The Man With The Plan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What happens in Aid Vegas stays in Aid Vegas

Here's the best thing about this business:

No one's watching.

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

I'd just hate that!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and of course

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

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

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

Meanwhile, more funding our way just makes business sense.

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

10 Remarkable Individuals in Aid

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

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

Same Same but Different

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

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

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

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

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

Quite to the contrary.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome friends, to a new era.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brown Babies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mystical Experiences about Ancestors and T-shirts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was finally happening.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. K's Diary - Roughing it in Nicaragua

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Continued Success in 2011!

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

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

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

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

Could that be a coincidence?

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

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

You get it, right?

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

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

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

Best Practices in Procurement for Hardship Postings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is all about the image in this business.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Patricia and The Horse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Protecting Children - All the Way to Easy Streets

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

Dennis The Malaria Expert

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Workshop Season

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Absorptive Capacity