'Less control, more recommendations'

Six months down the line and we are curious as to the state of affairs at Wemos. How are the organisational assessments coming along? And the monitoring of capacity development progress? How does Wemos deal with its various roles now? Mariska Meurs gives an update.

September 2009

'We've been busy in recent months. As I mentioned at the time, we wanted to avoid belittling in organisational assessments and the monitoring of capacity development. We therefore contemplated the question used to address one another. We also tried to clarify the indicators we use to measure results. We now enter into discussion with partner organisations on what internal improvements, such as the determining of job descriptions, are to contribute to for example improved lobbying or better reports. For Wemos this means: less control more advice.'

Learning-working path

According to Meurs, PSO has a great deal of knowledge in the field of organisational assessments. 'I attended a PSO workshop. The organisation has a clear vision of how to set up and implement a capacity development programme. We used this. In the framework of the Learning-working path with PSO I discussed organising assessments and the follow up to this with a number of PSO members.'

Roles

To follow up Wemos' organisational assessment in December 2007, Wemos thought about the combination of various roles: financier, cooperation partner and capacity builder. How does the organisation deal with its roles now? Meurs: 'In the framework of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' co-financing system we are engaged in the process of strategy formulation. We have decided to phase out a number of roles because we cannot clearly separate them. For example, the institutional financier role will be phased out. Because, as a financier, you cannot simultaneously be an equal cooperation partner. Incidentally, we may still provide funding at activity level.' 

'As a cooperation partner, we are now going to focus much more on our core business i.e. knowledge about lobbying in the field of international policy and health. We have noticed that separating the various roles and adapting our procedures has allowed us to properly control the relationship with our partner organisations and even improve that relationship.'

Lobbying capacity

Have these developments contributed to the efficacy of partner organisations in their lobbying activities aimed at structural health improvement in the South? 'Absolutely. In Zambia, for example, we provided workshops in conjunction with Cordaid on the theme of care staff. After those workshops, twenty Zambian organisations decided to unite in a network and jointly participate in the Ministry of Health's Technical Working Groups. The latter prepare policy. This has enormously increased lobbying capacity. We now want to involve Zambia's university. It has the research experience and capacity to support the network which will lead to improved policy proposals. In other words, the advances have been huge,' according to Meurs.

Vicious circle

There is a clear relationship between Wemos’ multi-year plan for 2006-2010 Breaking the Vicious Circle and its standard capacity development programme. Meurs explains: 'We want to tackle structural, policy-related problems in the field of medicines, nutrition and care staff. However, we often encounter a vicious circle. Take, for example, care staff in Zambia. There is demand for staff and there are a large number of unemployed nurses, but there is no money to employ sufficient staff. Much of the donor funds that come in have been earmarked and may only be spent on specific objectives, such as combating HIV/AIDS and training staff to include combating HIV/AIDS in their tasks, but only a small proportion of the funds are actually aimed at paying salaries in the public health sector. The ministry spends a lot of time on bookkeeping and managing all those small funds and therefore has less time to devise a thorough approach to the lack of staff. The ministry's capacity is limited and is used incorrectly. We reach out to donors and ask them for more structural support.'

'Our capacity development programmes capitalise on this. We provide courses which teach people to analyse government budgets and assess whether the funds end up in the right place. We explain lobbying strategies aimed at making government bodies take on their responsibilities. The network I referred to, can play an important role in this.'

How have partner organisations responded to the changes at Wemos? 'A review revealed that they appreciate our desire to be on equal footing with them. They also appreciate our role as a capacity developer, but there is room for improvement from Wemos in this field. We want to query our partners to find out more,' says Meurs.

Partner organisations

The partner organisations have improved in many fields, though here and there no improvement has been achieved. Meurs: 'Don't forget, these are often small organisations with limited capacity. Lobbying is their number one priority. This leaves little time to reflect and to learn lessons.'

'Wemos does not want to distract partner organisations from their work and yet still wishes to work towards structural solutions. We do so by shifting the emphasis in organisational assessments from justification to impact. We no longer ask what the funds were spent on, but whether the organisation has become more effective.'

Substantive relationship

Returning to roles for a moment, Meurs: 'In recent years, we have put a lot of effort into capacity development at our partner organisations. We now wish to spend more time on the substantive relationship. We want to enter into dialogue and reinforce cooperation. This is necessary because the lobbying we carry out often pertains to themes that are hard for us to relate to. We have gained a better idea of which lobbying is required by working together and drawing up problem analyses with our partners. More demand-oriented work and an increased emphasis on the partner organisation's importance. That will be our permanent challenge.'