UNHCR in Sri Lanka

I have just retuirned from a 4 month placemengt with UNHCR (the UN's Refugee Agency) in Sri Lanka. This placement was as part of Irish Aid's Rapid Response Corp.

I travelled to Sri Lanka in May in response to the large scale displacement of people in the north of the country, resulting from the final phase of fighting between the government foirces and the LTTE (Tamil Tigers).

As a field officer for UNHCR my responsibilities were various and varied. As part of the visa process I had to prepare a brief ToR which is probably the best way to summarise my role:

1.Monitor the situation in IDP camps and Returned Divisions & GN Divisions and assess IDP/Return needs, specifically in the shelter sector and distribution of NFIs.
2.Monitor delivery of assistance to vulnerable groups.
3.Improve the mechanisms for identification of humanitarian gaps in the delivery of assistance and protection in the Return & IDP sites and liaise with the Head of Sub-Office and other clusters to ensure appropriate steps are taken to address gaps.
4.Provide guidance and support to Government representatives at District level and in Return Divisions & GN Divisions, governmental camp managers and NGO partners working in the IDP sites, which include participation of IDP communities (Returned & in Camps or Host locations) in issues of humanitarian services and protection provided in their sites.
5.Strengthen coordination mechanisms between local authorities (GA, DS and GS levels plus military authorities) and NGO partners, in the framework of the Shelter Coordination Cell and the Watsan Cluster.
6.Together with the Shelter Coordinator, act as focal point for negotiations with government & military authorities, UN agencies and NGO partners on the provision of assistance to return Divisions/GN Divisions and camps
7.Improve the mechanisms for information management, including age and gender demographic data, and ensure proper analysis of the collected information in order to maximize delivery of assistance.

During my time in Sri Lanka I kept a regular diary of the events and experiences, ranging from protection monitoring in the IDP camps, supporting the return proccess for families allowed to return to their original villages and homes, the difficulties of establishing & managing a supply & logistics function in a remote part of the country - and the challenge of elephants (from finding them, to dodging them).

The return process is continuing - based on a 180 day plan by the Sri Lankan governbment, so I anticipate that I will return to Sri Lanka later in the year to continue my contribution to the work of UNHCR and the assistance of Irish Aid.

Ireland & Uruguay - sharing economic development experiences (3)

On my recent trip to Uruguay I worked with a development programme (Uruguay Integra) whose focus is on building the capacity of the local government structures to identify, plan, fund and implement local development initiatives. As part of this I prepared a guide (drawing from several sources) to policy development and engaging public participation in policy. The basis of the guide was again two processes (value chains [Uruguay 2]):

Public policy design process


Public participation in policy design process

Ireland & Uruguay - sharing economic development experiences (2)

On my recent trip to Uruguay I met with a number of agencies where we discussed the Irish economic development structure (from policy to implementation to evaluation and the agencies responsible for this).

From this we developed some enterprise development Value Chains to allow us to compare the Irish experience (policy process and agencies) with that of Uruguay:

Policy Research Value Chain: this is the approach that has been adopted by Forfas, the Irish agency responsible for economic policy research:


Enterprise Development (Agency) Value Chain: this is the approach to building on innovation and entrepreneurial capacity towards export-based growth:


Policy Development (Implementation & Evaluation) Value Chain: we designed a chain of events that tend to be followed when defining a policy, developing implementation strategies for it; the associated coordination, regulation and monitoring and ending with evaluation. The purpose was to create a comparable method that we could align both Irish and Uruguayan development agencies and see where the similarities and opportunities lie:

Ireland & Uruguay - sharing economic development experiences

I have just returned from an assignment in Uruguay, working with the Office of Planning and Budgeting (OPP: oficina de planteamiento y presupuesto). This followed on from a trip by the director of OPP to Ireland in 2007.

The primary deliverable from this trip (in addition to a report and recommendations) was a story-board “Tail [tale] of the Celtic Tiger” – in interactive presentation drawing on more than 40 sources of information describing the Irish economic experience from the 1980s onwards.



