As we are beginning to open new country program offices, the Reps are doing well with the program development and implementation, but very poorly on financial and administrative accountability. RKP has established a very good system of mentoring for the Reps where they travel to other pgoram sites and visit with other Country Directors. What is lacking, however, is the same type of mentoring system for the financial and administrative end of the program.

The IPD Operations Manual gives a very good outline of the procedures, requirements and forms, but it is only useful once you are familiar with the HPI system. If you have never operated a country office from the ground up, these procedures will prove useful, but often very confusing.

The purpose of this team, therefore, is to a) establish a very very basic set of instructions for new country programs that helps them with the simple things (i.e., establishing a bank account, how to submit a project proposal, how to draw up a budget, how to create a spreadsheet to track income and expenses, how to handle petty cash, etc.); and b) establish a yearly team from among the ASP support staff that will travel to new country program areas for training and training follow-up.

The Instructions or manual or workbook will be designed with the novice in mind. It will contain steps in a 1-2-3 fashion and examples of forms and spreadsheets. This will NOT be a manual of requirements. The IPD manual gives procedures and requirements. Rather this will be more like a workbook that new country programs can use to help them get started and get started right.

The Yearly training team will change from year to year. It will be composed of a team of 2 to 3 persons from more well established country programs that that have staff competent in financial and administrative areas and familiar with the HPI system. They will go into a new country office with the Instruction Manual and work with the Rep and/or staff in the office on all the basics. One year later, the next team will come back for follow up training and to conduct and internal audit of their progress. The training team will NOT be an evaluation team to determine whether or not the program will continue. Their purpose will be to help the program establish good record keeping systems and come back a year later to help with any further questions or concerns. The team will do in person, what I have tried to do via email and postal service; but doing so in person should prove much more effective.

-- Anonymous, January 26, 1999