – we all know he belongs somewhere else, perhaps donning one of those classy shirts with very long sleeves (that can be tied helpfully around his back), but because of the landscape we dismiss his madness as an unfortunate transgression and move on with our lives.

This is not the first case a police-state shoots civilians and I am afraid it will not be the last either. My personal element of discomfort stems from the fact that usually when that happens people of my status congregate somewhere where they serve dodgy beer under neon “butcher’s lights” and bond with colleagues and donors representatives while lamenting the shocking strategies of respective rouge state while plotting possible “capacity building” programs for the future.

This time it’s different. HRI doesn’t even have an office in Israel. Perhaps that’s what those people need – extensive exposure to HRI “capacity building” activities to the point they get numbed, the danger element gets shaven off and they will be satisfied with just being mere incompetent, corrupt hypocrites – a type our lot knows how to “partner” with.

Anyway, you guessed it: I’m in Kinshasa because it is Global Fund season. For those who don’t know, the Global Fund is the donor community’s version of “multilateral aid”, and we are already talking round 10, no less (time passes, eh?). HRI has of course been the principal recipient for Global Fund money in D.R. Congo in three previous rounds and we have managed to spend almost 19% of the money already allocated. Naturally we decided to go for round 10 as well, arguing that the slow spending of existing funds is an obvious indication of “lack of absorption capacity” of partners, a situation that requires supplemental funds to address.

The CCM (Country Coordinating Mechanism, for the uninitiated) as well as other stakeholders in the country agree on this strategy so we have a textbook case of the development community and the government speaking in one voice. Donors love that stuff, so our chances to get at least part of what we ask for are pretty high. Knowing that partial funding is an option, we will of course massively inflate our initial submitted budget so everyone will be happy.

I was pleased to discover that I remain well known at the Sunday buffet at the Intercontinental (Le Grand these days is not what it used to be by the way), as well as at other respectable establishments in town and I remain on very cordial terms with many of the 86 or so Ministers in the Government, some of whom I visited already as part of my preparatory work for Round 10 GF, with a long list of visits scheduled for the remainder of the week.

One of my favourite is the Minister of Human Rights, an absolutely crucial partner on any application for funding involving partnerships with the Government and a man of high moral standing with the staff at L’Orangerie and Chez Nicola on account of the fact that he always tips generously when he is invited for lunch, which is every time he has a meeting with an NGO.

Yesterday, before inviting him for lunch I met him at his office where I had the pleasure to admire the tastefulness of his desk, complete with the obligatory leopard-skin accessories, so stylishly consecrated by the Mobutu school of interior design (the reader may remember I am myself a man who appreciates discrete tastefulness).

Here is a picture of his desk, taken on the sly on my “iphon”:

And here is my friend the minister himself, happy to see me again and filling me in on the “progress” of his Ministry since back in the day when he was a promising student of capacity building literature, before his HRI backed promotion :

You may notice, to his honorable's left hand, on the right side of the photo a shelf containing files on important matters of Human Rights in the country. While the minister excused himself to do his hair before our departure, I dared a step closer and put my “Iphon” to use.

And here are some useful details:

(before Nathan the inter's birth)

(after Nathan the intern's birth)

Amazingly efficient, the Minister seems to be still working on files from the 70s and the 80s (each decade has its own shelf, in impeccable ascending order), which is very reassuring. I like a well organized fellow and I have already proposed to the CCM that he will be elected as the co-chair.

But what of Bibi the twat? To do my part I already decided to refuse the service of any bodyguard armed with Israeli weapons (notoriously unreliable as well, “my driver” tells me) and perhaps, in the future I will laugh a bit less when treated to Israeli jokes by the next drunken bore at the Savannana or 3615.

How to stay on top by speaking the right language in the 21st century: "Multilateral Aid" & "Budget Support"

2010-05-25T08:12:00.000-07:00

Progress in our sector, as in life, comes from “creating an enabling environment” for ideas to interract and cross-fertilize, a thing also known as “collective intelligence”, which, according to Nathan, means that good stuff always comes out of interaction and collaboration between great minds.

This is a good thing for sure, that also explains why it is so crucially important for us experts to spend much of our precious time in meetings and workshops. We do it for the sake of progress and evolution – the future of our sector depends on it.

But the best thing about our business must be the high number of experts ready to roll their sleeves and get the theoretical game sorted for all of us. Always at the cutting edge, HRI remains fully commitment to “shifting paradigms” in order to increase the eloquence of proposals we submit to donors. We’re privileged that way, and I’ve noticed since we adopted the latest “development discourse” it has become even easier to mobilize resources by closing deals behind the scenes with donors or bullying less well connected partners into HRI partnerships: it feels good to know that for example when major donors "sole-source" a massive grant to us over impeccable lobbying, they actually compliment us on adopting the latest ideas flogged by development punters.

It’s also pretty much why HRI bothers to have a twitter account, by the way, or a blog – Nathan the intern sometimes complains about having to write regular posts and 140 character long messages to complete strangers formulated in line with HRIs strict corporate style guidelines, but how else can we take the pulse off the punters from all the way here in Comoros, a place on another planet?

It has also been suggested to us that we create a facebook profile – to better market ourselves to the young and hip, to tomorrow’s donor bureaucrats. I’d be up for that, just worry that we couldn’t handle seeing that we’d have less friends than certain ~~competitors~~ partners – the pressure, the pressure.

Every so often, Nathan the intern is preparing a little brief for me, containing a list of subjects that are currently discussed and found to be in favour with the most influential minds in the sector and we immediately incorporate them in our “discourse” to better please both donors and potential critics. That fact alone will certainly convince even the most bitter of our critics that we are the flexible, agile organization that this century of ours needs.

For example, we have already put "Multilateral Aid" under our belt. Several of our affiliates are international governmental organization and as a “best practice” i could mention HRI’s own Women and Tradition Forum (WTF), based on a protocol 42 important countries have signed after a high level “technical meeting” we organized at the Imperial Botanical Beach Hotel in Entebbe, timed shortly after the place was graced by the Clintons, back in the day.

The meeting has produced what has been since known as "The Entebbe Declaration" – strong commitments on empowering women, as long as that does not interfere with cultural and traditional norms in the respective countries.

At the meeting, government representatives agreed to pay an annual fee as a membership to HRIs network. The money would formally come out of the respective ministry’s budget, but given that the all countries in question “lack resources” in the meantime we simply use HRI donor funds in the respective countries to contribute for this fee, just to “bridge the gap” of course. We file the whole thing under “system strengthening” and it is indeed another HRI win-win: dodgy governments get to beef up their international credentials without actually committing to anything, and HRI gets to position itself as a facilitator of international collaboration – a position very much in favour with donors. As a bonus, we sell the whole thing as “multilateral aid” and please the academics as well.

Also, we have already adopted “Budget support”, a thing punters started promoting as the aid of the 21 century. In plain English, "budget support" means that donor money goes straight to the government budget – a perfect position for HRI in most countries we are working in and here is how it works:

We start with an informal meeting with donor’s representative where we bond over anecdotes about the unreliability and ineffectiveness of the respective government;
We then address the reality that money put into the government budget cannot be traced and, given the fact that it is distributed by percentage by an paranoid authoritative executive branch, we wonder what can be done to avoid taxpayer dollars to go into say the defense budget of given country;
Helpfully, at this point HRI makes the inspired recommendation to give the money directly to the Ministry of Agriculture budget, point at which a HRI local staff (former government employee, still a ghost employee at the ministry, due to a human concern for his pension) brought along for this single purpose volunteers the insight that the Ministry of Agriculture does not have a bank account and its centrally allocated budget gets distributed in random batches with an average of six years delay;
Then, the signature HRI win-win move: why doesn’t HRI as a strategic government partner not handle these funds on behalf of the government (paying salaries, procuring stuff etc), while also placing a few advisors in this and the other commission to ensure the right decisions are taken?
Before long, MoUs get signed, partnership meetings get called, ministry offices get refurbished, capacity gets built, systems get strengthened.

Yes, reader - like you HRI & affiliates are looking forward to another century of effective, life-saving, empowering, high impact aid.

You're welcome.

Brand Building: HRI Logo and Location x 3

2010-05-21T08:49:00.000-07:00

Today's customary Friday Bacon and Booze combo has blown fresh courage into Nathan the intern, who, slightly inebriated, has just pointed out to me that HRI has not done a good job of “building a brand” and that our logo is virtually unknown outside the vast circles of life-saving workshopaholics.

All those leadership and management trainings have really changed me to the better and I appreciate an intern attempting to give unsolicited advice, just because they took Marketing in College. Theoretically at least, it could be that years and years of working for HRI has biased me just a bit and perhaps there is something one can learn from a humble intern's "fresh" perspective (fresh perspective of course being an euphemism for "green", and by that i don't mean the environmental type).

After all, working together in the hardships of "Africa" has led to a certain bond between the two of us and perhaps Nathan will have a chance to get a 1-year “special contract” in six-seven years or so and become one of us.

Faking passive-aggressiveness I first tnaked him and immediately told him he needs to learn to keep his mouth shut as well, while he proves himself by writing reports, taking minutes, making newsletters and in general engages in other character-building activities that will help him cut his teeth and learn the ropes. Nothing kills a promising career in this business than speaking to your supervisors un-asked and/ or attempting to be smarter than them.

Meanwhile, in the unlikely event that there may be some truth to Nathan’s opinion, I thought I use the opportunity and share with all of you the well-known, iconic HRI logo again, just in case you need to put it in document-headers, billboards, t-shirts, landcruiser doors and what have you and somehow have misplaced the correct file:

Also, while we speak of brand-building. Some new-comers into the sector have recently emailed me with questions about why someone like me, the executive director of a large international organization no less, chooses to set up in a backwaterish place like the Comoros.

I will provide the simple explanation, apologizing to the more clued-up of our readers for having to state the obvious: please bear with me, for the sake of “brand-building”.

The answer, of course is: Location, Location, Location.

The world has changed you see, and HRI being the cutting-edge organization that it has always been, has immediately acted on these changes under my visionary leadership. Back in the day the executive director used to be based in Geneva or in Washington DC or in some other such place. But in those days it was all about saving the world and life was much simpler. Concepts like "Local Ownership" and "Local Knowledge" were virtually unknown and the donors were happily funding the same sort of stuff again and again.

These days, some people tend to frown upon US/ EU based organizations and besides, having to choose between being based in Europe or in the US also forces one to choose between donors, as US donors tend to fund US-type organizations and EC tends to fund EU-type organizations. And we’re not even talking AUSAid, NZAid or private fundations.

Enter HRI. Having our executive director based in Moroni makes us eligible to funding from a comprehensive list of donors to include everyone that matters, really. They go crazy over being able to fund “locally based organizations” these days and it is our pleasure to indulge them.

Naturally we maintain well-staffed “Administrative Centers” in Washington, DC, Geneva, Brussels, Melbourne and Beijing, to name a few, in addition to having a direct, affiliated or francised presences in virtually every country out there. Sure, these arrangements tend to keep admin, travel and communications costs pretty high, but that also conveniently explains our higher-than-average overhead fees.

Besides, having a well organized “domestic support” team who know how to treat a man of my status has sadly become unfashionable in large parts of the world, just like being driven around up and down the street in a bulletproof Landcruiser, all while acquiring the “field cred” so very useful in our ~~business~~ sector.

A Glimpse Into the Awesome World of Meetings

2010-05-18T09:26:00.000-07:00

It may have occurred to some of you that much of what we do in this ~~business~~ sector has to do with meetings. We are all fully committed to coordination, cooperation, sharing of information, learning lessons, creating enabling environments and that the only way all these noble ideas can be achieved is through the marvelous realm of life-saving meetings.

With the passing of time, HRI & affiliates have developed a repository and specialized jargon to differentiate among various types of meetings, but also to build the necessary skills and core competencies in our staff to handle this awesome diversity (you want to send the right skills to the right meeting).

The endless diversity and richness in the world of meetings can hardly be captured in a simple list and any attempt will remain nothing but a humble “work in progress”, continuously evolving with the development of our ~~business~~ sector (there’s a pun there waiting to happen).

Regardless, I am happy to share with you the most updated version in the hope that it will give at least a glimpse in the marvelous world of meetings.

The “LBS”, or the “Lima Bravo Sierra” (short for Look Busy And Stall) - a favourite here, organized for the purpose of avoiding doing something while looking busy doing it. Self explanatory, no?

The “Skopje Sling” – HRI convinces the government to call a meeting so agenda items look like government proposals. Took its name from the golden days of new autonomous states.

The “Dry Cleaner” – useful when a HRI reasonably paid consultant needs to legitimize a copy/paste job from another country (policy, strategy, action plan, roadmap). Example of use: "We just got a grant to develop public health policies in Sri Lanka, call Ed and have him pull a Dry Cleaner on that job he’s done for us in the Solomons".

The “Hulk Hogan” (the name is a complicated derivate from Steering Committee, as in Steering as in Handlebar as in Hulk being like Mr. Handlebar Mustache). When you pull a "Hulk Hogan" you share very complicated matrixes and work plans written by reasonably paid consultants in impenetrable wank-lish to a steering committee, on the assumption that no-one will ever be able to read them and then, as you improvise during implementation you repeatedly make reference to the workplan/ matrix/ strategy. No-one will actually check.

