On the most recent Accountability Club call we were fortunate to have representatives from CARE, Christian Aid, the Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC), the ECB Project Team, Merlin, Oxfam, Save the Children, and World Vision. The topic of the conversation was financial transparency, and the discussion was rich. Angela, CARE agency manager and standing team member, shared her experiences in the field.
Angela: In 2010-2011 I ran various projects for CARE in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), providing multi-sectoral support for displaced families living with host families. This work started with a pilot project in Goma using funding from the DEC. The funding was quite flexible and allowed us room for decision-making and revisions of the planned expenditures per sector. We started by setting up a committee of community representatives in the two areas of the town where we were working. We then worked closely with this committee to determine selection criteria for beneficiaries and reviewed the proposed project together, including presenting the project budget. Direct project costs were shared in more detail, but other costs, including salaries and costs of being operational there, were lumped into one sum due to sensitivities around salary information.
The planned interventions were in shelter, food and non-food items (NFIs), and we presented various shelter design and cost options, as well as different food and NFI options, and together decided what type of shelter beneficiaries would receive and how much money would go to each sector. We also decided jointly what modality was preferred for delivery – shelter would be in-kind and food/NFIs would be through a cash voucher scheme.
Q. What were some of your key challenges?
A. At that time it was not usual to share financial information. The community representatives appreciated the chance to contribute to decisions and have an understanding of the budget. Budgets can be extremely complicated, so a challenge is how to share the information without confusing people. We drew up the budget on flipcharts as simply as possible, calculated costs per beneficiary family to make the amounts more tangible and went through everything verbally.
Q. What were some of the advantages of sharing this information?
A. We were able to offer different options with the shelter, and the community could make a decision on what they felt was appropriate. Did they want us to spend more to build a more elaborate shelter and then spend less on food or NFIs? Or would their preference be a more basic shelter extension, that would allow us to spend more on food and NFIs, or somewhere between the two? This ensured that the intervention was really relevant to them, and we received great feedback from the beneficiaries. Additionally, we surprisingly received good feedback from non-beneficiaries. When the project ended, one of the community committees was still active for at least a year after, as the community continued to do their own fundraising from local businesses and implement their own little projects.
Q. What information was shared with partners? What was included in the partner agreement?
A. We didn’t have partners on that first project, but it may be tricky working with local partners with full transparency. I previously worked with Merlin in DRC where we worked with the local health authorities, and I definitely wouldn’t have shared the full project financial information with certain individuals as they may well have used it against us to leverage higher ‘primes’ (a subsidy from Merlin on top of their normal Ministry of Health salary).
On this point Lucy from Oxfam shared that during an Oxfam program in West Bank they were completely transparent with their partners and conducted the budgeting process with them. They also shared financial information with communities with whom they worked. The level of comfort they felt in this relationship was, however, mainly due to the long-term relationship they had with these partners. They had built trust over time, but she also noted that the more information you share, the more trust you build. It is a long-term process, but it’s worth working through.
Read the second half of this interview here!
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