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?
Friday, March 26, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
This just in: Excellent Experts sought for Parliamentary Reform & a look under the hood of HRI's win-win work in Turkmenistan
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.
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.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Research & Rescue Action Plan
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.
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.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Call for abstracts: HRI success stories/ be a HRI guest writer
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.
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.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Ground-Breaking Work in Somalia - A Report
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.
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.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Musings on Tastefulness and News from Mozambique
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.
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.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Award Season, Avatar and HRI on Twitter
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.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Of Ownership and Action Points - checking in from Cape Town
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.
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.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
The Apple Ipad and Memories of Humvee Bumper Sticker Wisdom in Haiti
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?”
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?”
Monday, January 25, 2010
Giving credit where it's due: tough choices in Cambodia and lessons learned about Karma
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 ourbusiness 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.
You will agree that in our
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.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Jezuss! Branded Guns?
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 nocompetitor 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.
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:
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
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Back from Haiti; and: "Do I work for HRI" toolkit?
It’s been a while and there are no prices for guessing why I did not have any updates recently - you’ve watched the news and would have assumed that the internet connection in Haiti isn’t what it used to be. Indeed HRI had a massive presence in Haiti, not to mention all our affiliates there and I had to immediately leave the relative comfort of Moroni and head for Port au Prince (via santo domingo and a reasonably priced helicopter operated by one of our affiliates), to assess the damage and, of course, see how HRI can put a foot in the door and receive some of the massive funding that will, again, reach that very, very unfortunate place. The bad news is I’d love to tell you that HRI staff are safe but I can’t do that – lives were lost, much was destroyed. The good news is HRI and our affiliates are well in control of the relief efforts an, more importantly, the development plans for the near future.
With my job done I’m on my way back to my humble residence in Moroni and, between flights, I thought I force myself to think about something else for the moment. So I went back to a question many people are asking me of late and, taking advantage of an unusually philosophical disposition, I thought I have a go at answering it. The question, of course is:
“Do I work for a HRI affiliate?”
Indeed, many of you, who do not have the privilege to be directly employed by HRI (in which case you would know it by the mildly sarcastic slogan “another day another dollar” printed in the left hand corner of your payslip) could in fact be employed by one of our many affiliates, the long list of which could never be recovered after it was lost in a tragic excel accident (we don’t like talking about it as the memory is still too much to bear but it involves an intern and the wrong answer to the question “Do You Want To Save Changes You Made To Book1”).
To cope with this monumental loss of information, we had to devise a simple cheat-sheet to help anyone determine if they work for one of our affiliates or not. You probably know it deep down, so a “toolkit” to determine affiliate status is not absolutely necessary, but since the conversation among my fellow discerning travelers in the business lounge was hijacked by a loud party of Heineken-necking Malagasy government contractors on their way back to Antananarivo from a groundbreaking “democratization” workshop organized by one of our close affiliates in Zanzibar (yes, post-coup Madagascar aid/ development money is still making a difference in zanzibar and elsewhere), I thought I give you a pretty straight forward "toolkit": as a rule of the thumb, if your answer to more than one of the questions below is yes, chances are you are employed by one of our affiliates. Of course there are millions of other ways to tell, some of them more sector-specific than others (and I’d love to hear from some of my esteemed colleagues who, like me, have tried to mitigate the loss of that list in their own ways - llok at it as avoiding re-inventing the wheel or as a lessons learned or as an exchange of good practice) but before I get dragged back in the lounge to that conversation about democratization, here are the questions:
1. Do you need more than 3 minutes to explain to a complete stranger what your job is?
2. Does above explanation require the use of any acronyms or terms that require further explanation?
3. Do you use a “toolkit” in your job that is not a physical box containing tools?
With my job done I’m on my way back to my humble residence in Moroni and, between flights, I thought I force myself to think about something else for the moment. So I went back to a question many people are asking me of late and, taking advantage of an unusually philosophical disposition, I thought I have a go at answering it. The question, of course is:
“Do I work for a HRI affiliate?”