The “SHRUE” (as in Shift Responsibility to Uncertain Entity) – organized when decisions need to be taken that should not be traced back to HRI, or any other specific player for that matter. Difficult one to pull without preliminary “groundwork” and a way to spend donor money discretely. Should be timed to coincide with mealtimes. Use: “This is a pretty shitty plan but money needs to be spent; Nathan, pull a SHRUE on it please”)

The “Maradona”, also know affectionately as "The Diego" – a meeting is called after a miserable and obvious failure, with the objective to “identify challenges” and “lessons learned”, as a way to avoid admitting responsibility. Official documentation in a “Maradona” is always formulated in passive voice (“challenges have been faced”, “there was a gap in communication”, “capacity to absorb has been low” etc.) and conclusions involve recommendations that need further funding to address. Named in honor of the legendary Diego who managed to win the mother of all games by braking the most important rule and not only did he get away with it, but he made more money after that.

The “Trojan” – attending a meeting/ becoming members in a task force for the sole purpose of ~~sabotaging a competitor~~ providing constructive criticism to a partner, that may result in changes in strategy. A good way to pull a Trojan is to exploit the instincts of any collective body to favour unanimity and avoid conflict. For example, a competitor partner presents a distribution strategy for NFIs (non-food items, for the uninitiated) to an emergency planning committee. HRI would pick on a detail and “express concerns”, for example by saying that members of so and so obscure group in so and so community receiving those NFI have a cultural suspicion of the color blue (which they believe brings bad luck). Unfortunately that tarpaulin provided by the ~~competitor~~ partner is blue therefore we cannot support that distribution strategy. The rest will be done by the ensuing dynamic and the whole thing may evolve in either a "Lima Bravo Sierra" (above) or and “Avalanche” (below).

The “Avalanche” – possibly a sub-genre of the “Lima Bravo Sierra”, using as main stalling technique the “follow up meeting” which will require an action group that needs to be divided in topical working groups that report back to a task force and so on ad nauseam.

The “High Five” – a meeting organized for the sole purpose of patting each other’s backs. Very wide spread, requires no further explanation.

The “Weasel Hold’em” – call a meeting to “collect feedback” on an item that has already been decided as a way to create the illusion of ownership.

Why one Single HRI Project is Worth 1million Bad Ideas

2010-05-14T01:48:00.000-07:00

While experts are busy dragging the corpse of 1millionshirts behind their technicals on the streets of twitterdishu under the watchful eyes of punters including this or the other glossy magazine, HRI has silently closed a few behind-the stage deals with donors and is comfortably on the way to “burn” upwards of 68 millions world-wide without having to put up with any significant scrutiny, except the occasional passive aggressiveness from ~~competitors~~ partners when we sit together in life-saving coordination meetings.

Many of these funds have been “sole-sourced” to us by donors who trust us to get the job done, while others were deservedly won in open competitions where the procurement criteria are designed to fit HRI like a glove, in ways that regular readers of this blaag, as well as veterans of the sector understand very well.

The lynching of impressionable teenagers with bad ideas about aid is to the world of aid criticism what the jailing and public shaming of a village headmaster who accepted a chicken from the parents of a pupil would be to the world of anti-corruption, in a country where the province governor drives around in a S600 merc, regularly flown to the big town for service in the belly of an Antonov AN-12 operated by a Logistics Cluster contractor.

Speaking about logistics clusters, yesterday I drove to a nearby compound in Moroni, to attend the regular Heads of Agency Country Team Meeting, scheduled every Thursday at 9am. Unfortunately I arrived just a bit late and the whole compound yard was already full with white landcruisers and hiluxes, some of them with imposing agency flags appended to their HF aerials, and my driver had to drop me quite a distance away from the entrance – a maneuvre I usually disapprove of as the short walk threatens to affect my dignified standing with the local populace.

It was my own fault for being late however, so I proceeded walking and entered my man-of-the-people-mode, giving dignified nods and grimacing grins to the group of drivers congregated around the tea-lady's improvised stall. Right here, I thought, is the hard evidence of our important impact – without us, the tea lady could not make the good business that she makes, probably feeding numerous children with the profits. A success story right there, as well as a charming little anecdote I can tell as cocktail chit-chat during the next life-saving function.

Inside, the senior aid/development community, were getting ready for the meeting with instant coffee and biscuits, chatting leisurely about malaria, famine, environment and condoms while they were waiting for the chairman of the meeting, always fashionably late (she has a reserved parking space outside so there is no incentive to be there in time). As i entered, I immediately sensed the usual mix of passive aggressiveness and need to flatter that comes with my respectable position and I made a mental note to try and sugarcoat my mentioning of the 9 million that HRI has been recently awarded for “peace consolidation” in the Comoros.

That will happen only during the AOB section however, so i have plenty time to "feel" the crowd. Meanwhile main items on the agenda include: coordination of office opening hours, a proposal to increase the security phase for Moroni, based on a worrying incident of pick-pocketing in the local market (it is not about the increased danger pay, it is only that as head of agencies we worry for the safety of our staff) and, finally, the piloting of a new matrix expected to increase coordination between agencies by combining logical frameworks with available budgets. On behalf of HRI, Nathan the intern has been committed to take the lead with this process and he will “follow up” with each agency focal point to finalize the matrix – the deadline is end of 2nd quarter 2011, a time when all respective info will be of great value to development history buffs.

And so, reader, another busy week has passed, in which we have done all we could to make the world a better, more peaceful place.

Today, being a day off i will spend smoking Hookah with the minister of planning and coordination, who has kindly offered to send his driver to pick me up in his private Lexus. He’s an important partner for HRI and, indeed the development community in Comoros and I will make sure we bond over exchanging anecdotes and having some laughs about bad aid ideas, a subject sure to keep a conversation going for hours, even here in the Comoros.

Converting Credit into Development - What's it all about?

2010-05-11T04:11:00.000-07:00

Those in the ~~business~~ sector who have recently joined the ranks of the cynics can be forgiven for thinking that it is all about the money. In fact they would be very wrong and that’s why the saying goes about this profession being filled to the brim with unrealistic motherfu*ers.

While money makes the world go round - and don’t get me wrong, proud HRI affiliates do like to dance to the tune of sizeable chunks of them ka-chinging in our bank accounts - fact is money does not come directly out of anybody’s pocket, which brings us closer than you’d think to the proverbial insurance salesman.

what is it all about then?

Well, it’s about credit. I mentioned elsewhere how important credit is in “M&E”, but that’s just a small part of it and this credit i'm talking about is different. Think about HRIs many partnerships - the trouble to administer all that money on behalf of various inferiorly capacitated local partners, the hassle we are putting up with when we play middlemen between the donor and so many unreasonable local organizations, and what do we get for it? Sure the 40% overhead fee is welcome, but the thing that keeps me going, in spite of all the adversity, is clicking on HRIs webpage and seeing how many lives we touch, what a difference we make, all over the world.

A good example is a recent project in Laos where a local organization (LO) has been providing sub-standard orthopedic surgery to children since 1999. They were struggling with resources, coordination and “demand” until HRI, using our cutting edge fundraising techniques, have “mobilized resources” to support this and other similar LOs in and around Ventianne. We have organized a few workshops to ensure that all relevant LOs get to meet each other and coordinate their work. We have identified medical students in the US who came for several 3 weeks cycles, just enough to change all procedures, point out the unsuitability of available instruments and, with sustainability in mind, training surgeons in modern orthopedic techniques, still fresh in their minds after recent anatomy classes. Thinking out of the box, they offered a road-map that would require “upgrading” supply-chains and “increasing demand”. Each of them required a driver during their time there, which also justified purchasing a few vehicles and make some strategic hires to ensure sound administration of assets etc.

Shortly, assessments were completed, new instruments were procured, new techniques were “piloted”, trainings were developed, programmes were managed, consultants were consulting, capacities were built, enabling environments were created.

The number of people receiving surgery didn’t really increase, but as one consultant pointed out that is a matter of “demand” so a communication campaign was hastily put together – it is ongoing as I am writing and based on focus-groups and pre-tests we are optimistic that demand of services wil soar. The donors particularly liked the campaign because due credit was given in the creative execution, the right logos were there and the messaging also included a reference to the importance of sexual abstinence, a relevant issue in what are traditionally promiscuous, karaoke-loving communities.

To make the story short I am personally filled with pride to go to the HRI website and read about how “HRI is saving limbs and improving lives in Laos” and i am actually looking forward to a few trips to Vientianne to see the program myself - as someone who was based there "back in the day" i maintain a soft spot for Laos, in spite of recent developments in which the place has lost much of its sleepy charm. But really, for me knowing that I can have a small contribution to improving people’s live, making sure that people know we are making a difference, that's what really matters. It's good to see that good work like this is always acknowledged by current and other donors and I find that with every new program our track record improves, which means our eligibility for further funding improves as well.

That's what it's all about - converting credit into development. Make sure you are seen doing a good deed and money will flow, lives will keep improving.

It's The Small Things, Arizona

2010-05-09T08:37:00.000-07:00

In this business, like in life, it’s the small things that matter. Busy day-in day-out with meetings, workshops and other life-saving activities we tend to forget about the smaller things in life, the ones that give its texture, its poetry. Things like bacon, red wine and superior cheese, all of them smuggled regularly into Moroni by myself and other respectable HRI collaborator.

As some of you may know, the Comoros are what you would call a “dry country” and things like bacon are referred to by the local populace as “haram”, which is a French word (Comoros were French colonies you see) and as far as I can tell means something like “bad for your cholesterol”. For unclear reasons, Friday is the day off here and on this day Comorians like to congregate around a tall building with speakers where they play some sort of French talk-music that presumably gives them trances, so important to any form of "ethnic" worship. Nathan the intern is also a hobby anthropologist and he is explaining these things to me. he is also in the process of finalizing a short documentary about the mystical habits of Africans, which he plans to "premiere" together with his photo exhibition upon his return home.

Last Friday the weather was spectacular and I had a few people over for lunch – Nathan, forever home-sick, has made us pancakes with bacon and eggs, with Malagasy honey instead of syrup, all washed down with two choices of wine: white or red. We’re not talking any decent terroir here of course, just the boxed fare one can procure in “Joburg” airport, my personal choice to transit planes on the way here. To fit more, I just remove the carton and stuff the bladder in my “Vesachi” carry-on and there you have it.

As we are enjoying the bacon and wine lunch at my humble residence on the beach, with mysterious French talk-music sneaking in from the over the electrified fence mingling with the sounds of the waves, all was fine indeed on this "island of contrasts”.

An observing pastafarianist, I find it hard to comprehend strict dietary restrictions beyond the obvious ones (no parmesan on sea-food pasta) - which is another small but significant sign that my religion is the superiour one. However, I would say that smuggling in bacon and wine and consuming it in ear-distance of a place of worship in a country that forbids both, must be a minor and understandable transgression (after saving all those lives in particular, with our work).

Not unlike say a group of immodestly clad gay Mexicans consuming a generous choice of recreational substances around the corner from the whatsitcalled megachurch in Tampa, Arizona on an early summer Sunday morning. As a matter of fact, today is probably a fine Sunday morning in Tampa, Arizona, early summer, and I have no doubt that such an innocent scene is not uncommon back there.

Here's to that - and, for those with no map at hand, Tampa, Arizona is somewhere south of Canada (not quite, but in the ballpark).

Shifting the Aid/ Development Paradigm - HRI Life saving Congress in Monrovia

2010-05-04T02:13:00.000-07:00

With the corpse of 1millionshirts still cooling off on the battlefield, where the strategy to “bring it on like a man” apparently did not work out to well for them, the ashes are slowly settling over another epic battle in the world of online “aid & development”, until the next sucker touches another nerve and we can all awaken again and lynch some teenager trying to impress chicks with a cheesy sounding idea on his facebook, the sort that Angelina would approve of (fact: chicks dig givers).

Speaking of which, am i the only one who, during the hottest moments of this “debate” was wondering: What would Angelina have done? Which side would they have Bono taken?

Regardless, it’s all over now and it is time for all of us to get back to our life-saving work. For me that means preparing my keynote speech at the upcoming African Aid Workers Congress, to take place in Monrovia later this month, where I have been invited on the panel along with other reputable African aid experts from Atlanta, Georgia, Washington, DC and one bloke from Geneva, name to be confirmed.

Liberia is an excellent place for aid meetings, rivaled in west Africa only by neighboring Sierra Leone as a "country of contrasts" that has gone a long way from civil war and destruction to being a stable democracy where one can have a well organized extracurricular topic on any development event agenda that would include friendly matches between amputee football teams - the sort of stuff that replaces the usual “cultural show” with a mix of actually going to the beach, a bit of feel-good factor, an opportunity for grave reminiscing and a feeling that one witnesses something better, in a very "african" landscape that conveniently confirms one's expectation of palm trees and chaotic driving. A very good (photo) opportunity as well for future smugness, constructive or not, and many a tale about suffering told in the future, always with the same changes in tone of one’s voice.

During the congress itself, I am looking forward to fascinating discussions about what differentiates “aid” from “development” – solving this thorny issue once and for all, by means of a list of action points developed by subcommittees, will greatly help the HRI coalition of affiliates on the ground make another significant step towards becoming a regional leader in achieving MDG no. 8 – “develop a global partnership for development”.

Further life-saving topics of discussions will doubtlessly include construing relevant standards on the difference between very vulnerable people and the merely vulnerable (a crucial debate in which, as some of you may remember, I have previously been involved during another life-saving activity). Perhaps discussions in the subcommittees will even address the complex issue of how to interpret the definition of “extreme poverty” as reflected by the baseline 2004 Millennium Development Goals Report (MDGR) for Liberia and apply it to today’s realities (also a good opportunity for mentioning blood diamonds and their “disempowering effects in the vicious circle of poverty”).

