Project Implementation
The implementation of FACT project required a close collaboration of 8 teams involved into the project: senior management, finance, M&E, IT, logistics, HR, field stuff and temporary staff. (Atchell, 2006)
Finally, it was decided at the planning stage that the food ration, provided to each participated household, would include 20 kg of maize, 4 kg of beans and 1 litre of vegetable oil.
The food ration was complemented by an envelope with cash inside. Amount of cash was allocated according to the designed bands system as follows (Atchell, 2006):
Tab. 1 Source: Atchell (2006), p. 71
As it can be seen in the table, there was a big difference in amounts of cash offered to different bands. Thus, a household with 3 family members, falling into the Band 1 (Small) had to receive 350 MK for household, while a household with 4 family members – with just one extra person as compared to the previous case – would receive 1,400 MK, which is 4 times as much as the first one. Taking into consideration that the food ration was equal for all the households in spite of their actual size, it is easy to see the reason for people’s complains about the applied system.
It might be better to consider an option to assign the amount of cash for each household in a direct proportion to its size.
In spite of some problems with the band system design, Concern demonstrated the highest level of commitment to this project by all the members of its staff, including the temporary employees and volunteers, and made all the possible efforts to avoid any kind of mistakes during the cash and food distribution process, however, not always in the most efficient way.
Thus, one of the problems on the operational side was concerned with IT skills of the stuff involved in the project. As only one person in the team could use Access, it put much pressure during the process of the preparation of the beneficiary lists and printing out of personalised beneficiary cards and cash envelopes. As nobody, except one person, could use Access, all the data regarding the participating households were gathered in Excel sheets first of all and later had to be transferred into Access data base in order to allow printing of all the personalised materials. The only person with Access skills had to manage the transfer of all the data into Access, while also having to supervise the printing process itself, including the feeding of the envelopes into the printer. This situation cause big delays of the process and place additional pressure on the team who was trying to deliver the project according to the agreed schedule.
This example illustrates the importance of having enough human resources with necessary skills for such projects, which was also highlighted by Rauch & Herrmann (2007) and others. Some financial knowledge and experience of working with cash was another type of skills which proved to be extremely important for such cash distributing project.
It was advised by Atchell (2006) to assure the availability of IT skilled personnel for the future projects of Concern and allow time for the IT training when needed, however, taking into consideration the urgent character of such projects it is doubtful that the project team would have time to undergo such training. Instead, it could be advised to keep a a regularly updated contact list of IT specialists interested in volunteering and temporary working in some projects if the needs arises.
Another problem on the operational side was related to the preparation of the cash envelopes and the process of their physical distribution to the beneficiaries in the targeted areas. While Concern achieved great results in terms of the accuracy of distributions with just 1 error for all the 20,000 of handed out cash envelopes, it proved to be a highly time consuming exercise. It was reported by Dereveux et al. (2006) that the cash designated for each envelope was handled by the Concern staff 7 times during the process, each time checking and re-counting it. Thus, such attention to detail can be praised; however, it would be advisable to Concern to try to find a more efficient way of dealing with cash transfers. A study of best practices in this field, for instance, the experience of Oxfam in similar project, would be beneficial.
The re-design of the operational side would be especially important if Concern attempts to deliver a similar project on a larger scale as it could be extremely challenging without enough experience. (Harvey & Savage, 2006)
As it was stated by Gentilini (2007):
“Capacity building is a process that requires substantial commitment and time, and should be organized in a step-by-step process, starting with pilot activities that are gradually scaled up. Hasty country-wide implementation of social cash transfer programs in [least developed countries] with weak administrative structures can lead to poor performance. This, in turn, can have a negative impact on the political support and financial sustainability of such programmes.”
However, in the same time it is important to point out the overall high quality of FACT project implementation at these stage and scale. The beneficiaries were highly satisfied with the work of Concern, timely deliveries always according to pre-agreed schedules, and that all the deliveries were made in full, to all households selected as beneficiaries for this project. (Deveraux et al., 2006)