Help for Poor Africans - Project Management in the International Non-Governmental Organization - Business Plan Example

Name: University: Instructor: Date: Help for Poor Africans (HPA) INGO – Project Management Introduction In Africa, countries that have limited finances and plagued with corruption and poor governance. Hence, these governments are unsuccessful in bringing about development for their citizens. In view of this, nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) have become alternative forms of development in poor African countries since the 1980s. International NGOs play a crucial role in advocating a way through which the disconnect between existing services and needs of the citizens could be bridged (Banks and Hulme 3). In countries where the government cannot offer adequate services, goods or facilitating environments, which can enable the citizens to secure livelihoods, INGOs offers the alternative means of providing such services. Although INGOs are widely criticised, their activities have focussed more on service provision instead of empowerment and advocacy. The INGOs normally pursue the ‘little-d’ or ‘Big-D’ development. The ‘little-d’ ‘development’ as mentioned by Banks and Hulme (8) is development as a continuous process that focuses on the systemic and radical alternatives looking for diverse means of organising the politics, social relationships, and economy. On the other hand, the ‘Big-D’ development regards development as an intentional and project-based activity, wherein project outputs that are tangible have no intention of changing the institutional arrangements of the society. Although earlier INGOs were created mainly to address the structural challenges of inequality and power as well as growing civil society against feeble or hegemonic and misleading governments, they have changed in terms of their work nature and organisational character, rather espousing managerial and technical solutions to various social issues like HIV/AIDS and poverty through welfare provision as well as service delivery. International NGOs have in the process become depoliticised and professionalised. The proposed INGO, Help for Poor Africans (HPA) will provide a broad spectrum of services in different fields that range from education and health service to finance, democracy building, emergency response as well as policy analysis. The main focus will be on service deliver. Vision Creating the world that every person leads a healthy and prosperous life Mission Ending poverty and hunger in Africa through innovative, sustainable and grassroots strategies as well as ensuring they are adopted widely in countries across Africa. Principles The project seeks to end poverty and hunger in Africa; therefore, ten principles have been identified as being fundamental to the HPA Project. The INGO will make sure that all of its strategies build on such principles. The first principle will be Gender Equality: It will be an essential part of ending poverty in the targeted African countries. Without a doubt, women have a major responsibility to meet the basic needs, but still, they are deprived of the resources, say in decision-making processes, and freedom of action. The second principle will be Human Dignity: Every person is born equal in rights as well as dignity, which includes the right to education, work, health, and food. Therefore, poor people should not be treated as beneficiaries because that will be crushing their dignity. The third principle will be Sustainability, wherein solutions to finish poverty and hunger will be made sustainable environmentally, economically socially, and locally. The fourth principle will be Holistic Approach: Poverty is intimately associated with a nexus of issues such as education, health, social justice and environmental sustainability. Therefore, solving these issues together will enable HPA to reduce poverty sustainably. The last principle will be empowerment: African countries are continuously facing social suppression; HPA seeks to offer a sustained and focused action so as to awaken the poor people to the prospect of self-sufficiency and motivating them to be accountable for their own development. Goals and Purpose The main goal of the INGO will be to help poor people in exercising their fundamental rights: Considering that poor people in Africa are normally deprived of their rights to education, food, safe water, healthcare shelter as well as a dignified life. The majority of Africans are not allowed to contribute to decisions that have an effect on their lives; therefore, they are doomed to a life of uncertainty and poverty form one generation to another. By placing emphasis in the basic rights of the poor people, HPA will manage to pursue development. Another objective of the INGO is to collaborate with other partners so as to ensure the real needs of the poor people are met. For this reason, the INGO will work with local groups that understand the local knowledge and enable the organisation to effectively work in urban slums and isolated villages. The purpose of the INGO is promoting change in Africa through advocacy work that would allow the voices of the poor people to be heard by people who can make change happen. Furthermore, the INGO seeks to improve gender equity considering that women are the most affected by poverty across Africa. This is because the women lack the same power, status or control over and access to resources as the men. The INGO understand that gender inequalities