Nathan the intern will come along as the organizers can use some help with logistics – he will even get to practice his public speaking as he will address the plenary regularly with updates on tea breaks and “process checks”. In expectation of this trip he has just used our regular diplomatic pouch in Moroni to ship in three or four new lenses for his DSLR from back home. Indeed, Nathan the intern is a photography enthusiast, already planning a exposition on “Africa” upon his return in his local coffee shop. Meanwhile he also gets to practice his photo & layout skills with finalizing the congress report – another small favour that we’ll do on behalf of the coalition, for a very modest fee.

You may think it is unusual that HRI would invest in letting an intern attend such a conference, but who knows I say, perhaps with more exposure like this Nathan the intern will become the African Aid expert of the future.

Making 1millionshirts a Success in Ten Easy Steps

2010-04-30T00:25:00.000-07:00

The last few days were quite emotional as the “twitterverse” came alive with the voices of many offering an opinion on the serious matter of some dude from US of A wanting to send a million t-shirts to “Africa”. Some of the noise, produced in a wide spectrum spanning from “constructive smugness” to aggravated snark, reached even the sleepy metropolis of Moroni where I have recently returned after a culturally significant and high impact trip to “Zim”.

Regardeless, as I take in the many angles of this story, along with a humble breakfast prepared by my trusty “domestic help”, I thought I should also throw in some unsolicited advice for the nice people who came up with this idea, in the hope that the vast experience HRI has in matters of aid may perhaps benefit this or other such innovative ideas in the future.

Before going live with the next big idea, you are well advised to get in touch with a HRI affiliate "on the ground" and arrange for a "needs assessment". All it takes is a reasonably paid consultant to go down to “Africa” and see what’s going on, take some pictures, write a report.
After that you want to call together all “stakeholders” and discuss the report. The trick here is to pull the old “recommendations monte” and by the end of the event it should be obvious that the recommendations were made by a “committee” (helpful language: so and so working group, on the base of the obvious gaps resulting from the assessment reports recommends mobilizing resources for the identification of 1 million t-shirts to be distributed by HRI affiliate in the logistica cluster along with other NFIs). That simple detail is very helpful in managing eventual PR issues as you upgrade to the position of someone just implementing what the committee has decided.
You have to ensure the government, as a main stakeholder, participates in this workshop (think lunch), after which you will visit the Director/ PS/ Minister and obtain an official letter in which the government requests so and so many t-shirts, urgently; if you are smart, you could even pull out a "t-shirt state of emergency" situation, which will qualify you for CERF funding.
Once the recommendations have been “formulated” and “approved” by the stakeholders, you approach donors and source some funds, not forgetting to include crucial overheads and costs of marketing and distribution;
It gets a bit tricky once you find the t-shirts, as every intern knows t-shirts can only be distributed if the logos of all “stakeholders” are appended very visibly. This minor inconvenience can be resolved by contracting (following due procurement procedures) a company that can either silkscreen or embroil the respective logos on the t-shirts, along with a well designed and creative slogan (my back used to be bare, now it is covered, thank you HRI).
To increase "perception of value" you could also contract a company that can shrink wrap the t-shirts after they have been embroided. This phase, along with the business of the warehousing and distribution strategy will come in handy in your final report where you claim success under “supporting income generating activities”;
Your next problem is targeting. You need to avoid that t-shirts get distributed randomly or that somebody will god forbid grab more than their share and sell them, falling in the sad trap of exploiting his brethren. This can be addressed by developing a number of activities, to include “edutainment”, “exercises in community inclusion and participation” and of course life-saving workshops. All participants will receive one t-shirt, with the better ones (polos) distributed as prizes during games.
If there are too many t-shirts and you "face challanges" in distributing all in the given timeframe, what you do is you first put them in your central warehouse (upgraded to comply with WHO standards for storing t-shirts) in the capital, after which you take them out in batches that you then deposit in regional warehouses. You do your counts on the bin-cards in the main warehouse only and once that is empty, job done.
All you need to do now is finalize your first draft of the report and present it to the same stakeholders for approval – ensure you take many pictures under HRI banners, which will then be pasted in the final version of the report that will subsequently be DHLed to all participants.
You will print more reports than necessary, and deposit them in the now empty central warehouse. You can then hand them out to any person you run into that wears one of your, easily recognizable, shirts.

And this is how, friends, wisdom and experience can make the difference between a PR disaster and a “best practice”.

Roughing it in Zim: cholera, cocktails and rock'n'roll

2010-04-28T14:24:00.000-07:00

It’s been a while but here I am again, typing on the sleight while chairing a life-saving workshop in Harare, Zimbabwe. Or “Zim” as it is affectionately known among those of us who try hard to show nonchalant familiarity with the region.

A Zim old-timer, I have had the pleasure to be invited back here by a coalition of HRI affiliates, who understand that in principle donors appreciate like no other to hear that the work they have funded during the cholera outbreak in 2008 is slowly been wrapped up in lifesaving lessons learned workshops, known in local development circles as “post mortems”.

And so, here i am, sitting at the panel in front of a packed room decorated in by the strict standards of the Plastic-Chairs-Covered-In-Cotton-Condoms School of Interior Design. It is a bit too early in the year to enjoy the legendary jacarandas that have made Harare such a beloved destination among HRI consultants as well as intrepid backpackers, but the plastic flowers on the panel table, contrasting nicely with the hue chosen for the conference banner, make up for it, as do the tastefully arranged sets of water bottle,mints and purple napkins spread meaningfully among the participants.

As one of the presenters was getting into the second part of her presentation – appologizing to Mr. Chairman for running behind schedule before starting the section of challenges and lessons learned from the role played by the organization she represents in the unprecedented “scale-up of aid in the wake of the outbreak” - in my peripheral view I caught a glimpse of the garden, where a young unkempt looking girl was being removed from the premises by a dignifiedly clad servant. She couldn’t have possibly jumped over the electric fence so her presence here must be a case of human failure (which has become too common in ZIm, what with the brain-drain and all). I made a mental note to mention my concerns about security to the hotel manager before making a point to personally close the curtains, to avoid witnessing further scenes that would distract participants from the topic at hand.

With the room freshly darkened by my inspired gesture, the powerpoint slides become more vivid and meaningful and I have allowed myself a rare moment of reminiscence.

Zim really is an ideal HRI location and the past few years have been good to us. For the average HRI employee, Harare is a suitably comfortable location, featuring a vast choice of dignified accommodation as well as a solid infrastructure and a vibrant expat community, served by what may very well be the region's best "domestic support", conveniently accomodating due to the current unfortunate economic realities. To the outside world however, Zim is a very rough place where access to the most basic supplies is a rare and expensive luxury while oppression, poverty and despair consume a once-glorious country making the misery index soar to very respectable levels.

Both camps are right of course, which is not only good for HRI staff’s street-cred, but also for that small matter of hazard pay and the monthly shopping trips to Johannesburg and R&Rs to Cape Town.

Sure, inconveniences such as having bank accounts in Botswana or, at least over the last two years or so, the difficulty to source quality petrol with suitable octane content as recommended by the manufacturer of our brand new fleet of Ford Explorers (purchased during the cholera outbreak with emergency funds made available to HRI by one of our main donors) are real and they do diminish the quality of life ever so slightly. But somebody has got to do this job and we take pride in the readiness of our staff to rough it when there is no other way.

Anyhow, I’d better intervene and bring the proceedings to an end. The organizers of the currently ongoing Harare International Festival of the Arts have gracefully offered us a few VIP tickets and I really must have a nap before cocktail hour.

HRI Success Stories. Today: groundbreaking work from CelebrAID

2010-04-23T02:25:00.000-07:00

We all agree: celebrities are awesome and they are crucial to the process of "development" as we know it. HRI is naturally aware of the ability of a good celebrity to simplify development realities and create a useful stereotype about big-eyed undernourished children “back in Africa“ that have not known affection.

through my work I have myself hosted my fair share of celebrities visiting HRI programs in this or the other camp, shelter or other miserable location and have experienced deep transformations within, from the privilege to stand modestly in the background and hand out the occasional disinfectant tissue so they can ostentatiously wipe a tear and/ or discretely rub a hand, an elbow, after the dreaded skin contact so necessary to any choice photo opportunity.

Like no other "tool", celebrities succeed in bringing important issues to the attention of the masses so that the issues become part of the “popular culture”, commented on facebook, lamented on twitter or reflected in sound advice given about role-modeling, as shown in this example taken out of a copy of a popular guide book for intrepid travelers:

You will agree that such impact is worth a lot to HRI and our donors so it goes without saying that money does change hands every time a celebrity “gets involved”. Money well spent of course, and it is also a pleasure for our more impressionable international staff to get to be patronized by a celebrity’s vast and demanding entourage, while HRIs "local staff” gets to be chased around by what looks like a group of stereotypical decadent caricatures of everything that is wrong with the "west".

But what of the celebrities themselves?

Well, today’s success story shows that HRI & affiliates care about them. As first movers in the area of “celebarketing”, HRI has an affiliate fully dedicated to “harnessing the power of celebrities to create an enabling environment for empowering the powerless” and today’s human interest story is just about them. Do read on and shed a tear if so inclined; and, should you want to share your own success story, remember that HRIs call for abstract remains open.

CelebrAID: The Humanitarian Appeal for Celebrities

Britney (not her real name) sits quietly in a dark corner of a Haitian village hut and studies her hands. It's a rare moment of quiet reflection for a girl otherwise cast into the shadow of the spotlight.

Britney is one of America's countless vulnerable and most-at-risk celebrities.

On a normal day, Britney will wake up early in the afternoon and begin her arduous daily routine. She climbs out of bed after everyone else in the house is still fast awake and she boils her own water to make a cup of coffee. This is a dangerous task for a girl with a crippling hangover. Almost immediately, she remembers she has children and checks in with her nannies to ensure they will be out of the house for a little while longer. Each day she walks 0.000003 miles to fetch water for her bubble bath. She has very little to eat.

Still, life has improved dramatically for Britney. When CelebrAID found Britney 3 years ago, she was in dire need. She was about to lose her mansion, her children, and her career. She had been exploited endlessly and her name had been tarnished in her Hollywoodian community. We found her in celebrity rags. We approached Britney and let her know that there are people out there who care about her and who want to see her image improve. At first, she was wary and confused, but soon enough, we gained her trust and sent her on her first field mission to a refugee camp in Colombia.

Today, the girl in Haiti is a very different one. Britney emerges from the Haitian hut and into the sunlight, to be photographed cradling a child. "America is a tough place for a young female celebrity" Britney says with wisdom beyond her years. "There is an entrenched culture of slut-shaming and if any female celebrity dares to drunkenly expose a glimpse of her vag or french-kiss another woman on stage...her chances of being treated with respect significantly decrease. Thankfully, CelebrAID is there without fail to provide PR-disaster relief" she announces in a calm manner as she manages to walk in a straight line on one of Port-au-Prince's few roads cleared of debris.

"For so long, I had no idea I could claim the right to aid. I thought the right to aid was reserved for elite celebrities that were well-educated and had a reasonable understanding of world affairs that was reflected in the dignified manner with which they carried themselves, despite their fame and fortune. But CelebrAID taught me the principle of non-discrimination - that ALL celebrities EVERYWHERE have the right to participate in 3-day overseas missions to pre-arranged, thoughtfully selected field sites that demonstrate "model" programmes that make a difference in the life of the poor. No celebrity should be deprived of their right to engage in awkward conversations with poor people they will never see again. Even the most vulnerable caste of celebrity should have the chance to put on a stern face with a furrowed brow and nod thoughtfully as they relay their story of visiting Pakistani earthquake victims at a NY-cocktail party" says a teary-eyed Britney.

In addition to CelebrAID's rights-based approach to celebrity disaster relief, another way CelebrAID has been able to reach out successfully to a whole new generation of stars, is through the power of role-modeling. This is especially important for female celebrities. Old-timer celebrity, but relative new-comer to the aid scene, Madonna, illustrates this point.

"Girls like us don't need a hand-out - we want a hand-up", Madonna thoughtfully explains. "Preferably when that hand is formed into a fist," she adds. Even for the infamous "brilliant business woman" it took decades to realize the massive power of celebrity aid. "I saw Bono doing it, I saw Geldof doing it, but it didn't really click until I saw the world see Angelina doing it" she says as she happily bounces her adopted son on her lap.

Indeed, CelebrAID harnesses the technique of "behavior role modeling" to inspire at-risk celebrities to gain confidence in themselves. "I mean, here I was in LA right, and I was thinking to myself...you know, if Cameron Diaz can take photographs with poor children in the vast slums of Nairobi, then so can I," beamed Nicole Richie, proudly displaying her new photos of herself with a small group of Kenyan schoolchildren.

While some international charities prefer to partner up with dignified celebrities like Cate Blanchette or respectable musicians like Angelique Kidjo, CelebrAID specializes in celebrity disaster relief - daring to go where the need is greatest for celebrity reconstruction. CelebrAID focuses on the LDCs (Least Developed Celebrities) even though it would be easier to work with more reliable artists that have spent years legitimately honing their craft, such as Kate Winslet.