Indeed, many of you, who do not have the privilege to be directly employed by HRI (in which case you would know it by the mildly sarcastic slogan “another day another dollar” printed in the left hand corner of your payslip) could in fact be employed by one of our many affiliates, the long list of which could never be recovered after it was lost in a tragic excel accident (we don’t like talking about it as the memory is still too much to bear but it involves an intern and the wrong answer to the question “Do You Want To Save Changes You Made To Book1”).
To cope with this monumental loss of information, we had to devise a simple cheat-sheet to help anyone determine if they work for one of our affiliates or not. You probably know it deep down, so a “toolkit” to determine affiliate status is not absolutely necessary, but since the conversation among my fellow discerning travelers in the business lounge was hijacked by a loud party of Heineken-necking Malagasy government contractors on their way back to Antananarivo from a groundbreaking “democratization” workshop organized by one of our close affiliates in Zanzibar (yes, post-coup Madagascar aid/ development money is still making a difference in zanzibar and elsewhere), I thought I give you a pretty straight forward "toolkit": as a rule of the thumb, if your answer to more than one of the questions below is yes, chances are you are employed by one of our affiliates. Of course there are millions of other ways to tell, some of them more sector-specific than others (and I’d love to hear from some of my esteemed colleagues who, like me, have tried to mitigate the loss of that list in their own ways - llok at it as avoiding re-inventing the wheel or as a lessons learned or as an exchange of good practice) but before I get dragged back in the lounge to that conversation about democratization, here are the questions:
1. Do you need more than 3 minutes to explain to a complete stranger what your job is?
2. Does above explanation require the use of any acronyms or terms that require further explanation?
3. Do you use a “toolkit” in your job that is not a physical box containing tools?
Monday, January 11, 2010
Faith Based Development: consolidated appeals to the spaghetti monster
After the last post on Thursday, in which I may or may not have referred to the a medieval spiritual community in passing, somebody wrote to me saying they took offence in the way I dismissed the orthodox christmas with the smug superiority of a catholic islamic presbitarian puritan of some sort. This would be then the opportunity, I thought, to shed some light on HRIs and my personal religious affiliation.
Indeed, HRI is a faith based organization, a detail that I failed to mention, but which has made us popular in the past with value buff type donors who have generously funded us for ridiculous campaigns and activities that we have managed to produce at the sweet spot where the surreal meets the bizarre. Given our flexible corporate ethics and our organizational commitment to never turn down funding I always preferred to speak only selectively of our values and have naturally developed significant skills in navigating awkward faith uncertainties as well as the odd communal prayer.
As a keen believer myself (I am a very observant pastafarian
), I am trying to instill more Flying Spaghetti Monster Values in the organization I executively direct as well as in our numerous staff world-wide, who could hence add salvation by meatballs as one of their many job benefits. I dream of a time when all our offices, missions and affiliates will be reunited in daily prayer over the spaghetti bowl and show a new found zeal to even more value-based life-saving activities.
For instance, I learned today that one of our closest affiliate is leaving some areas of Somalia, while promising they won’t “abandon” the country, in spite of the insecurity. Well that’s a bummer – as a member of the “Logistics Cluster”, HRI has generated significant revenue operating humanitarian flights all over Somalia, which is HRI speak for hiring some rusty old soviet planes and charging all other agencies massive fees to use them while agreeing that these flights are the only ones approved by our other affiliate, in charge of security). Speaking about the Logistics Cluster (LC) – is it only me, or is this a Three Letter Acronym (TLA) waiting to happen? Surely LCF sounds much better than LC, if you know what I mean.
But here’s the silver lining: everybody knows that spaghetti are Somali staple food, so that is a natural entry point for HRIs first faith based intervention inspired by the Spaghetti Monster Values. We are therefore uniquely positioned to request a few tens of millions bucks for a charitable intervention in the name of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and have already inputted our requests in the most recent “Consolidated Appeal” CAP 2010.
