Nuffic organises financial workshop in Uganda
16 Jun 2011
On 1 and 2 June 2011, exactly a year after the first NICHE Financial Rules and Regulations (FRR) workshop was held in Tanzania, the 5th FRR workshop took place in Entebbe. The workshop, facilitated by local PricewaterhouseCoopers consultants, was attended by NICHE partners from Uganda, South Sudan and South Africa.
Nuffic asked all its partners in these three countries to send their project manager and the financial officer who deals with day-to-day project management. Nuffic was represented by two financial officers and a senior programme administrator.
The participants entered the workshop expecting to:
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become (more) knowledgeable about the FRR.
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gain a common understanding of the reporting requirements.
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share experiences with other participants and create alliances.
We started the workshop off by taking the participants through the FRR and touching upon the issues that were going to be dealt with more specifically during the workshop.
Financial toolkit
Each participant received an information pack containing all NICHE documents about the financial and administrative reporting requirements. Project offices can use the pack as a reference tool.
A test case and a quiz
In three groups the participants were then guided through the process of preparing a NICHE project work plan using a test case.
The groups also had to answer a series of questions about the FRR and cost eligibility. They were asked to present their work to each other which led to interesting exchanges.
In a quiz format the groups were then asked to answer a number of questions with points rewarded to the correct answers. Although there were no prizes to win, the participants were very competitive, which led to hilarious arguments about the scoring.
The discussions were lively and practical and the participants were able to relate to their own projects. The test case allowed the participants to apply the FRR and challenge each other on cost eligibility.
Roles and responsibilities: a hot topic
The roles of the different stakeholders in the NICHE programme and the responsibilities of requesting organisations were hot topics at the workshop. By addressing these issues the participants increased their sense of project ownership and ability to recognise challenges.
Financial format
The final session focused on the financial format. The group was split up into pairs to prepare a budget for their described activities.
In this hands-on session the participants learned how to relate expenses, including unplanned or unbudgeted expenses, to project activities. It proved to be a good way to show the participants how the financial format works and how it can be used as a monitoring tool.
Finally, an actual example of a NICHE financial report 2010 was shown to illustrate what it looks like once complete and how detailed and specific it has to be.
Many 'aha moments'
Overall, the partners thought the workshop was useful for project management purposes. On the first day one of the participants exclaimed: "Oh, I am very happy I came to this workshop!". It was the first of many 'aha moments'.