"Working in disaster zones such as Lindsay Lohan is so much more rewarding than working in predictable and safe places like [Denzel] Washington" reflects Sarah Witman, a long-time employee and spokesperson for CelebrAID. "Yes, all celebrities have the right to aid, but it's much more satisfying touring with Paris Hilton and seeing the look on her face when she is finally able to distinguish the difference between the region of West Africa and the country of South Africa. I knew right then and there that I wanted to dedicate my life to ensure each and every celebrity has the chance to gain a basic education."

Thanks to generous donors like yourself, CelebrAID boasts Nobel-Prize-worthy results. CelebrAID increased the celebrity participation rate (CPR) by 500% in just the last 5 years! With such a dramatic increase in the use of CPR, CelebrAID is seeing the celebrity mortality rate (CMR) plummet to levels approaching zero! "We are confident that within 2 years, we will be able to report near-universal enrollment of celebrities in aid projects in ever single country of the world!" exclaims Witman. "This would NOT have been possible without the very generous time the average hard-working American citizen volunteers every single week - often daily - tracking the every going-on and whereabout in the lives of celebrities. By showing you care, they care too."

CelebrAID is not without its critics, however. The Malthus Institute released a controversial report last month that questioned the long-term sustainability of celebrity spread. "Yes we are pleased to see CMR decrease so drastically, but no one is asking how indigenous cultures will cope with the influx of celebrities as the CPR far outstrips the CMR. We believe CMR is being artificially deflated by the activities of INGOs such as CelebrAID and issue strong caution that soon aid workers might be overburdened and without capacity to respond to so many celebrity needs" warned a Malthus spokesperson.

We are at the end of our tour with Britney in Haiti and she seems content and at peace. She is holding the little hand of Veronique, a 10 year old Haitian girl. Veronique is wearing a beautiful white dress that was distributed to her by Britney; she looks up at the star and smiles shyly. In a barely audible voice, Veronique whispers:

"I am very happy for Britney. When she first came to Haiti she seemed a little nervous but after us children told her not to worry about her problems and that everything would turn out ok, she really cheered up. Thank you CelebrAID for giving Britney the chance to come and take pictures with us."

Veronique walks away, still with many of her own problems, but happy knowing that she was able to make a difference in the life and publicity ratings of even just one celebrity.

How can YOU help? Here are three simple ways you can take action TODAY. Like our celebrities at an Oscars after-party, they are easy:

Become our fan on facebook and follow us on Twitter. In the 21st century, facebook-friending and Twitter-following are the two single most important ways we will talk about changing the world.
Talk to your friends and family about the need for celebrity aid. You can download the inspirational story of Amy Whinehouse at our website. The more you care, the more celebrities care too.
SPONSOR A CELEBRITY TODAY! For as little as the price of a manicure a week, you can restore hope and a sense of purpose to the life of a depraved celebrity starting now! As a sponsor, you will receive a photo of your celebrity, a daily gossip email, and progress report. We also encourage you to send fan mail to your celebrity to thank them for their efforts and to let them know that you are watching and rely on them to guide your nearly non-existent political interests. Let them know that because of their cause-involvement, you have heard of a new country though you are not sure where it is exactly, and that because of their tweet, you spent one minute on CelebrAID's website before going back to Perez'.

Thank you CelebrAID for taking Celebarketing to another level!

Short HRI Q&A and Words of Wisdom on Emergency Response Funding

2010-04-21T08:17:00.000-07:00

For whatever reason, this blaag seems to have received increased attention recently, which, while not unpleasing, has brought along the occasional unsolicited email from well-wishers, haters and inquisitive types. The latter are the most fascinating and I thought I take the opportunity for a very unusual step out of character and address here a few of the common questions raised by representatives of this group, to avoid any "duplication" involved in having Nathan the intern respond individually:

Q: Do you work in development?
A: No, I just learned stuff from repeatedly watching that movie where Angelina is the suitably dressed selfless HRI employee working in some refugee camp in "Africa".

Q: What is your opinion on the link between <put whatever you fancy here> and development?
A: I don’t have one. Except if you are a donor of course, in which case Nathan the intern will get a draft proposal going, pointing out the obvious interdependence between the two and HRIs readiness to make the link more meaningful by empowering stakeholders and building capacity to harness the power of the <put your pet subject here> to impact the poor and vulnerable and reverse the cycle of poverty by innovative strategies.

Q: Why do you choose to write a “spoof” blog instead of participating constructively in a debate about <put whatever you fancy here>?
A: Did you just call me a poof?

Right, with that out of the way, let’s get back to more important business - a very quick one today as i am planning a lobster-binge over lunch, to celebrate my return to Moroni after many a week of wanderings, complete with having being "stranded" in Paris due to that islanding vulcano thing.

If you feel a bit overwhelmed by recent earthquakes, plane crashes, landslides and famines that may have led to the proverbial “donor fatigue”, you should pity the professional emergency type who, having missed the opportunity to score a good-for-street-cred job in Haiti is forced to follow the thinning stream of cash to all sorts of lesser emergencies just to put bred on the table.

Luckily HRI, having seen our share of emergencies, has developed useful coping mechanisms to identify and secure sufficient resources to keep our “emergency” presence uniformly spread across the globe. A helpful factor of course is the Central Emergency Response Fund – CERF, a funding mechanism mentioned right here a while back, that has the helpful rule stating that in order to become eligible for funding, any emergency must be recognized and formally declared as such by the respective government.

Many whiners in our business have refered to this clause as dangerous because it allows dodgy governments to refuse assistance to groups in emergency that they don’t like. Whatever, I say. For those of us inclined to look at the full half of the glass, the beauty is that with HRI extensive network of partners and affiliates working closely with governments across the globe to “build their capacity”, it is a small matter to get this or the other government (dodgy or not, who are we to judge) to declare the small landslide here, minor cattle epidemic there as an emergency, after which HRI immediately liaises with the CERF people to get that "rapid response" cash in to put some plastic sheeting in place, buy a few goats.

Stuff like that keeps our world class emergency response team busy and HRI in the headlines - good for us, good for ~~business~~ the sector .

HRI fundraising secrets: writing a succesful proposal

2010-04-15T03:21:00.000-07:00

It is still award season and many of our affiliates remain busy working well into the night to finalize proposals to ensure our activities will continue uninterrupted for the next funding cycle.

Spare a thought for those who bet on the fallacy that a proposal will succeed or fail based on the soundness of the activities proposed, for their survival in the cutthroat realm of reality will be short and sweet and their minor careers devoid of much satisfaction.

For those who know better here is some useful advice from HRIs vast experience:

First you need some local partners. You will find some good advice in HRIs guide to successful partnerships, and in a nutshell, the secret is to ensure that all local organizations that do something useful and have visible results are committed to exclusive collaboration with HRI. Donors like to be seen as funding local networks - “ownership” and “sustainability” are the appropriate wank-words here, and we all have to adapt to a world increasingly inclined to ridicule the more obvious clichés of the beltway bandit. You want them in your “partnership” also that you can report their results as your own during the next “reporting season”.

You don’t need to worry, the donor will never fund such local organizations directly as there is general agreement that they “lack capacity to absorb funds” – HRI will gladly do that for them.

Then, you need a slick team of lobbyist types in the capital of the donor who can reliably sleaze their way into the process walking that thin line between “seeking further guidelines” and “compromising procurement process”. Do not underestimate the relevance of this phase.

It helps a lot if, in country (“the field”), you have at least one or two staff who succeed in to combining a solid professional relationship based on respect with the “head of mission” – having children in the same school helps here as does frequenting the same cocktail circles. These situations provide useful opportunities for shared smugness about the lifesaving work we are doing together as well as bonding conversations about the heat, the craving for superior coffee and baby spinach salads and the unreliability of the local staff.

If in your country there is a local organization lead by someone with a dramatic story – an ex sex worker say, a former refugee or an HIV+ person - you are in luck. Throwing in a “bio” of this person in the proposal, written in a way that HRI does not necessarily deny any contribution to their “finding the way” will hit some important spots with the bureaucrats processing your application. Besides, after the award has been granted, you can burn significant amounts of money on having this person attend international meetings where they can “tell their story” in front of note-taking voyeurs before returning to the front of the room where they are expected to remain silent but smiling with dignity while HRI experts talk about her past suffering and what that means to her.

You will have to acknowledge that there are other organizations out there with whom HRI & affiliates compete for this funding. “Competition” is not a very popular word in our circles so the trick is to find a way to “partner” with them that keeps everyone happy. The best way to do that is to have a “coordination” meeting where, in front of a map, all the head of these organizations would decide who works where, dividing so to say spheres of influence. A good sign is when some participants will attend by phone and you know the meeting is productive if you hear phrases like “these are my MARPS (acronym for “most at risk population”)” or “so and so province is ours”. Expect a bit of horsetrading here, covered in the fair sounding argument of “avoiding double counting” and do become suspicious if many local organizations are invited to attend this particular coordination meeting (one or two are ok though, to cover "ownership", as long as they dont talk too much).

Making the budget is a pretty straight forward affair – you start with the bottom line (which you set as a few dollars under the maximum amount for that particular call for proposals, making sure that the overhead formulas are locked on the spreadsheet) and work your way up by adding random numbers until the totals come together nicely. Experience and access to the right information make or break the success of this process, as knowing the right favourable percentages for each section is crucial. With most donors it is safe to assume that staff costs have to be minimal (10% is a safe percentage) and the way you achieve that is by ensuring that these lines are covered by the right mixture of expatriate staff and drivers (“support staff”), while the rest of the people involved will be budgeted under “consultants”, in the operations section. The Consultants line benefits from much more “flexibility”, going up to 80% of the total with many donors.

For obvious reasons, it is a good idea to ensure that the person who finalizes the budget is not the same person as the one who fills in the “sustainability” section in the narrative – in HRI that is usually Nathan the interns’ section as he is pretty good at copying and pasting it from past successful proposals (why re-invent the wheel?).

Writing the actual “narrative” usually involves filling in complex forms that make no sense to anyone, developed by wannabe academics making a living as born-again bureaucrats in teh donor's headquarters. The secret here is to err on the side of optimism and promise loads of “downstream targets” and much "involvement of local partners" with significant "capacity building" components. Not to worry, after the award has been granted the whole thing will be diluted through endless “realignments” and “restrategizing processes", which are spun in such a way as to shed on HRI the favourable light of “flexibility” and “adjustment to local changes” while ensuring that all measurable commitments are conveniently replaced with vague concepts like "enabling environment" and "system strenthening". Indicators are helpfully chosen along the lines of “t-shirts distributed” and “people trained” which also helps with finalizing the “workplan”, in addition to further assuring you that all those t-shirts & baseball caps will benefit at least one local small or medium enterprise, fairly procured of course through a competitive bidding process.

Well, good luck y'all with proposals and do reach out to HRI affiliates for further guidelines – your chances of receiving some funding will significantly increase if you partner up nicely. Also, may I remind you that HRIs call for abstracts remains open and we are looking forward to more flattering, feel-good human interest stories from our hard working affiliates out there.

HRI Success Stories. Today: Stroke the Children on the groundbreaking "Stroke don't Spank" campaign

2010-04-12T10:19:00.000-07:00

You may remember HRIs recent call for abstracts/ human interest stories. Thanks for all the awesome submissions – Nathan the intern (known to the outside world as "the panel”) is going through them and, among those that he bothers to read, he is short-listing the ones that he assumes would be more to the liking of the donor community, for ticking all the right boxes. I should add that Nathan is not paid at all, his only reward for doing all the unpleasant tasks in the office is appearing world-exploring to his facebook friends, in addition to the unrealistic hope that one day soon he’ll score a proper job with HRI. He remains motivated though and diligent in completing his tasks.

If you did not submit your abstract/ human interest story/ success story yet, you can still do it as submissions continue to be accepted (we really love to hear how our affiliates out there get the job done and, perhaps, touch a life or two).

Anyways, without further ado, let’s hear it from Mr. Jean Baptiste Clamence, Executive Director of Stroke the Children (STC), a HRI affiliate on the “south-asian subcontinent”

Dear Dr. Kurtz,

As a proud recipient and inefficient administrator of HRI's funds over the past 15 years, we at Stroke the Children are delighted to send you a summary of lessons learned from our successful "Stroke Don't Spank" Campaign. Hand Relief has supported Stroke the Children to make a positive impact on the lives of children and families, and the local economy throughout South Asia.