Studying this very important document (put together by a comprehensive team of HRI affiliated reasonably paid and fairly procured consultants, based in Nairobi, Washington DC and New York with information provided by our affiliates on the ground), I was well impressed to see the very thorough graphics and analysis used to communicate following extremely complex phrase:
“HRI and affiliates need a shitload of arbitrary but precise-sounding amounts of cash to do loads of capacity building, coordonation and workshops”
Knowing that all donors prefer their information excel-coated, the comprehensive team of consultants offered a helpful table with pretty much the same amounts copied/ pasted in three different columns and a conspicuous 5% funding available for the country of choice for HRIs Spaghetti Monster agenda:
To help the donors further understand the comprehensive team of consultants further offer some explanatory notes in vulgar pseudo-legalese, HRIs lingua franca:
Finally, to drive the point home, they offer an extra page with a bar chart:
I can fill you in on the fact that, under the clear instructions and supervision of the comprehensive team of experts, this chart was put together by that HRI volunteer who also does all the HRI reporting when she is not busy running two of our more shitty sub-offices and pointlessly applying for a paid position with the lame argument that she has been a volunteer for like 6 years or so.
Pray to the Spaghetti Monster Almighty, my daughter, I say to her, and let your life be driven by the happiness of helping others, not greed.
Just like Angelina, really.
Indeed, HRI is a faith based organization, a detail that I failed to mention, but which has made us popular in the past with value buff type donors who have generously funded us for ridiculous campaigns and activities that we have managed to produce at the sweet spot where the surreal meets the bizarre. Given our flexible corporate ethics and our organizational commitment to never turn down funding I always preferred to speak only selectively of our values and have naturally developed significant skills in navigating awkward faith uncertainties as well as the odd communal prayer.
As a keen believer myself (I am a very observant pastafarian
), I am trying to instill more Flying Spaghetti Monster Values in the organization I executively direct as well as in our numerous staff world-wide, who could hence add salvation by meatballs as one of their many job benefits. I dream of a time when all our offices, missions and affiliates will be reunited in daily prayer over the spaghetti bowl and show a new found zeal to even more value-based life-saving activities.For instance, I learned today that one of our closest affiliate is leaving some areas of Somalia, while promising they won’t “abandon” the country, in spite of the insecurity. Well that’s a bummer – as a member of the “Logistics Cluster”, HRI has generated significant revenue operating humanitarian flights all over Somalia, which is HRI speak for hiring some rusty old soviet planes and charging all other agencies massive fees to use them while agreeing that these flights are the only ones approved by our other affiliate, in charge of security). Speaking about the Logistics Cluster (LC) – is it only me, or is this a Three Letter Acronym (TLA) waiting to happen? Surely LCF sounds much better than LC, if you know what I mean.
But here’s the silver lining: everybody knows that spaghetti are Somali staple food, so that is a natural entry point for HRIs first faith based intervention inspired by the Spaghetti Monster Values. We are therefore uniquely positioned to request a few tens of millions bucks for a charitable intervention in the name of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and have already inputted our requests in the most recent “Consolidated Appeal” CAP 2010.
Studying this very important document (put together by a comprehensive team of HRI affiliated reasonably paid and fairly procured consultants, based in Nairobi, Washington DC and New York with information provided by our affiliates on the ground), I was well impressed to see the very thorough graphics and analysis used to communicate following extremely complex phrase:
“HRI and affiliates need a shitload of arbitrary but precise-sounding amounts of cash to do loads of capacity building, coordonation and workshops”
Knowing that all donors prefer their information excel-coated, the comprehensive team of consultants offered a helpful table with pretty much the same amounts copied/ pasted in three different columns and a conspicuous 5% funding available for the country of choice for HRIs Spaghetti Monster agenda:
Pray to the Spaghetti Monster Almighty, my daughter, I say to her, and let your life be driven by the happiness of helping others, not greed.
Just like Angelina, really.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
This just in: It’s Christmas, again!
If feels like Christmas again, and I don’t mean the orthodox Christmas which is happening as I’m writing this, rites conducted by potbellied bearded people with a somewhat medieval edge, under the watchful but generous eyes of dignified visonary leaders:
It feels like Christmas because shortly after I expressed the wish that Global Warming (the up and coming gravy train in our business) be somehow linked to one of the areas where HRI has significant expertise, and a reader already sent me a link to the document that may very well be the base of our future strategy. It’s official – there is a clear and UN-endorsed link between HIV/ AIDS and Global Warming, which will make HRIs attempts to bag Global Warming money look less like spin and more like following the "modern paradigm". I can easily visualize our future applications to the Global Fund for Global Warming and HIV money. No wonder that USAID & UNFPA have been some of HRIs closest affiliates over the years.