The presentation follows the tail of the celtic tiger:
1. What caused the Celtic Tiger? (What existed before & what we did)
2. How did the Tiger roar? (Basis of the Celtic Tiger)
3. How can the tiger keep roaring? (Key Messages for today…)
4. How did we train the tiger? (Enterprise Development Structures)
5. The owners of the tiger (Social Partnership)
6. Feeding the Tiger (National Development Plan)
7. The tiger’s circus (Public Sector Modernisation)

Grant Management Guiding Principles

“Best practice” can be an inappropriate term to use – as what suits one organisation may not suit another. But having assisted a number of grant providers over the past number of years, there are common themes – “guiding principles” - that impact a grant provider and its grant management processes. So, while I have not listed out these “guiding principles” here, I have gathered these common themes together.

Naturally, there will be certain assumptions that support grant management “guiding principles” (to try and close the gap between grant providers and the way that they work) so I have used the following grant management process as the basis (drawing on the practical experience that I encountered with grant providers):

Supporting this value chain are the following assumptions (which underpin the “guiding principles” which I have identified:

 Grant management is an end-to-end process that is initiate with the initial application for a grant through the final payment of that grant
 Compliance with all donor requirements can be met throughout the grant management processes (initial grant application, through to final payment), including compliance with sound financial management practice and controls.
 The actual payment (settlement of the financial responsibility) of a grant is a financial transaction within the accounts payable (AP) function and as such must meet the appropriate financial management standards of control, reconciliation and audit.

I have prepared 27 “guiding principles” (15 management principles and 12 process principles that, combined support the overall grant management) under the following headings
 Planning & Design (5)
 Operations Management (5)
 Performance Management (5)
 Technology Management & Enablement (6)
 Data Management (3)
 Financial Management (3 – not including corporate governance & compliance requirements)

Enterprise & Entrepreneurship in Development

I recently completed a research study on the opportunities and challenges facing development organisation (from donors & policy-makers; through NGOs and development agencies to micro & small enterprises): “Opportunities and management requirements for enterprise & entrepreneurship-based programmes in development!)

In addition to the resources that I have found very useful through the Business Figths Poverty network I also reviewed more that 50 sources including:
- Papers & Presentations from various development; corporate; philanthropic and institutional (e,g, World Bank; IOL) sources
- African & Asian Networks (e.g. LEDNA & SBC Network & Entrepreneurship Development)
- Government Donors (e.g. Irish Aid & DFID)
- UN General Assembly
- Journal of Developmental Entrepreneurship,

I adopted the same research methodology as t used for ICT in Development (which supported a successful 7-figure funding application).



There were two objectives for this research:

1. Identifying the various elements that are required to design a successful enterprise development programme; ranging from Needs Analysis & Solution Design to Programme Management and Monitoring & Evaluation (Development Value Chain)

Within this I focused on the four stages of enterprise (business) development:
- Business Idea: the basic concept for initiating an enterprise
- Business model: how will this business idea actually generate revenues
- Business Case: is the potential return (profit) appropriate for the necessary expenditure (costs) to achieve this return
- Business Plan: hat actions will we take, what decisions will we make, what finance do we need in order to start the business (Note : the business plan is a combination of business idea, model, case plus plan)

In addition to a re-usable research log (where I have itemised all of the relevant aspects of the literature and categorised them for easy searching & sorting in the future) I designed an Enterprise Development Programme Design/Assessment tool – a question-based tool, with guidance notes, to assist in either designing a programme/proposal or in assessing an existing programme as part of ongoing management, monitoring & evaluation.



2. The second objective was to help me in development an Enterprise & Entrepreneurship Development Programme, based on work that I have been doing over the past year with a number of development organisations here in Ireland.



Based on a proven enterprise & entrepreneurship development model here in Ireland; the County Enterprise Boards (CEBs), I was able to design a 3 year programme, using the Logical Framework. In addition to the “end-2-end” Development management processes I have also incorporated a policy-based (macro) set of objectives as wells as enterprise-led (micro) objectives

Enterprise Healthcheck Update

Drawing on the work that I have done with small and medium enterprises in capitalising on the opportunities of the internet (see eCommerce for Success) I have updated the Enterprise Healthcheck tool to include an eReadiness assessment that covers the following:

- Company Commitment to the internet
- Competitive Environment
- Distribution Chain (website/internet)
- Product Database
- Product Photos
- Online Sales fulfillment
- Legacy Computer Systems
- Internal (IT & Website) Maintenance Staff
- Development/Developer Readiness