A brief summary of our key achievements in 2009, made possible through HRI funding:

Stroke's and HRI's joint Publication "Harnessing Women and Girls" provided key revenue for Mustafa Publishing House and allowed Mustafa enough income during this tough financial crisis to take on his fourth wife.
Through our series of 5 high-level regional workshops, we filled out a total of 200 sheets of flip paper that were then transcribed into a 40-page "Stroke Don't Spank" Workshop Results paper that included 20 tables of workshop results separated into 6 columns (Problems, Solutions, Stakeholders, Actions, Main Responsibility, Key Dates). The government authorities will now be responsible to follow up on these agreed-upon actions so that we at Stroke don't have to. In this way, we will also not need to be held accountable for results. We expect that the annual monsoons in 2010 will sufficiently divert attention away from the incomplete processes and serve as an appropriate challenge that disenabled the promised outcomes.
The Stroke Don't Spank Campaign has been extremely successful to date. Through this campaign, we set up a website that allows users to select whether they click on the "Stroke" icon or the "Spank" icon thus showing their support to end violence against children. In this way, visitors to the site were not mere passive observers, but were enabled to take real action (clicking on the icon) and express themselves. Visitors were invited to sign an online petition from which we will feed the "# of visitors signing petition" data into our M&E indicator matrix.
The Stroke Don't Spank Campaign has to date, photographed and video-taped three pilot sessions of rural men and women sitting under trees and listening to a facilitator. While we have typed "Ministry of Women and Children" into the matrix under the column "Main Responsibility" to replicate these pilot sessions across 5 regions, Stroke decided to conduct 3 initial "pilot" sessions so that we could have enough visual evidence of activity to populate our promotional materials (website, brochures, donor reports, and powerpoint presentations).
In these pilot sessions, participants were outnumbered 3-to-1 by NGO officials, the local Prefect, local media, and village dignitaries that were all standing around fanning themselves and congratulating each other on the success of the approach, before the facilitator even begun the 45-minute session. During this session the facilitator explained to the rural villagers who have an average of a grade 2 education, that there is a difference between gender and biological sex and that gender is something that is created. She spent the first 25 minutes asking the participants gathered under the tree to name tasks that are seen as "female only" and "male only". This segued into discussions of domestic violence as being something we can stop and then veered into child spanking. The participants, who work in back-breaking agriculture under the searing sun all day long, listened patiently as the Oregan-born facilitator spoke kindly and scanned the group to see the "aha" moment. The unmarried, childless facilitator then went on to explain that discipline is important but that it does not need to involve corporal punishment. The pilot session was a huge success because after only 10 minutes of discussing why we must Stroke and not Spank our children, the men and women gathered under the tree agreed unanimously that yes, they and their entire ancestry have been going about child discipline in the wrong manner and that from that point forward, instead of raising their hand, they would count to 10 and take 5 deep breaths, before reacting. In merely a 45 minute session, the entire socio-cultural fabric of a community was revealed as illegitimate and people that suffer from chronic worms and whose feet are constantly cracked from walking barefoot, accepted the error of their historical ways and agreed that they from now on would squeeze the branded Stroke Don't Spank Campaign yellow stress balls to release their frustration.

Finally, and most importantly, our key finding from this experience is that by focusing our advocacy efforts on the offensive behaviours of society's vulnerable (the poorest of the poor), we are able to detract attention from the fact that we are impotent to express outrage toward the most serious human rights violations. By focusing on impoverished rural parents' child discipline practices, we present ourselves as outraged against abuses and taking action to eliminate them...while all this while we don't once ever publicly decry the Government Leaders, local Mafia Networks, the corrupt Police, anti-Unionists, or Big Business for the myriad ways they oppress human rights, jail and torture activists, and block economic progress for the poor. By making next to no reference whatsoever to the gross land rights abuses inflicted on the landless poor - something which we are completely helpless to tackle and indeed personally terrified to do - we instead highlight sensational and horrifying child spanking stories to our constituents in donor countries. We thus gain the financial donations while never having to actually address the underlying politico-economic landscape that creates stressed-out parents. Through photographing workshops and taking note of 2 or 3 participant quotes - we are able to demonstrate that change is possible, without ever having to change anything.

You may have noticed that this format does not follow your request for an abstract but is rather a few bullet points. In the first sentence, I erased the word "abstract" and replaced it with the word "summary" so that I could avoid the necessary work it takes to fashion a proper abstract. I thought you would appreciate this as its very much in line with the spirit of our work.

Once again, without Hand Relief, we would not be able to truly....Stroke the Children.

Very truly yours,

Jean-Baptiste Clamence

Ex. Dir., Stroke the Children

En route to Bishkek and all you ever wanted to know about certain HRI refugee assistance programs

2010-04-09T14:22:00.000-07:00

Been a while, but I am back at the Grand Hyatt Dubai, letting my hair down and indulging in impeccable room service while waiting for the connection to Manas International on Kyrgyzstan Airlines, departing tomorrow. For whatever it's worth, business class on Kyrgyzstan Airlines is nowhere close to business class on Turkmenistan Airlines by the way, HRIs favourite airline in Central Asia and the first choice of any discerning traveler in the region. For lovers of details, retro leather seats make all the difference.

Anyway, the decision to swing by Bishkek was taken very spontaneously, over by a few dirty martinis consumed in the Emirates Lounge where yesterday, on my way back from New Delhi, I was killing time in the pleasant company of a respectable Swiss entrepreneur in town with business he wouldn’t give too many details on. I couldn’t help noticing that he was carrying last week’s Economist and, for some reason, a book with nursery rhymes – he wouldn’t give too many details on that one either.

Anyway, we were exchanging expert opinions on pros and cons of skiing in Kyrgyzstan versus Chimbulak off Almaty and from one to the other we ended up talking about the recent unfortunate incidents in Bishkek which have brought fond memories of the days of the Tajik-color-revolution-that-never-happened and a certain not-so-subtly-handled-incident-in-Uzbekistan, both of which have provided useful opportunities for HRI to considerably expand its Central Asian portfolio under a newly found donor interest in a traditionally ignored region where pretty much everything goes.

And that’s why I am headed to Bishkek. Like elsewhere in the region, this is the sort of situation where a few donors will throw money around to compensate for continuing to do business as usual with nasty governments, geo-political strategy and all. I foresee life-saving workshops and capacity building in human rights and right based approaches, I foresee a need to develop gender tool kits and I foresee some lucrative work around refugees.

I may have said it before: HRI & affiliates really excel in our work with refugees and there are several reasons why I am particularly partial to HRIs refugee agenda. For one, this is one of the few solid arguments for HRI to maintain humble presences in the developed world, in particular say in Scandinavian countries or the UK. Here’s how we pay the rent:

Mentioned governments have to balance a natural dislike for immigrants with a number of inconvenient international obligations that include one exotically called non-refulement which essentially forbids them from deporting people to places like Iraq or Somalia. Another inconvenience is a rather active public opinion that would react unpleasantly to hearing that their trusted governments deports people to Haiti. Additionally, these governments also reckon they have too many refugees already so in principle they refuse most asylum applications for technical reasons that no one really understands, while crafting clinical euphemisms to refer to rejected asylum seekers in ways that would remove any element of vulnerability: “economic migrants” is HRIs term of choice, or "irregular migrants" is another one, embraced by governments who know very well it is easier to maintain one’s asylum credentials by funding Angelina & co to publicly hug miserable looking people on TV rather than actually fulfilling any inconvenient obligations. It may be a bit more expensive but damn, she is hot isn’t she?

What to do however with all those people that cannot be deported due to such technicalities? This is where HRI comes in with a typical helpful plan constructed on a sound argument which goes like this: all people have a "fundamental right to return” to their countries of origin, and HRI, as a humanitarian organization is ready to help the government support these poor people fulfilling their rights.

It so happens that most of them are conveniently detained indeterminately for being caught without a visa, which obviously limits their “universe of choices” significantly. They are briefly visited by an HRI official in the high security prison where their handcuffs are slightly loosened by the “law enforcement officer” (whose capacity is built in related HRI activities), just enough to allow them to sign an official application for Humanitarian Voluntary Return and the rest as they say is logistics – get a charter, put them on a plane, whatever.

The government loves the deal because the spin allows them to appear compassionate and helpful – which their enlightened citizenry find pretty cool and something worth opening one’s purse for. The additional association with HRI takes care of inconvenient legal technicalities and provides a nice opportunity to whitewash what are essentially illegal deportations and make them appear like the acts of a supportive, caring government. in press conference, the misfortunes of these people are deplored and straight government speaker faces make mention of countkess thank you notes received, for affording them the opportunity to return “home”. The idea that someone may leave a nasty place with many a financial and personal sacrifice on a journey that often takes several years and typically involves leaky boats, dodgy facilitators and plenty of significant loses before having the opportunity to claim asylum just to happily and voluntarily choose to return beck to square one does not strike anyone as unreal as long as HRI is there to vouch for the humanitarian nature of the whole affair. Since no courts are involved, HRI is helpfully covering all necessary legal advice, avoiding to burden what are essentially simple minds with difficult to comprehend (and impossible to pronounce) terms such as non-refoulement.

You may wonder what happens to these people once they voluntarily return to a place where they have nothing left and where unemployment is in the upper 90% ? Well I am glad you ask – sometime soon I will tell you all about HRIs cutting edge vocational training and “reintegration” programs, generously funded by a coalition of Scandinavian governments plus the UK.

Secrets of succesful "Partnerships"

2010-04-01T04:02:00.000-07:00

You may remember that one of my recent posts was written en route to New Delhi where I was supposed to give a presentation about HRI best practices in income generating activities. The presentation was a success and I have managed to get through my 68 powerpoint slides in the allocated 15 minutes (more or less of course, in our circles it is considered good form to “run behind schedule”). The Q&A session was also pretty good with several participants asking pertinent questions about the upcoming tea-break. Participants also received color hand-outs of my presentation, along with an electronic copy on a CD containing our newsletter and a folder with a few hundreds relevant pictures of red-eyed people in HRI polo shirts giving presentations under HRI banners all over the world.

The presentation was part of a groundbreaking Training of Trainers (ToT) Training, that HRI is currently implementing as part of a regional initiative funded by one of our more significant donors. Although we do not really have a presence to speak if in India, the award was granted to us based on our impeccable lobbying and our ability to put both the local donor “mission” in India and their capital at ease with our demographic and linguistic familiarity.

Sure, there are hundreds of local organizations in India who do a pretty good job with “income generating activities” but it is only natural that HRI would come in from outside to “coordinate” all this well intentioned but sporadically implemented work. For a reasonable fee (negotiated globally with the respective donor to be ever so slightly above your average INGO fee) we are ready to bring our coordination expertise to the “income generating” sector in India while also saving money by not establishing a permanent presence there.

What we do is first we hire a reasonably paid consultant (I am thinking to "sole source" my yold buddy, Ed) to fly in and complete a "comprehensive assessment" of all the “stakeholders”. That is an HRI euphemism for playing some necessary power games with the “partners” to make sure they understand who calls the shots. The reasonably paid consultant will compile that information by outlining the best looking processes from some of these “local partners” before giving the report to another reasonably paid consultant (“the trainer”). The trainer, who for the sake of objectivity has only a vague theoretical understanding of Indian realities, aquired by thorough lecture of the on-flight magazine on the way in, looks at the assessment report and conveniently identifies those processes that are already in place with some of the “partners” and develops training materials (“the curricula”) focused on exactly the processes already in place.

In the next phase, we find a bling place to organize the training and invite the “local partners” who are already doing the work that involves the processes in question and pretend we train them in “innovative processes” during an "intensive" 18 day residential training. We’ll then send them home with a well stamped certificate and take credit for all their work onwards, while we expect them to change all their accounting and reporting structures in order to qualify for the money that we give them as part of our “prime-sub partnership”. Given the different reporting/ financial cycles between us, the donor and the “partner” we will remit the money to them with an average of eight month delay and, just to keep them on their feet, we will sometimes ask them to apply random budget cuts which we justify with vague arguments involving donor requirements and the fluctuation of currency exchange rates.

Unfortunately, not all of these partners see the brilliance of our work all the time or the important addition that we bring to the sector. Just recently one of them regreted our invitation for the ToT training motivating their refusal to participate with a spurious argument that they already have said processes in place and none of their staff can afford to be away from their work for 18 days to attend our training. In our formal response, conveniently copied to the local donor mission, we expressed regrets that the said partner chooses to prioritize dubious “political arguments” over a commitment to cooperation so clearly supported and facilitated by both the government and the donor agency. We also expressed regrets to hearing that the said partner refuses to use this TOT training as an opportunity to share their experience as part of the planed working group sessions and to reminding them that, as hard as it may be, we as sector leaders expect our “partners” not to allow their “egos” to be in the way of important activities in support of the poor and vulnerable people of India.

The letter prompted a direct call on my cellphone from the donor “mission director” who congratulated me personally for the hard work we are doing and our commitment to cooperation. He appologized for the unnecessary trouble and we finished the call on a friendly tone, with some chit-chat about the hopelessness of the “local culture” that encourages such unacceptable behavior as the one displayed by the un-cooperative partner. We agreed that we have to stick together as “strategic partners” as we brave the hostile attitudes of the local populace before promising each other to catch up during happy hour at the Taj later in the week.

During the same call, he also mentioned to me off the record that there is an upcoming “RFP” for SriLanka. For those who are not familiar with the lingo, "RFP" is donor shorthand for “loads of money to be awarded to an HRI affiliate”, so it was pretty useful information and I thought perhaps I should take advantage of being on the subcontinent already to pop across to Colombo and do some footwork. (No need to tell you that SriLanka is HRI territory what with all the post-war reconstruction not to mention the all the great “tsunami work” we’ve been doing there for a while now).

As I am writing this my trip to Colombo is already organized – will leave tomorrow early in the morning and use the opportunity to spend some quality time on the beaches in the south (where package tour fortresses have been successfully reconstructed, conveniently keeping the local citizenry away from the sea), discreetly but satisfyingly attended to by respectful hospitality personnel, many of them former fishermen trained in the high arts of waiting tables by an HRI affiliate as part of our flagship “income generating” work in post-tsunami SriLanka (project “info-sheet” heading: “Destitute SriLankans Given Second Chance to Dignified Life Through HRI Groundbreaking work in Ceylon”).