are the main causes of poverty; therefore, it will strive to ensure both women and men have equal status, particularly in the field of health and education. Poverty in Africa The world’s poorest countries are found in Africa, but still some African countries such as Egypt and South Africa are not poor as compared to others like Malawi and Angola. According to Wilmot (120), the income levels in Africa have been dropping as compared to the rest of the world; therefore, Africans have become poorer and millions have recently been hit by starvation in countries such as South Sudan, Sudan, and Somalia. Most of the useful land and other countries are experiencing unreliable rainfall leading to low food production. Additionally, the natural resources of Africa have largely been monopolised by American and European companies; thus, the people do not benefit in any way from their own natural resources. Poor land management has led to land degradation, particularly close to the Sahara and in East Africa. Most of the financial aids that African countries get from INGOs are mostly for emergency food aid during famines since the longer-term aids are often embezzled by corrupt officials for personal wealth. Other financial aid comes in the form of loans that have very high-interest rates that normally become a debt burden for many poor African countries. Some of the challenges African countries face includes drinking water; education; and health. Some of the African countries are plagued with different diseases such as Cholera, Malaria, and AIDS and also have inadequate medical services and poor water systems. Some countries such as Burundi, Angola, and Somalia are experiencing poor governance and civil wars; therefore, it has become very hard to construct the needed infrastructures. As a consequence, the number of refugees in countries like Kenya (Somalia and South Sudan refugees) and Tanzania (Burundian refugees) have been increasing. A number of poorest African countries actually require considerably prolonged relief so as to be able to climb out of poverty. Widespread poverty in Africa has resulted in children getting no education, sold to the militia or forced to work. Poverty normally means widespread starvation as well as hunger. In Africa, poverty is mainly widespread in the rural areas given that over 70% of the poor people in the continent dwell in rural areas and rely on agriculture for livelihood and food. Besides that, HIV/AIDS has changed the African rural poverty profile since most poor rural households are unbearably strained with it. Almost 70% of people with HIV/AIDS live in Africa. Nearly half of sub-Saharan Africa population survive less than $1.25 a day, and this has resulted in hunger across Africa (Green).  For this Reason, the HPA Project will be an African movement working to sustainably end of poverty and hunger. The INGO will first focus its operations in ten countries; Liberia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Lesotho, Uganda, South Sudan, Mauritania, Senegal, Malawi, and Niger. Areas of Priority The INGO will have five areas of priorities: Food security, HIV/ AIDS, education, peace-building and emergencies. Food security: Hunger and poverty are closely associated; therefore, the INGO will work to prevent famine and improve food supplies through provision of tools, seeds, loans, fertiliser, as well as training. HIV/AIDS: HPA consider HIV/ AIDS as the main problem that the world is facing today, therefore, the INGO will challenge companies from developed countries to help control the epidemic in Africa through donations. Besides that, the INGO will offer support to the poor people in the rural areas by training counsellors and facilitating the creation of local support groups’ networks. Peace-building: Africa is currently plagued with armed conflicts, and for this reason, the INGO will work with the local communities to create sustainable programs that prevent re-emergence of conflict and build peace. This will be achieved by rebuilding livelihoods as well as lives; inspiring former militias to interact with the victims; helping resolve identified issues locally. Education: The INGO education activities will mainly concentrate on adult literacy as well as primary education. This will be achieved through ‘Access and Reflect’ programme: Access will offer children the informal primary education, especially who are unable to go to school because of the distance, cost or poverty while Reflect will be an innovative approach for adult empowerment and literacy. The INGO will also initiate campaigns across the targeted African countries to pressurize governments to offer quality and free primary education to every child. The INGO will use part of its donation to buy educational materials for classrooms. Emergencies: helping the poor people in Africa is not easy because the continent is hit by different forms of emergencies, which normally affect the poor. The INGO acknowledges that the rights of people are frequently starved during emergencies. In the case of an emergency, the INGO will work with members of the community to evaluate their needs as well as offer the needed help. The INGO will as well assist poor people to plan on ways of reducing the risk as well as the impact of disasters. Another programme that will initiate by the INGO after the main priorities have been met is the improvement of the community agricultural infrastructure with the objective of reducing the poor rural communities’ isolation of as well as improving their access to services and markets. Approach and Strategies The main element of the INGO work in Africa will be to mobilize people for self-reliant actions. In this case, mobilization will be utilised to change the underlying attitude and awakening individuals to the prospect of resourcefulness and sustainably be free from hunger. This process will certainly generate confidence as well as a vision of overcoming poverty. This will be achieved through a workshop dubbed Africa Arise Workshop (AAW). The AAW will integrate public commitment and leadership training to achieve that vision and some set of actions for realising the vision will be identified. All partakers will be required to develop a particular action plan for projects that they can independently achieve in 90 days, through their own family resources, skills, and initiatives. At the AAW, the INGO will recruit the most motivated as well as committed people to become ‘animators’ volunteer leaders. The animators will be expected to empower other poor individuals to understand their own capabilities and look for sustainable solutions. In the ten African countries, the INGO will create clusters within the rural areas known as epicentres that comprises of 2,000-10,000 people to perform integrated strategies in order to meet the basic needs of the poor people. The INGO plans to have 100 epicentres in Africa to facilitate the development programs; thus, reaching close to one million Africans. Measuring the Output The INGO Project’s outputs will be measured by Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) system, which is rooted in a number of principles; measuring what matters; community-led engagement; and objectivity. The INGO will be measuring what matters and will focus on Africa development and grassroots advocacy. The M&E system will act as an important framework for ensuring the INGO delivers on its organizational mission of ending poverty and hunger through empowerment and promoting sustainable self-reliance. In order to evaluate the INGO Project’s performance, INGO will gather reliable primary data (both quantitative as well as qualitative) for outcomes and outputs and also from secondary sources. This will facilitate the INGO to critically examine its partners’ ability to handle issues like health care and malnutrition. The objective of the M&E system will be to examine what the project need and what is not needed for successful implementation. The feedback loop will connect directly the performance of the project to community goals as well as expectations. The M&E system will serve the whole network of HPA’s partners in the 10 African countries. The system will be tracking output indicators and activities quarterly. Furthermore, the INGO will develop outcome indicators that will improve the ability to measure the long-standing progress towards its goals. Outputs will also be measured through key informant questionnaires, focus group discussion, and household survey. Additionally, the INGO will be monitoring its activities as well as outputs quarterly so as to get high-quality data. The M&E systems will be integrated with information technologies through an integrated database as well as mobile tools for data collection. Equipment and Supplies The INGO will place much emphasis on the financial assistance so as to facilitate the conceptualisation of the projects. Normally, when working on processes that are time-consuming, most INGOs become unsuccessful in realising the importance of non-financial resources that are more available as compared to direct grants. Non-financial donations for the HPA will include vehicles, computers, books, stationary and furniture. Such resources are considered important for the continuous sustainability of programs and projects that will be implemented by the INGO in Africa. The INGO will request for books from other INGOs such as the International Book Project so as to furnish the libraries, schools, religious and medical institutions in rural areas across the targeted African countries. Besides that, the INGO will look for non-financial donations such as refurbished laptop and desktop computers so as to reduce the cost of operation. Furthermore, the INGO will supply its donations through Mercy Logistics, which is a development and humanitarian organisation that help INGOs to fight poverty in developing countries. The INGO will also collect non-perishable food from donators at local retail stores. Personnel and Funding The INGO will employ all types of persons given that members of NGO personnel are not characterised by capability, profession and personality. The INGO personnel will consist of graduates in international relations, public health, political science, social work, medicine, as well as communications. For managerial positions, the INGO will recruit candidates will with management experiences and expertise. Basically, the INGO will recruit various individuals from ex-military personnel to fresh graduates and young volunteers. The INGO member positions will be grouped into a number of categories: Executive management, general field personnel, general support staff, senior field staff, local staff and experts. Basically, the General Support Staff will comprise of volunteers and employees that will be situated at the INGO’s HQ. Their role will be to offer the support and backstopping services for the field operations of the INGO. They will also be tasked with HR duties, fundraising, accounting, as