Sure, you may say – this report has been issued a few months ago which means it is yesterday’s news (in fact it's so last decade, really). But I only found out about it today so let me enjoy another HRI Christmas right now. We are not that up to date here in Moroni you see, which is yet another argument in support of my proposal that HRI implement a proper dedicated VSAT system to improve the island’s bandwidth which would also allow all of us to spend more quality time in front of our computers reading and then sharing groundbreaking UN reports on facebook, one of my and most Comoreans' favourite pastimes.
And while we speak about money, I think it’s about time we start building a feeling for China the Donor. The Chinese continue showing the money around Africa and I don’t know about you but it doesn't feel quite right that HRI & affiliates wouldn’t adjust their overhead around this reality if you know what I mean. I for one retain significant karaoke skills, acquired during my hardship HRI days in south east asia, and I could easily imagine myself making ground-breaking deals with this or the other Chinese delegation, on health, human rights - you name it, over beer-on-the-rocks and lobster. Plus, it was about time that we build the capacity of the chefs in Comores who will greatly benefit from learning chinese cooking skills - sustainable, poverty reducing stuff, i assure you.
Sure, you may say – this report has been issued a few months ago which means it is yesterday’s news (in fact it's so last decade, really). But I only found out about it today so let me enjoy another HRI Christmas right now. We are not that up to date here in Moroni you see, which is yet another argument in support of my proposal that HRI implement a proper dedicated VSAT system to improve the island’s bandwidth which would also allow all of us to spend more quality time in front of our computers reading and then sharing groundbreaking UN reports on facebook, one of my and most Comoreans' favourite pastimes.
And while we speak about money, I think it’s about time we start building a feeling for China the Donor. The Chinese continue showing the money around Africa and I don’t know about you but it doesn't feel quite right that HRI & affiliates wouldn’t adjust their overhead around this reality if you know what I mean. I for one retain significant karaoke skills, acquired during my hardship HRI days in south east asia, and I could easily imagine myself making ground-breaking deals with this or the other Chinese delegation, on health, human rights - you name it, over beer-on-the-rocks and lobster. Plus, it was about time that we build the capacity of the chefs in Comores who will greatly benefit from learning chinese cooking skills - sustainable, poverty reducing stuff, i assure you.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Yemen? Yeah, man!
Like many of you, I find myself thinking a lot about Yemen these days. Sure, sure the place is complicated yadda yadda, but I was personally quite interested to see Mr. Lieberman reckoning it will be tomorrow’s war and all.
Not sure what the guy means, I sure hope we won’t have another one of those “invasion” things again (invasion 2.0 they’ll call it), but the good news is that the aid money in yemen and region will increase over the next few years and that is where HRI will come in.
If we play our cards well, HRI & affiliates will manage to pull another one of them proverbial best-of-two-worlds trick on them. What I have in mind is a brilliant practice that will hopefully become standard procedure among all respectable agencies working in Yemen. Here is how it works:
Due to high danger of kidnapping, terrorist attacks and what not, we’ll insist to our donors that no expat should be actually based in Yemen. Which means that all of our expats who are de facto based in Yemen will be formally “based” in Djibouti, Ethiopia or Nairobi where they would pocket a significantly higher post adjustment to their pay – we’ll decide on the final “hub” after we analyzed all combinations of actual comfort, post adjustment index, level of airport connectivity etc. (I personally favor Ethiopia what with that good food, good climate and direct flight to Rome; Dubai and Doha have also been mentioned).
Anyways, once formally based in the “hub”, all expats working in Yemen would be effectively “on mission” while there, which means that they would be entitled to per diem and accommodation in Yemen, in addition to the danger and hazard pay. Meanwhile they can rent out their accommodation provided in the “hub” at a reasonable price to partner agencies who will be surely interested in quality standard accommodation for their expat staff and like so we even manage to achieve some more of that proverbial inter-agency cooperation.