Then, next week I will have a series of meetings with HRI affiliate directors to get a better idea of who does what, who has what "core competency" and also identify “local partners” that could do good work without having the “capacity to absorb” large amounts of money. We'll then approach some of these “partners” and get them to sign exclusive letter of intent about their willingness to partner up with HRI for activities that could be covered by the mentioned RFP. Finally, when the RFP will be out, we’ll apply as “primes” without bothering to consult with these “partners” and then, once awarded, we’ll approach them and ask them to deliver whatever activities we want them to deliver. Not having too many other funding options (it so happens that donors like to avoid duplication) they will naturally agree and that's how, reader, you create the beginning of a wonderful “partnership”.

Of Dubai Layovers, Church Sex Scandals and "Saddlebacking"

2010-03-26T08:24:00.000-07:00

So here I am, in Dubai, enjoying a leisurely layover en route to New Delhi. I am at the Grand Hyatt downtown, where Emirates put their stranded discerning travelers and where I was taken by the shuttle when it became apparent that I won’t make it on my connection flight.

As it sometimes happens, the business class was full – they did have some places on coach and for a moment the airline liaison person attempted to suggest I board in coach but one look over the Irish coffee in the lounge where we were having this conversation and she immediately organized the Hyatt voucher. Here I am, the international man of development, at home in DXB lounges, I am to fly coach to New Delhi and ruin my hard earned reputation? Sure I would if I was in a hurry or anything, but I’m not – I am on my way there at the invitation of one of our affiliates to give a presentation about income generating activities (believe me, I know a lot about that sort of stuff) and the conference won’t start til next Wednesday. Why would I rough if with the commoners in coach when I could put up with a night at the Grand Hyatt?

Never the one to argue with sound logic, here I am in my dignified room overseeing the infinity pools, pillow arranged by service beautifully enhancing my confort in the king size bed, a tray with half-eaten Beijing duck next to me, telly on. Perfect time to reminisce about my recent trip and a few current events.

Dubai airport, for starters, is my kind of place. They know how to treat their first or business travelers and the experience is even more delightful as you observe through the well-coated lounge windows the over-crowded jet-lagged masses, trying desperately to get some sleep on the floor while hugging their laptop bags. Whole families on holiday, refugees, migrant workers, cheap-flight connoisseurs en route to that postcard destination and bargain hunters are all rubbing shoulders with cell-phone shop owners from all over the world on stock-up trips and the occasional junior investor looking out of place, trying to sleep in a stiff Marks & Spencer suit on a bench specifically designed to make laying down impossible. The kiddie corner, with its enviable soft floor has been taken over by a group of Philippino hospitality workers while the Starbucks table are all occupied by what looks like a massive group of student-union rejects, but which are actually separate small groups of back-packers, NGO interns & volunteers crowding the wireless with long updates to their blogs. The “duty free” downstairs is haunted by zombies in elaborated funny packs on the look for cashew nuts and sugary drinks to keep them going during that golden watch bargain hunt.

Meanwhile, in the first class lounge, HRI executives on their to or from Afghanistan are catching up with the international press over sushi while dignified business people in full thobe & guthras chat about the latest consequences of the “crisis” with well perfumed investment brokers and their silent, dolled up girlfriends.

As I’m watching the telly and catching up with the lates news, my favourite story must be the mud hitting the fan with the most recent series of catholic sex scandals. I don’t want to be misunderstood – just because I am an observant pastafarian doesn’t mean I enjoy seeing our fellow institution having their skeletons finally taken out of the closet (for the gazzilionth time). But as a veteran of quite a few peace-keeping missions, not to mention plenty of other postings in the sort of places where the proverbial red line is thinner than we would care to admit, I have always been amazed by the apparent contradiction between the surprise that people profess when some scandal hits the press and the passivity-inducing consistency and spread of the knowledge of that particular scandal going on.

Raise a hand if you ever been in Kinshasa and saw a HRI vehicle parked in front of Savananna, complete with HF aerial and donor branding!

Raise a hand if you ever had a beer with the HRI affiliated Nepali army contingent in Dili at the Obrigado Barracks overhearing war stories from Bali!

Raise a hand if you were in Cambodia during the days of the HRI-sponsored UNTAC – no need to say more;

Raise a hand if you ever spent a night on the town in Djibuti and run into drunken army boys taking the edge off that tedious military routine!

Raise a hand if you had few drinks with the US troops in Haiti recently!

Are these hands perhaps the limbs of people who are outraged to read reports of abuse from refugee camps to karaoke parlors patronized by people linked to HRI directly or indirectly?

Are the people outraged to hear the stories of children abused by clerics the same who have sent their children to religious schools to keep them away from the “dangers” of the world? Parents who would rather have a dignified institution run by sexually oppressed men in frocks taking care of educating their progeny?

Finally, Saddlebacking anyone?

This just in: Excellent Experts sought for Parliamentary Reform & a look under the hood of HRI's win-win work in Turkmenistan

2010-03-23T09:29:00.000-07:00

In our commitment to this or the other respectable value, HRI is naturally at the cutting edge of any well funded processes of “democratization” the world over. For instance, an affiliate of ours is currently recruiting “Excellent Experts in Parliamentary Reform”, for a gig in Turkmenistan.

HRI has been doing good work in Turkmenistan from the mid 90s (part of our "CIS Strategy" - in those days CIS was a donor euphemism for “former soviet countries that no-one can place on the map”) and I have personally spent many a delightful autumn day in the company of Father Andrew the local papa nuncio, (tasked with shepherding the 12 or so catholic souls in the country and, presumably, ensuring from a typically neutral position that all that gas is put at good use) playing ping-pong against the modern Ashgabat skyline and ruminating about the relative merits of the Turkmen melons superior we agreed, to the Afghan ones.

It was like M*A*S*H, on crack, in North Korea.

In those days, Turkmenistan was led to its glory by a visionary leader, a renaissance man with a taste in the arts and feel for history. The place was in many ways an ideal HRI location, and for a brief moment in the mid 90s we actually considered setting our headquarters there, in one of the then newly constructed skyscrapers where i was even offered and considered backhand shares by a friendly “government contact” (upon inspection we found it was a hollow structure, built just to enhance the quality of the skyline at sunset, so we made other plans).

Turkmenistan sits one of the biggest single natural gas reserves ever. It is also neighboring Afghanistan. Both these facts placed it pretty high on the priority list to receive generous aid from certain donors. For years and years HRI and affiliates have organized “training sessions” with “government officials” on democratic values and “right-based approaches”, in seminar rooms tastefully decorated with giant portraits of the late Mr. Niyazov, President for Life by the Will of His People and his Good Book, all the while wondering how to inform various local staff that their employment with HRI is retroactively terminated by virtue of their names being on a list of “relatives of subversive elements” submitted to us by our “government counterpart”, in a pink envelope with the notorious green seal (in the shape of Mr. President’s portrait, from profile, Cesar Style).

While members of the opposition were routinely denounced as terrorists before summarily disappearing (presumably hit by the president’s mystical powers), HRI Rights Based Approach to Development trainings naturally commenced and finished with quotes from the Ruhnama, the book that contains all that ever needed to be written, and, as practical exercises requested by the Ministry of Justice, the whole group was regularly taken in pilgrimage to the newly constructed Ruhnama Park, where we were all ritually bowing in front of the mechanically enhanced statue of the book, before stopping for a green tea at the end of the 45degree elevator up one mechanically enhanced golden statue of the great leader.

That great leader proved to be mortal after all and checked out sometime in 2007. After the shocked citizenry recovered from the tragedy, they voted his successor in as the second president for life, with a 99.9% majority in an "open" election. Another man of the people, a visionary and modernizer this one, a leader to be trusted to build solid, democratic institutions that can be further “capacity-built”. The head of another government to be supported in his efforts to “reform the parliament”, a complicated process in support of which HRI is bringing out the big guns.

And that’s how that vacancy is on reliefweb as I’m writing this.

To make things work smoothly, HRI has a number of private sector affiliates, consultancy partnerships as it were. These are essentially staffed by HRI old-timers plus a few slick striped-suited types in relevant capitals, to make sure the right amounts of lube are applied to the right wheels and joints of the bureaucratic machinery to ensure the necessary “resources” are being “mobilized”. These particular affiliates prefer to operate mostly in places that can be hard to point on a map and about which most people don't know the first thing.

Once the money is in, the affiliate sends in the “short term consultants”, for an assessment, which then identifies stakeholders and drafts an action plan. In the next phase, technical meetings are organized with the “stakeholders” and “lists of recommendations” are drafted. Sometimes, “third country experts” are being brought in to share best practices, after which the whole thing is wrapped up in a dignified “summit” at the President Hotel (government endorsed wiki page here), where I personally prefer to occupy the suite facing the Ministry of Natural Resources (the junior suite in the other wing offers an inferior view on some back street populated by depressing looking people moving around with donkeys). During the reception compliments are made to the government partners for the tastefulness of their golden President pins (all the rage in local fashion circles) while expats pat each other's backs over the success in managing to obtain visas for all the experts.

Finally, reports are printed, acknowledgements and appreciations are shared, group-pictures are taken, you know the gig. The rest of the money goes where it belongs, in obverheads, fees etc and the government of Turkmenistan is delighted to go around producing solid credentials about their "efforts" towards democratization. Meanwhile the donor country enjoys improved talks about that gas and there you have it, another delighteful HRI win-win situation.

Research & Rescue Action Plan

2010-03-18T06:14:00.000-07:00

As I leisurely walked into my humble but tastefully decorated office this morning, slowly digesting a dignified breakfast professionally prepared and served at my residence by two of my six “domestic helpers”, I beheld the HRI calendar on my desk (“if you have any questions about the content of this calendar please contact HRI” it says, under the touching picture with the big-eyed child, making one imagine a stakeholder calling: “I have a question about the content, how come August has 31 days, just like July?).

I beheld the calendar and realized that by the end of the month we need to provide one of our donors with the results of a research about the reasons behind gender-based violence in the Comoros. Except we don’t call the thing "research", we call it “M&E” because we know that our donors have a software that they run all funding proposals through and if they contain the word “research” they get automatically rejected, or at least, as was the case in point, the funding gets “restricted”. It’s actually an open-source spam guard software that was adapted for a reasonable price by a mixed team of IT and “programmatic” experts and is now “implemented” on all computers used by all members of the Grants commission at the headquarters of the respective donor.

This particular proposal was submitted in the financial year 2004 and it was compiled by Nikki, one of our interns at the time, hired since as a “project officer” based on her combination of Brandeis University degree and “experience in the field”, a box she ticked as a peace corps volunteer in Cameroon where, in addition to a ganja habit, she also acquired three words of French (one of them is “espece” and the other two cannot be printed in a family blog, in the words of one of our former employees), which consolidated her position as an HRI francophone country expert.

While the donor agency won’t fund “research” as a matter of principle, the feller who works for the donor at the local “mission” is particularly interested in “M&E” results because he hopes to put his name next to them so when former high-school colleagues in Ohio google him they find out he has published stuff which will obviously make that girl regret she did not go bowling with him back in 1983. He also doesn’t particularly like Moroni so he hopes a few publications under his belt will increase his chances of obtaining a posting closer to Pattaya, where he once spent memorable moments in the company of several talented karaoke artists. Meanwhile, the restrictions imposed on this research by the mentioned software need to be lifted but most of the budget has been “realigned” since, which means HRI is currently having a team of six permanent staff, three interns and a reasonably-paid consultant addressing some restrictions on money committed in 2004 and already spent years ago for different activities than the ones flagged by the software.

Naturally all people involved at the time on both sides have moved on and cannot be contacted anymore which makes the whole process even more interesting, while allowing all of us to just point the fingers ar vague “predecessors” while we try to figure out hhow we burry the whole thing under piles of papers. The fact that this particular donor is very much interested in “M&E” is not the same thing with their intense interest in “numbers of t-shirts distributed” or “numbers of stakeholeders trained” commonly reffered to as “impact indicators”.

Whatever the background, fact is there remain less than 2 weeks to complete this “M&E” process about gender based violence and, because we are go-getters, here is what we will do:
1. Nathan the intern will google gender based violence and Comoros;
2. He will then copy-paste whatever he finds into one document with a special focus on footnotes (“primary sources”)– we’ll refer to this step as “literature review”;
3. Make up a generic sounding story about a woman “whose name has been changed to protect her privacy”, as a believable “human interest story” and we’ll add some pictures Nathan took when he backpacked through east Africa on his way to Comoros.
4. Put together some vague references to cultural norms with references to islam;
5. Take the section “Expected Results” from the original proposal drafted by Nikki in 2004 and do a ctrl+F/ Replace All "2004" with "2010" and “will” with “have” along with some subsequent fine tuning;
6. Take a list of recommendations from a similar “M&E” process completed in nearby Madagascar and copy/ paste/ adjust them to Comoros;
7. Nathan the intern will then put all of it together in a “publication”, complete with the usual overexposed pictures of HRI staff under the logo and submit it to the duly procured printer.

Once all above steps are completed we will book the large conference room at the Itsandra Sun (which is to Comoros what the Sheraton is to Ethiopia) for sometimes in April and send out invitations for all stake-holders to attend the dissemination event. We’ll pick the date to be ever so slightly late, for credibility’s sake (as everyone knows when you get down to practice sometimes things get a bit more complicated etc etc) and we’ll ensure that he budget gets ever so slightly overspent – we’ll naturally offer to cover the diference ourselves, to show commitment (easily done by charging some staff time dedicated to this project to another donor) – that stuff goes a long way in increasing our funding next time around. We’ll print ca 20,000 copies of the report in high quality color and send many of them by DHL to regional and global “stakeholders”. We’ll then wrap it all up with a regional seminar at the Ellerman in Cape Town (a dignified long term partner of HRI), and call it a ground breaking success and a regional best practice. The whole thing being “M&E” of course will inform our programmatic decisions which means that we are well placed to apply for further funding and there you go, sorted.

