10,800 people receive life-saving aid in drought affected Somalia – what I have been busy with last week
After the two heavy statements in the introduction posts of myself and @adra it got a bit silent last week. Reason is the current drought in Somalia and neighboring countries that kept me busy at work. I don’t want to get too much into detail about the situation there, as I don’t want to kill your mood. Just in short. It’s bad, really bad. And it’s not the fault of these people who happen to be born there. When there is no rain (also due to climate change, which people in Somalia hardly caused), your well dries, you cannot drink clean water nor wash yourself, making you sick, your crops die, your animals die. And because you live in a poor part of Africa you have no other resources to support yourself nor your family … well… you get the picture what will happen next.
Luckily the Government of Germany agrees, that these people really need help. And my part in that was to receive the project proposal from our partner office in Somalia (they know the situation best and can decide best what would help the most) and polish it up in order to submit it to the German Federal Foreign Office.
Now, for those of you who do not know how such a proposal looks like – which is probably almost everyone – why not follow @adra (and me of course @dinoo). Under the tag #ADRA-University I plan to submit a series of posts over the next couple of weeks and months that will answer a lot of those details when it comes to how humanitarian organizations work and what it takes to become a humanitarian aid worker.
The short version here.
The project proposal consists of several documents.
The main document is the narrative proposal itself. Every donor has a slightly different format with differing requirements in detail. In this specific case let’s call it medium difficulty. The final product has 20 pages now, translated into German. And I really don’t fancy doing translations. But before translating, my task is to check if every question has been answered with all the needed detail, if all policies, guidelines and regulations have been followed, and if the entire logic of the proposal is consistent. There is a lot of conversation going back and forth between our office in Germany and our partner ADRA Somalia until every potential question has been answered. As you’re about to request a lot of tax-payers’ money from your government, you really want to make sure it will be put to best use and the proposal document reflects exactly that.
The second document is the so-called LogFrame. The logical framework. Quite tricky this one, as it reflects on one page exactly what you plan to achieve, how, and what could potentially go wrong in a very distinctive format. Writing a good LogFrame is an art and the most important document of your proposal. Everyone will look at that one first in order to get a good guess about your entire project.
The next document is the so-called DIP. A detailed implementation plan. Something like a Gantt-chart where you list every activity needed to fulfill your project goal, the time when each activity begins and the time needed to fulfill it. Every project manager has seen such a thing before in one form or another.
Last but not least, money talk, the budget. How much you need for every activity in order to achieve the expected result. In this case we spend most money for a lot of food, for drinking water, for increasing the capacity of wells and for some hygiene products. Enough to ensure 10,800 people survive for the next 6 months. In addition we have some expenses for the staff of ADRA Somalia who have to do all the work to bring the goods to the people and ensure everything works a planned. Salaries in Somalia are quite moderate. I have no problem at all to spend money for that. They work in real hard conditions and I’m proud of each and everyone there. I would even pay them more, but that would mean we can give people in dire need less and that is not an option.
Here comes the part where you as Steemian can play a significant supportive role.
In Germany we don’t have any gain from such a project, aside of some personal satisfaction maybe. On the contrary. The money comes from the German government, yes, but not all of it. 10% has to come from our pocket. In other words, for every dollar we can receive as a donation we can receive up to 9 additional dollars (or € in this case) to leverage the impact of our work. I like that idea.
All the money @adra earns goes into our projects and all the liquid author rewards of my posts with the #ADRA tag get transferred to @adra as well.
Thank you for your interest, I hope to find some more time to write more stories the next couple days. The week just started : )