In Acord Newsletter Issue 1: February 2001

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Article 11:
This page includes two articles. Click on the title below to take you down the page to the relevant article.

1. A few words from Dave Waller, Executive Director, ACORD

2. Funding News

A few words from Dave Waller, Executive Director, ACORD

The work of the past few months has continued to gather pace as we prepare for the Board meeting in London on February 27. By the middle of February we will be in a position to present a strategic plan to the Board that brings together the results of the many discussions that have taken place over the past 2½ years about ACORD’s future.

In addition to the Pan Africa Meeting that involved some of us almost 18 months ago, many of you have also been involved through the regional meetings and through e-mail exchanges. Most recently the e-mail has enabled a rapid additional round of reaction to the draft mission statements that would have been impossible at the start of this process. Thanks to all those who have participated so actively.

Here in the Secretariat we have also had intensive debates about the structures that are needed in order to support the emerging Area and Thematic programmes and ensure that our commitment to integrated programming is as consistent as possible.

While taking the decisions necessary to finalise the strategic plan has taken more time than any of us would have wished, I am confident that this process will enable us to move forward more rapidly in the future – from reviewing what we should be doing to focusing on achieving the exciting goals that we have set for ourselves.

I am very encouraged by the progress that has been made in developing clusters of integrated programmes in the past few months and am confident that this will continue.

Hopefully this whole process makes it clear to us where the ACORD bus (see above) is going.

In the short term all aspects of fundraising are a priority. This involves everything from programme development, proposal development, programme reporting and accounting to developing relationships with potential donors and exploring areas of initial interest where we could work together.

The reporting and accounting is critical not only because of our reputation as efficient programme managers but also because we cannot claim our grants from those donors that reimburse our expenditure rather than pay up front. We currently have almost £1m that we need to claim from donors, which puts a strain on our cash flow that affects us all. So get those reports and accounts in please!

I would like to thank everyone for their tremendous commitment and am confident that we are moving forward and developing an exciting and innovative organisation staffed with excellent individuals who are making a real contribution to addressing the issues facing Africa.

It’s fair to say that in the past four to six weeks we have experienced uncertainty, unexpected successes and unexpected setbacks. Just when we feel like we’re plunging down, we get some good news and climb up again!

Let’s start with staffing. Hayley Wilkes, our new Funding Officer supporting Eagle and West Africa, handed in her resignation and will leave after just four months with ACORD. The post was advertised internally and Samy Adouani, the new Funding Administrator, applied and has been offered the job. Although this means looking for a new Funding Administrator (part-time) again, we wish Samy well in his new challenge and we look forward to developing a new team.

The National Lottery Charities Board agreed to fund our programme in Eritrea, which will give us close to £1,000,000 over four years. Getting funding out of the European Commission this year has been rather like an England national football team victory – almost impossible to achieve! But to cut a long story short, we are hopeful of being awarded one contract for Ethiopia from the co-financing budget, and in early January we received a contract for a block grant, which will fund small parts of ACORD programme across Africa. The disappointments with the EC have been denial of an extension of funding for the Somalia programme beyond 2001 and refusal to issue a contract for Rwanda.

Our friends at DFID, however, rewarded us with an early Christmas and Eid present by announcing that all four of our applications would be funded. These were for programmes in Burundi, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Mozambique. Further good news after the Christmas break was that the States of Jersey agreed to fund three of the four small projects we submitted; Chad, Rwanda and Sudan. Unfortunately, they turned down Tanzania.

We are still hopeful of reaching our target of overall income for 2000 of £8,000,000 but income for 2001 at this stage is looking much lower than in the past. We need to continue to work hard at identifying new possible sources of funding and making applications. Let’s hope for some more successes for 2001.

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