Anyways, may I remind you all that we are still collecting “abstracts” and we are looking forward to host some quality submissions from colleagues out there.

Call for abstracts: HRI success stories/ be a HRI guest writer

2010-03-16T11:01:00.000-07:00

For years and years HRI and our many affiliates have been working hard in all corners of the world doing workshops, seminars and engaging in various other activities that had massive impact on the lives of the poor and vulnerable and have, in the process, created and sustained vital industries of fake-ethnic eateries in dignified hotels and expat-only watering holes, to name just two of million other sectors essential to a decent life in the bubble.

HRI is naturally committed to exchanges of experiences and I personally believe that by sharing lessons learned and success stories we will become an even stronger and more “comprehensive” organization.

If you work for HRI or one of our affiliates (not sure? apply the “toolkit”) you must have some experiences you want to share, a lesson or two you have learned, a story you’d like to tell.

To facilitate the exchange of such materials I have decided to put out this call for abstracts – please email your story and over the coming days I will post the better ones right here, with the level of credit/ acknowledgement you request.

In order to select the best ones, I will ask Nathan, one of our interns (currently working on a team of eight tasked with compiling a global newsletter containing unreadable articles and underexposed, blurred pictures of HRI seminars, distributed straight to the spam folders of many of our affiliates) to skim over some of the submissions and pick the ones dealing with topics that are currently in favour with our donors. We’ll then select a few that refer to strategic countries for HRI and tell everyone the selection was done by a panel of “peers” based on objective criteria.

We’ll then put all of them in a “repository", which is another word for an obscure folder on our website, available for later (and unlikely) consultation to all, and call the whole affair a success in inter-agency exchange of experiences.

Please submit your “abstract” at alden dot kurtz at gmail dot com.

And please spread the word – for credibility with our stakeholders, it's important we can tell everyone that we had a very diverse pool of “abstracts” to choose from.

Ground-Breaking Work in Somalia - A Report

2010-03-10T01:22:00.000-08:00

Somalia is again in the news and, as the executive director of an organization with significant “stakes” in "the horn", I feel I need to provide an overview of the great work HRI and affiliates are doing there, with the hope that the timing is good for donors to make the sort of commitments they always do when Somalia gets some news coverage. (Meanwhile we remain hopeful that the consolidated appeals will facilitated more much-needed funding for HRI)

As a measure of our organizational standards, in spite of all the hardship, HRI staff remain committed to our work in Somalia and continue to put up with the hassle of living in Nairobi on Somali hazard pay while their bravery stories of flying rusty An-24s throughout Somalia remain popular as ever with the crowd at “Crazy House” as well as with trophy spouse circles sipping lattes at Java House.

In Somaliland for example (a place that we officially prefer to refer to as “the north” fearing that any acknowledgement of an almost two decade reality will turn us into the odd-organisation-out and have negative consequences on our funding) we run a very “broad portfolio” of workshops and capacity building activities, striving to build the appalling capacity of our local partners. As elsewhere in Somalia, any very obvious failure that cannot be window-dressed in our reports is swiftly and naturally addressed by the “Clan Complexity Defense”, which is HRIs Somalia-adapted version of the reputable and irefutable Chewbacca Defense.

Our most successful program (part of our income generation package) is building the capacity of camel herders in “the north” to transition from herding camels to herding “shoats”. “Shoats” is HRI shorthand for “Sheep and Goats” and it is a term that we had to coin because no-one on our staff knew the difference between the two (they really taste the same with spaghetti and rice). One of our livelihood consultants gave us a PowerPoint presentation pointing out the differences but she presented it in the afternoon over our state-of-the-art video-conferencing facilities and everyone fell asleep due to a post-lunch combination of heat and lack of interest in the topic. An intern in Nairobi was then tasked with “following up” with the consultant and making a brief of the presentation and share it with all of us but then the email server crashed and, due to clan complexities, could not be restored for three or so weeks and all some of us remembered was that one of them had a black head but we couldn’t agree which (voting, in the democratic traditions of HRI led to a draw).

Then there are the “capacity building” activities aimed at dealing with market imbalances caused by an expected increased demand in “shoats” and decreased demand in camels that may have “complex trigger effects”. People affected negatively by these effects will have to be exposed to various “vocational trainings” and are taught how to start a business that does not involve buying an old Hilux and transporting khat. (Although irrelevant in context, we are making reference to khat because that will increase our chances of obtaining funding from donors interested in showing a commitment to fighting drug trafficking).

Then, in Puntland (referred to in HRI official documents as “the North-East”) we are working mainly out of Nairobi with short and expensive trips to Bossaaso meant to keep the spending going while we combine the Clan Complexity Defense with the application for more funding. We have three staff who exclusively deal with making and cancelling bookings at the only HRI approved guesthouse in town, run by one of our close affiliates. “Piracy” remains the magic word here, which is also why all our funding has to do with capacity building and mitigating effects of piracy in Bossaaso, while the rest of the country remains only relevant to us in as much as regular trips to Garowe are required by our concern with keeping appearances about collaborating with the local authorities. We have also hired a retired prosecutor from Wisconsin who is leading our “Law Enforcement Capacity Building to Combat Piracy” program out of Nairobi. Naturally, most of our work here happens in Nairobi, where we implement additional workshops of significant complexity, attended by “Somali officials from Puntland”.

Which brings me to our ground-breaking work in “South-Central Somalia”, a vast area that is mostly off-limits to everyone at HRI. For reasons of Clan Complexity we do not trust any of our local staff with any decisions, which means that most of our work in “South-Central” is about spending money in Nairobi “building the capacity” of whoever is referred to as “the government” at the respective moment. This is a sustainable activity because, due to high turnover in the government teams, we manage to run the same trainings again and again, giving us an opportunity to develop templates, manuals and other tools and become even more cost-effective.

The occasional international staff flying into Baidoa for a day or so give us the necessary street cred, while our affiliate doing overpriced exclusive Humanitarian Flight management gets us kudos in the Logistics Cluster (LCF).

Which reminds me: our decision to have water for sale in these flights a few years back has gone down as one of the most innovative decisions in recent memory, and has been quoted extensively as a positive example of “lessons learned” from the private sector.
I’d love to tell you more about the fantastic results of all this work (well acknowledged in the sector) but I need to attend a video-conference about some funding in the Seychelles and anyway, you wouldn’t understand the clan complexities.

Musings on Tastefulness and News from Mozambique

2010-03-08T05:56:00.000-08:00

It’s been an emotional couple of days.

For starters a certain academic type feller who used to work for one of our affiliates back in the day has dismissed HRI as a mere “satire”, and a tasteless one at that. I’ve said it before: HRI is not a satire. We are a dead-serious organization whose committed staff work day and night in some of the roughest parts of the world to address poor and vulnerable people’s fundamental needs for talking-shops and other life-saving activities. We are, an economist could say, the necessary response to a massive demand for our services. And we are NOT tasteless: from the life-saving cross-sectoral activities we organize in dignified establishments world-wide, to the plug-in 3d paintings on the walls of our headquarters in Moroni (my favourite one shows a placid lake with a waterfall – when you switch it on the water twinkles and the waterfall starts flowing), everywhere we work we are renowned for our tastefulness. Our offices in Cambodia, for instance, decorated by strict rules imposed by the Hok Lundy School of Interior Design are all the rage in local cock-fighting circles; and our Southern Africa regional headquarters, set amongst the hills in Somerset West, at a safe distance from the offending landscape of Khayelitsha, offer a dignified view of the bay and delight the eye with lines well set in Dutch and French architectural heritage. Our cutting-edge offices in Panama located in Clayton, next door to the new and greener-than-though US embassy are the envy of the NGO and IGO world, and not only because the proximity to the embassy allows our staff to minimize the time needed to go to a meeting to only 3 hours, as little as it takes to get through the routine security checks with our privileged, fast-track status.

And don’t even get me started on our vehicles.

Speaking of tastefulness, I spent the weekend in Mozambique and was quite disappointed to see that the Polana is still under renovations. Mozambique is a country where HRI is implementing crucial programs and I have traditionally favoured Polana as a home away from home while in town as well as a place to engage in life-saving workshops and conferences. Not unlike the Sheraton in Addis but with a superiour view, the Polana has deservedly earned its place in HRIs world as a dependable private sector partner where meetings about the regular floodings in the north can be facilitated with overpriced conference packages in a comforting surrounding, complete with servants in tasteful colonial-era uniform (another interesting feature shared with the Addis Sheraton or, since we mentioned Cambodia, the Le Royal, a dependable HRI partner in Phnom Penh additionally loaded with good memories as that was the place where HRI staff were accommodated during the UNTAC days, a period that has provided us in the “development community” the opportunity to learn many a lesson about how to do things in peace-keeping, how to calculate hazard pay and how to support small enterprises post-conflict, one cold thai beer at a time).

Anyways, since the Polana remains in an unfortunate state of renovation, I had to settle with a sub-standard establishment up the street, with an inferior view of the river and an appalling patisserie choice. But then hardship is part of the job and I am happy to report that my trip was very successful – making use of HRIs old boys network in the country I managed to put together an unbeatable consortium of affiliates ideally positioned to win both a massive upcoming HIV/ AIDS RFA and significant CERF funding to build overpriced pre-packaged houses in the flood affected areas (based on our world-class experience with similar activities in Aceh). Ed, the reasonable paid consultant is telling me he is slowly getting sick and tired of Haiti so will shortly fly him into Maputo to get the whole thing started.

Award Season, Avatar and HRI on Twitter

2010-03-02T07:43:00.000-08:00

It’s been a while but I’m back online ready to continue reporting from the frontlines of HRI state of the art development. It’s RFA season of course, which for those in the know is a time when loads of efforts are invested in creating the appearances of competition while making deals on the side and getting the money where it belongs – in HRIs and our affiliates’ account. Basically RFA is USAID procurement short-hand for a process in which political interests are combined with “priorities” that are irrelevant in a given country but sound pretty good in Washington DC and then a meeting with partners is called to give the whole thing an appearance of participation and ownership (to be fair we also love participation & ownership at HRI). Eventually, the official request for applications is issued and HRI or one of our affiliates will prove to be the best placed to bag the money. Spending it is pretty easy as we usually just hand it out to all the other organizations ("sub-recipients”) who have unsuccessfully applied for it with USAID, to do the same thing that they are doing anyway, plus of course we keep a certain amount for overhead, admin costs and so on.

It’s also global fund season of course and the situation here is a bit different. As Principal Recipients in quite a few countries, HRI and our affiliates find it pretty hard in principle to spend all the global fund money (round this, round the other, confusing stuff). What we do however, is we blame the slow spending on the country team & coordination and continue to apply for every new round prioritizing capacity building of course and “creating an enabling environment”.

You may remember last time I checked in I was in cape town doing important work around ownership and stuff. Well I had an epiphany in the flight back where I was taking refuge from the “it-used-to-be-better-back-in-the-day” chit-chat with my fellow passenger in first class by checking out the on-flight entertainment system, the only viable alternative in my experience to not having to have that conversation while flying in or out of South Africa. Anyways, this is how I got to watch Avatar, that movie that was all the rage a few months ago and that’s when I had the epiphany. The irony of a loud anti-colonial movie in which some American dude becomes the savior of noble savages somewhere on another planet has not gotten lost on me, but the most beautiful thing is how often the movie hit home for me in its similarities with HRI. The plot will sound familiar to any technical advisor with the right arrogance to ignorance ratio who, although doesn't know anything about the country or the people where he gets posted and has only a marginal knowledge of what he is supposed to be doing, becomes active in all sorts of meetings in which his proud local counter-parts translate for him. In his reports all stakeholders seem to be on the same page, working together towards a grand goal while the “big tree” is burning. You may think otherwise but to my knowledge HRI has not been consulted on the script.

Oh, and one more thing – HRI is on twitter as well. I thought since we’re cutting edge and all why not go 2.0 like everyone else? Still figuring the whole follow this follow that part but do expect regular ~~twat~~ twitter wisdom from yours truly.

Of Ownership and Action Points - checking in from Cape Town

2010-02-04T07:01:00.000-08:00

Haiti is slowly creeping off the main pages and tv screens, which should finally allow HRI and affiliates to get back to the business of running lifesaving workshops with the generous emergency funding and widely distributing ground-breaking reports. Since you are asking, Ed the reasonably paid consultant is already in port au prince and is opimistically reporting that our affiliates who did not have a presence in Haiti before the earthquake will be established in no time (Ed’s current skype status message: “follow the money”).

Meanwhile, it’s workshop season and I have been travelling again, this time to attend a conference in Cape Town organized by a consortium of HRI affiliates and the UN to discuss about continued assistance to a number of Zimbabwean, Somali and Mozambican refugees, displaced by the xenophobic violence in 2008 with a separate component related to new ways to support people living with HIV (why not combine two meetings and save transport money - HRI & UN are all about cost efficiency) .

this time of the year, Cape Town is an ideal location for such important workshops and I have had many a constructive discussion in the wine estate rented for this purpose (at a discount price reserved by the estate for non-profit organizations, part of their CSR strategy), enjoying the mock French landscape and the gardens discretely manicured by an army of servants.