Which reminds me – I need to leave now to attend the Comoro Heads of Agency Country Team Meeting (CHACTM), a crucial coordination mechanism among the “stakeholders” on the island, an opportunity to share ideas and lessons learned, to fill in matrixes and to make sure we avoid duplication. I am talking very important issues that are too serious to be discussed over lobster or the dignified evenings at the Itsandra Sun or one of the other local hang-outs where we all run into each other a bit too often.
Among these crucial items, the agenda for today includes an urgent discussion on the office opening times (we can't seriously claim we are well coordinated if our offices open and close at different times can we?) – this is a contentious issue that has been on the agenda for every CHACTM over the last year and half or so and the stakeholder community are considering hiring a consultant to help us break the stalemate created by two different schools of thought. The one favours all offices to work six days a week 7am-2pm and the other prefers that we all work five days a week 7am-5pm, with a 2 day weekend. This is pretty much an ideological rift between the afternoon nappers and the weekend warriors and, like all grand ideological questions it cannot be resolved by rational arguments, hence the need for a reasonably priced consultant.
You may wonder of course which school of thought i belong to. Well, i am a bipartisan type of person, a peacemaker really, and i can see both ideas having some merit - i am apparently an afternoon napping weekend warrior, and i really hope that the reasonably priced consultant who was hired to help us solve this impasse will also see the win-win potential of this argument and help us reach another memorable best of two worlds moment.
Not sure what the guy means, I sure hope we won’t have another one of those “invasion” things again (invasion 2.0 they’ll call it), but the good news is that the aid money in yemen and region will increase over the next few years and that is where HRI will come in.
If we play our cards well, HRI & affiliates will manage to pull another one of them proverbial best-of-two-worlds trick on them. What I have in mind is a brilliant practice that will hopefully become standard procedure among all respectable agencies working in Yemen. Here is how it works:
Due to high danger of kidnapping, terrorist attacks and what not, we’ll insist to our donors that no expat should be actually based in Yemen. Which means that all of our expats who are de facto based in Yemen will be formally “based” in Djibouti, Ethiopia or Nairobi where they would pocket a significantly higher post adjustment to their pay – we’ll decide on the final “hub” after we analyzed all combinations of actual comfort, post adjustment index, level of airport connectivity etc. (I personally favor Ethiopia what with that good food, good climate and direct flight to Rome; Dubai and Doha have also been mentioned).
Anyways, once formally based in the “hub”, all expats working in Yemen would be effectively “on mission” while there, which means that they would be entitled to per diem and accommodation in Yemen, in addition to the danger and hazard pay. Meanwhile they can rent out their accommodation provided in the “hub” at a reasonable price to partner agencies who will be surely interested in quality standard accommodation for their expat staff and like so we even manage to achieve some more of that proverbial inter-agency cooperation.
Which reminds me – I need to leave now to attend the Comoro Heads of Agency Country Team Meeting (CHACTM), a crucial coordination mechanism among the “stakeholders” on the island, an opportunity to share ideas and lessons learned, to fill in matrixes and to make sure we avoid duplication. I am talking very important issues that are too serious to be discussed over lobster or the dignified evenings at the Itsandra Sun or one of the other local hang-outs where we all run into each other a bit too often.
Among these crucial items, the agenda for today includes an urgent discussion on the office opening times (we can't seriously claim we are well coordinated if our offices open and close at different times can we?) – this is a contentious issue that has been on the agenda for every CHACTM over the last year and half or so and the stakeholder community are considering hiring a consultant to help us break the stalemate created by two different schools of thought. The one favours all offices to work six days a week 7am-2pm and the other prefers that we all work five days a week 7am-5pm, with a 2 day weekend. This is pretty much an ideological rift between the afternoon nappers and the weekend warriors and, like all grand ideological questions it cannot be resolved by rational arguments, hence the need for a reasonably priced consultant.
You may wonder of course which school of thought i belong to. Well, i am a bipartisan type of person, a peacemaker really, and i can see both ideas having some merit - i am apparently an afternoon napping weekend warrior, and i really hope that the reasonably priced consultant who was hired to help us solve this impasse will also see the win-win potential of this argument and help us reach another memorable best of two worlds moment.
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