Ok first thing that comes to mind is luv, but we all need alittle luv'in (sorry, brain fart). But what I was thinking of is:
- A Monitoring and Evaluation person (M&E)
- A Lawyer
Of course there are other things, the obvious like administrator, agronomist (duh), veterinarian (assuming the project has a livestock component which most of mine do), and a few others I that I am sure I am forgetting but the two afore mentioned positions are things that seem to be missing all to often from projects, and even when they are available they are misused.
Lawyers are needed because to be able to navigate the laws (or catch the caveats) of developing countries is truly a mind boggling task and is almost impossible for non-lawyer nationals but they are really quite essential. Even if the laws are not enforced you will be safer complying with them than ignoring them (international organizations are seen as limitless bags of money ripe for extortion etc so if you aren't following the rules then you become an even-easier target for corrupt officials or well connected individuals).
M&E people are important because you have to show the donor results, and it is of course lots of numbers and stats etc (and we all know about statistics) but if you have an obviously defunct (or worse, non-existent) monitoring plan in place and no data coming into the project you will have nothing to show the donor (or nothing to back up your claims). Not only that but for a non-math-minded type like myself creating a M&E plan is a bear and keeping up with it, crunching the numbers, and trying to take into account external factors is more than my wee brain can do (maybe if that was my only job but it would be a miserable job for me and at this stage of my professional life [such as it is] I am usually in positions where i have to follow many things and can't devote significant time to M&E).
My previous project didn't have a budget line for a lawyer and I tried to get my staff to contract one on a per job basis but it was towards the end of the project, they were lazy, and I was getting really tired of the project but I can think of a few instances where a lawyer would/should have caught errors in contracts, could have helped us in intervening in some areas (irrigation and government roles), etc. My previous project did kind of have a M&E person but they ended up just being computer guys that could input data and graph out what i needed but were worthless for analysis or following the project in anyway.
Oh well, my two cents for the day.
1 comment:
Monitoring and evaluation is a big part of lots of jobs.....a phrase I've used often is "you get what you measure." Basically the expression means to me that those things we track, we pay attention to. You might be surprised how many lights get turned off when someone starts to track the monthly electric bill....
Post a Comment