There were many items on the agenda so we all broke down in “sub-groups” and started developing “sub-outcomes”. In my sub-group, the most difficult question was figuring out which households are very vulnerable and which are merely vulnerable, so that only the very vulnerable get the blanket and the kitchen pot – the merely vulnerable have to make do with food items alone. As a sub-group, we agreed that figuring the difference between very vulnerable displaced persons and merely vulnerable ones will require many more meetings (to follow up on the list of identified action points), a few assessment missions to the camps, interviews and a consultant from Sweden.

Sure, i hear you say, the costs of figuring out the difference is much higher than giving blankets and kitchen pots to everybody, but that is not the point.HRI is into sustainable stuff, plus whatever "lessons" we learn in this excercise will greatly benefit similar situations elsewhere - Haiti, say.

A Washington DC based consultant, hired by HRI for a reasonable fee, was taking notes and will follow up with a report compiling he various sub-groups’ findings complete with recommendations.

Among the 400 or so participants was also one representative of the displaced people, a woman called Tengetile who was taking turns attending all the different sub-groups and eventually departed with several flip-chart papers in original. Her job is to ensure there is “ownership”.

Among the many recommendations that were put forward by the participants, one of them enjoyed unanimous support: given the need to make the displaced persons aware of their rights, it was proposed that HRI will develop a radio spot, to go with the acclaimed “edutainment” program already implemented by one of our implementing partners.

Tengetile the displaced woman said that she knows nobody in the camps who listened to the radio - something to do with different languages and another thing about them working long hours or something. HRI research clearly shows that radio is the number 1 medium for communication in Africa, and this is just another proof that thorough research may produce counter-intuitive results. It was allowed that Tengetile's misleading statement may to do with the fact that maybe there are not enough radios in the township, obviously because in their vulnerable despair, the displaced people have sold them. Immediately, one of the reasonably paid consultants proposed, under action points, that 5000 or so radios be fairly procured and distribute to all displaced households, so that our educational radio spots better “penetrate” the displaced community. Radios are pretty cheap and the communication subgroup has already put forward a slogan for the campaign, already focus-group-discussed during one of the sessions, ready to go:

“Empower yourself – only by being aware of your rights, can you help create an enabling environment for your community”

Meanwhile, the displaced-person component of the meeting is completed and today we have a day off to prepare for the HIV/ AIDS sessions that start tomorrow. During the wine tasting this morning I was told that Jabulani, the person living with HIV/AIDS has already arrived so if nothing else, at least we are sure to have “ownership” over whatever we decide as of tomorrow.

Here’s to that.

The Apple Ipad and Memories of Humvee Bumper Sticker Wisdom in Haiti

2010-01-28T07:28:00.000-08:00

As I am digesting the lobster consumed in the pleasant company of Ed, a reasonably paid consultant in town for a rapid assessment (in preparation for the "development of a joined strategy aimed at identifying sustainable ways to create an enabling environment for a better distribution of aid to the people of the Comoros") I am having an epiphany triggered by an agreement reached with Ed about the increased efficiency HRI could achieve in our work if we were to adopt Apple’s new gadget as a working tool (his assessment report about the "enabling environment" will naturally include a recommendation along those lines).

Apple and HRI are not as different as you may think. As a matter of fact, we share the same DNA: we are both committed to making a living out of flogging must-have stuff to people who don’t really need it. To make the model sustainable, every so often we come up with upgraded stuff or better looking ways to package the same stuff and define the next must-have concept.

Let's take the iphone as an example: you can kind-of make calls on it (provided you know how to hack it off the network that gets pushed down your throat with the package) but it costs much more than a regular phone. It does look really, really good though, and you want to be seen with one. If this doesn’t sound familiar, you know nothing about HRI.

Ed the reasonably priced consultant is also using the opportunity to collect some practical first-hand intel on Haiti, as he is supposed to fly in next week to lead a consortium of stakeholders in the development of a more coordinated strategy for a better penetration of aid in the aftermath of the earthquake. He will naturally use the opportunity to identify the need for several of our affiliates - who unfortunately did not have a presence in Haiti before the earthquake – to establish much needed presences there, to give a hand in the coordination effort.

Ed and I know a thing or two about emergency coordination as we go back to the days in Aceh, where I’ve hired him to develop HRIs fishing-boat distribution strategy, a program that is currently being monitored and evaluated by HRIs M&E wing: initial findings indicate that this program will become yet another world’s best practice. The 800,000 or so USD that have remained unspent in that program will come in handy as HRI is preparing a dignified launch of the findings report in Bali, with a mass distribution component aimed at making one M&E report available to each family in Aceh and beyond.

As one of the first global NGO directors to set foot in Haiti after the Earthquake, I have very good intel for Ed (i still owe you an update on my trip there, but as time passes i am not sure if impressions collected on my recent and very short visit remain relevant to my news-consuming reader, almost two weeks later). Things have changed in these almost two weeks since I left, but I know for instance where to find the coldest beer (I have personally ensured HRI’s generator has enough fuel to run 24/7).

Anyways, as I am going through practicalities with Ed over espresso chasers to take the edge off that lobster (slightly fortified with quality contraband Malagasy moonshine), I suddenly remembered my last memory from Haiti. It was Monday, late in the evening and I was leaving Port au Prince. I was walking towards the helicopter in the still disorganized airport when I was nearly run over by a Humvee driven with the i-mean-business confidence so characteristic to technical drivers. First I actually thought it was a technical and that the cold beer, the jet-lag, the madness are getting to me and I start mixing up countries. But then I turned my head to have a better look and, just before the humvee dissapeared behind those piled bags of rice i beheld the bumper sticker:

“I save Lives, What do You do?”

Giving credit where it's due: tough choices in Cambodia and lessons learned about Karma

2010-01-25T08:56:00.000-08:00

As a distraction from the Lancet critisizing HRI story which is frankly given too much attention by our fellow bloggers, I thought I make this one a "lessons learned" post, sharing with you a somewhat dated story, but still relevant as a textbook example of HRI overcoming challanges with the help of Karma.

You will agree that in our ~~business~~ work, as in life, sometimes we are faced with choices that separate the men from the boys and HRI has had its fair share of difficult choices taken rationally, with the right interests in mind. A relatively recent example involves a tragic country, a place where HRI and countless of our affiliates are plying our trade with probably the highest HRI staff/ capita in the world.

A while ago, a special rapporteur type came in to asses the situation of “human rights” in the said country. Some of our affiliates were involved in bringing him in, thinking this will be the usual meetings here and there rounded eventually up in a nice report praising “efforts” and “commitments” and identifying “challenges” and “areas for improvement”. The usual HRI gig in other words, that would have given us an opportunity to bring the “stakeholders” closer and showing donors that their money is well spent while pointing out areas that need further funding.

I remember it like it was yesterday: when I took the call, I was enjoying a chilled Singha with my morning massage on the beach in Phuket (where I was with some urgent business).

"Yash Ghai has f**ed us all!"

It was HRIs “Chief of Party”, desperate and worried – we shot ourselves in the foot he said. I got on the first flight and when I landed in the capital I saw how bad it was: the rapporteur feller has pissed off the government by picking on some land grabbing, arbitrary arrests and other minor faults of the government, all of them negligible in light of the dignified life most of us were leading, engaging in sustainable workshops and training of trainers.

Almost twenty years of peace-keeping and development and aid and technical assistance and HRI & our numerous affiliates were finally in synch with the government, successfully collaborating in ground-breaking workshops and seminars year-round, on pretty much every topic in the book. We also had a vast network of dignified hotels all over the country to accommodate such activities and the whole per-diem thing sorted out with the government. The money was flowing, the “structures were in place”, the officials were speaking the right language, donors were happy, reports were being printed and life was sweet.

And then this rapporteur guy wants end it all with his winging about land grabbing. A man from a country where they have human rights issues, no less.

“Stakeholder” emergency meetings were called, apologies were sent, contingency plans were drafted, calls were placed, work lunches were organized. There was no question about it: HRI and all our affiliates had to distance ourselves from the report. But damage has been done and our comfortable routine was threatened. (The only good news was that we managed to use that report in downgrading the country on the hardship scale, which has increased our hazard pay ever so slightly)

It took a year almost but karma worked our way: enter a little man to HRI liking, with the right dislike for job : love for paycheck ratio (DJ:LP). He has been chosen to replace the troublemaker who mercifully resigned over well deserved lack of support in his disagreements with the government and the visionary man who runs the place.

And then, sometimes in 2009, sweet retribution: Mr. Subedi’s report was out – a proper, beautifully crafted piece, a significant step towards reaffirming our peaceful life in the kingdom. For HRI literature buffs, the whole thing (in pdf) is here.

For the rest, here are a few highlights:

“people have enjoyed an unprecedented degree of freedom of assembly, expression and movement, although people need by law to seek permission to hold public demonstrations, which is sometimes refused on unspecified security grounds, and arbitrary restrictions on travel or holding meetings have sometimes been imposed.”

“The Government has also faced the complex issue of land ownership, including by making an effort to improve land tenure security for the population”.

And a HRI favourite, containing just the right mix of drama, “recent past”, weasel statements and that thing about economic social and cultural rights:

“Cambodia is a country which still is coming to terms with a tragic past, and the progress made thus far is encouraging. The legal, institutional and political systems had to be rebuilt effectively from scratch when the country began to pull itself together after 1979. In recent years, the country has experienced improved political stability which has allowed rapid economic development, thereby bringing more people out of poverty and into a position to better enjoy their economic, social and cultural rights”.

There are few more effective tools in the arsenal of HRI fundraising machinery than the reference to the “tragic past”. This particular country is a HRI favorite also because HRI staff can make straight-faced references to a “recent tragic past” that has happened before most of our staff were born. Such references are quickly balanced by a mention of “encouraging progress” and there you are, giggles all the way to the bank.

(Actually, I’ll take that back – there is at least one more effective fundraising tool in HRI's arsenal: curating art authored by anonymous children off the garbage dump in a dignified café).

Mr. Subedi’s report is splendidly concluded, pointing out that “the protection of human rights needs the rule of law” (“I believe”, he nuances this controversial statement), and an exquisite turn of the pen offering, in pure HRI style, to give a hand in "developing guidelines on land evictions”.

And so my dear readers, the whole affair turned into an awesome opportunity for HRI to offer a capacity building/ technical assistance package to the government – cutting edge workshops – generously funded by the donor community in Cambodia. as i am writing this, many of our affiliates in country and in the region are "burning" funding generated by this very report, while enjoying that ever so slightly increase in hazard pay.

In private conversations, some of my greener colleagues have expressed indignation that such fantastic work has not received enough publicity at the time and that the media, blindsided by the whole Khmer Rouge Tribunal thing, is not interested in covering such marvelous progress. But I keep telling them - we are not in this business for glory, I says; we must remain humble and trust in Karma.

Jezuss! Branded Guns?

2010-01-22T07:52:00.000-08:00

Back in moroni, I am starting the day with my usual latte (made by one of the children that are given a chance to get out of poverty by doing dignified work around my humble residence) and, to take the edge off my recent trip to Haiti, I thought I get an update with some of the news doing the rounds via the HRI V-sat connection with a dedicated line to my villa. I thought the jesus-freak gun story was quite exquisite and I thoroughly enjoyed reading the wide spectrum of outrage that punters expressed around this. I wonder what they expected gun manufacturers to write on their guns? Quotes from naom chomsky perhaps?

Naturally, being a strong believer myself, and knowing clearly that mine is the only true religion I naturally feel offended by such shameless proselytizing. On the other hand, should I find myself on the wrong side of that barrel-mounted sight, would I care about the religious branding of the gun that fired the bullet? For all I know the dude who handles that gun may very well be sporting a tasteful crucifix around his neck, for protection (against the evil eye), not unlike this one:

You’d wonder though, the feller who owns that company must be a pretty cunning businessman, or he wouldn't be running such a succesful shop (I think it’s safe to assume we’re talking about a bloke here, not a woman). He surely would have expected the outrage should the meaning of those letters become known. Which means that only three explanations are possible:

1. His religious belief is more important to him than his business; or
2. Spreading the word is his business, and the gun thing is just a means to an end; or
3. The sights are a special issue, designed to be used in tactical interventions against vampires and werewolves, vulnerable, as we all know, to silver and stuff out of the good book.

The first theory is highly unlikely and the third one, while very likely, must be discarded as the weapons were not shipped to Transylvania but to Afghanistan. Which makes me think that the second theory must be the real one and since that is the case, the whole story actually reminds me of some of HRIs favourite donors.

HRI connoisseurs may be forgiven for thinking I refer to the legitimate use of the good book as a source of evidence in some of HRIs most acclaimed interventions. In fact I am talking about the very strong terms in which HRIs most strategic donor demands that all activities funded by them be branded to the point where the impact of said activities is irrelevant whereas messing with the branding is a deal breaker. That is one of the reasons why this particular donor is so dear to us. As development veterans HRI understands these things and there is no ~~competitor~~ development partner out there who delivers on that particular indicator better than us. Branded T-shirts, well branded vehicles (including my humble V12 as well as the vest of the guy whose name i forgot and who drives me around every day) and, cutting edge stuff, that safe and hygienic tattoo parlor HRI manages in Laos where orphans receiving a helping of rice out of donor branded sacks are politely but firmly given a “quarter-sleeve” of a tasteful pair of shaking hands.