well as IT support. The General Field Staff will involve expats who will take part in the general programmatic oversight of the INGO activities in Africa. They will also be involved in managing the logistical services, local staff as well as IDP or refugee camps. The Senior Field Staff will consist of expats experienced in the management of the entire regional or countrywide programs of the INGO. They will be known as country coordinator and will be charged with making sure that the INGO programs are appropriately implemented. The Executive Management will involve professional executives from different fields such as military, government or private sector, especially those with connections with companies that could help INGO in its programs as well as fundraising. The experts that will be recruited include engineers, psychologists, medical doctors and specialists in hygiene, water, sanitation, agricultural, economic logistics and transportation. The local staff will be hired at country level on a contract basis. The policies that will be set for INGO personnel will be basic as well as straightforward, and they will include neutrality, safety procedures, and acknowledgments of the INGO code of conduct. Other will include duties descriptions as well as suitable behaviour in certain areas. For this reason, the INGO will require all the new hires to sign a form suggesting they have read the code of conduct and will adhere to its elements. The INGO will raise its funds through contributions and other means such as grants, donations as well as multilateral and bilateral aid. The multilateral and bilateral aid will be sourced from multilateral organizations like the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank as well as the United Nations. Another source of funding will be through the corporate agencies through partnerships. Funding will also be sourced from gifts and donations, mostly from informal groups or individuals (Werker and Ahmed 81). The INGO could also supplement official aid through engaging in the mobilisation of the private donors (Herzer and Nunnenkamp 1). Costs Different types of costs will be incurred during the project, and the overall costs will be divided as staff costs, operational costs, core costs, and capital costs. In view of this, the operational costs will consist of expenses that INGO will have to meet prior to the implementation of the project’s activities. These costs will be billed directly to the donors since they will directly impact the beneficiaries. The operation expenses will include conducting the Africa Arise workshop and campaigns for creating awareness. Another type of costs will be staff costs which are expenses that will be used to pay salaries to the INGO’s personnel. Therefore, the staff costs will include recruitment costs and staff salaries. On the other hand, the core costs will involve the costs sustained because of the organization’s operational expenses. The core costs will include costs associated with stationary, staff meetings, and hiring a receptionist. The capital costs will be essential to the INGO and they will include expenses for buying vehicles, office furniture, computers and office building. But this will be cut because some of the equipment like computers and furniture will be received in the form of donations. Summary In conclusion, the INGO will undoubtedly positively impact the growth of the targeted African countries with ways of overcoming poverty and hunger. The INGO will help the poor people to exercise their right to food, safe water, shelter, education as well as healthcare. The organisation as mentioned earlier will work in partnership with other organisation so as to be able to meet the real needs of the community members. Poverty and food insecurity is a key problem in Africa with a lot of Africans suffering from malnutrition and under-nutrition, especially in the rural areas. High food prices, as well as price volatility, have resulted in hunger and under-nutrition. Underutilisation of land have resulted in food shortage; therefore, as food security is amongst the main priorities of INGO. The INGO food programme will be in line with the Global Food Security Strategic Plan. The focus of the INGO in African countries will be on nutrition, food security as well as health given that all of these are closely intertwined. The creation of animators as well as epicentres will facilitate the INGO to achieve its strategic goals and objectives. As the mission suggest, the INGO will strive to end poverty as well as hunger in the nine targeted African countries through innovative, sustainable, grassroots strategies as well as ensuring that the strategies are adopted widely. Works Cited Banks, Nicola and with David Hulme. The role of NGOs and civil society in development and poverty reduction. BWPI Working Paper. Manchester: Brooks World Poverty Institute, 2012. Green, Zaida. One and a half billion people live on less than $1.25 per day. 1 April 2015. 26 April 2016. . Herzer, Dierk and Peter Nunnenkamp. Private Donations, Government Grants, Commercial Activities, and Fundraising: Cointegration and Causality for NGOs in International Development Cooperation. Working Paper. Kiel, Germany: Kiel Institute for the World Economy, 2012. Werker, Eric D. and Faisal Z. Ahmed. "What Do Non-Governmental Organizations Do?" Journal of Economic Perspectives 22.2 (2008): 73-92. Wilmot, Vincent. World Poverty in the 21st Century. Lulu.com: London, 2015. Read More