Professional Documents
Culture Documents
[20 points]
Response:
a)
Conduct Needs assessment
Conduct situation analysis, stakeholders analysis
Problem identification
Develop problem tree/objective tree
Develop Logical frame work
Develop narrative and budget files
Team work
b)
A project that ensure
o Comprehensive analysis
o Participatory process
o Cross-cutting issues, such as Gender, environment, disability and other cross cutting issues
o Humanitarian essentials, such as SPHERE, HAP, CHS, Code of conducts, etc. standard
c)
Compliance with Donor regulation
Managing Budget expenditure
Cost of doing business
Reporting
Community participation and feedback mechanism
d)
Staff training and orientation on the rules and requirements
Control system before approving payments
Budget follow up
e)
Note for file on the situation
Reasons for the under expenditure that need more time to implement
Reasons for budget reallocation in case needed
Prepare letter of request and submit to the donor
2) Exercise: You just came on board as Oxfam’s Humanitarian Funding Coordinator for Somalia. Welcome!!
Your position has been vacant for a while so there are many outstanding issues as the project work has been expanding
rapidly in the development and humanitarian sectors.
The context in country is also made more difficult because of clan divisions geographically and the impact on budgets of
having to employ more international staff to keep the organisation’s involvement ‘neutral’. In addition, travel by road can
be insecure so there is increasing us of domestic flights – yet another issue leading to higher costs. The teams are
stretched trying to implement activities and to prepare donor reports.
There are significant underspends across all the programmes with a mixture of donors including ECHO, UNOCHA, and
several Oxfam affiliates. [20 points]
A. There is an interim ECHO report that is due tomorrow. You have read it and know that the information is limited
and not the best quality. Here are 3 scenarios that need your response:
a) What do you do in this situation?
Response:
The best way is to approach ECHO to get extension submission date for the report mentioning the
challenges that the organization is going through (lack of adequate international staff, difficulty of
movement by road, volume of work, etc.) and that this has affected the to collect adequate and quality
data. Once this is done, request the field team for more information that is needed to complete the report.
b) Your Regional Funding Coordinator is someone who is very particular and demands attention to detail and
timelines, so in this instance is likely to reply to you saying s/he will not have time to review a report that is
submitted so late. What do you do?
Response:
As mentioned above, if the request for extension is approved then there will be more time for the
Regional funding coordinator to review the report. In addition, the coordinator will be informed on the
quality of the report received from the field that needs more work.
c) The Regional Funding Coordinator has accepted the report and then picked it to pieces as you suspected and
replied to you that it cannot be sent to ECHO? What do you do?
Response:
Ask the coordinator to request submission extension from the donor and work on to improve the report.
B. As above you have significant underspends in some of the programmes. How do you deal with that?
Response:
Revise the implementation plan to increase spending.
a. a UNOCHA deadline
b. several meetings lined up with donors that are crucial and cannot be missed
c. the Dutch Ambassador – Oxfam in Somalia’s home donor - has requested to visit the country programme
d. the Country Director and the Regional Funding Team asking for updates on the various deadlines you
have to meet.
Response:
Conduct task analysis for prioritization
Focus on the reporting deadlines and meetings
Propose to push the ambassador visit to another convenient time
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Delegate some of the activities to team members
D. What action plan would you develop to avoid this in the future?
Response:
Proper staffing
Proper planning ahead of project implementation
Fast track procurements to avoid delay of implementation and under spending
Monthly budget follow up
3) You have received the attached 6-month financial report from the humanitarian programme team for submission
to UNOCHA. [20 points]
Exercise:
a) Analyse the budget and report and provide your feedback on each relevant budget line in the comments section
within the report.
b) Provide your overall assessment to the team with recommendations on how to make the report more relevant for
this submission.
Response:
The overall expenditure level is ok though slightly more than 50%
Some expenditure balancing can be made between different lines to adjust under/over expenditure. This
should be done only with in the same budget headings
Some budget lines are overspent and expenditure should stop on this lines. Cost reallocation should be made
to another line with in the same budget heading to reduce the overspent lines
Spending should start asap for the budget lines that are under spent
4) The programme team submits a first draft of a logical framework for a project being developed to you for your
review. [20 points]
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1.1 Community visits
1.2 Organize focal groups to discuss selection of families
1.3 Assessment of partners capacity in the field of finance
and procurement
1.4 Conduct training of key staff
1.5 Monitoring / control visits
Exercise: Present your feedback to the team including at least 5 key recommendations on how to improve the
logical framework giving reasons for your suggestions.
Response:
The logical framework is not well logically linked between activities, results, SO and general objective.
Recommendations are mentioned below:
Change general objective to reflect something to contribute to a greater goal such as the one
mentioned under specific objective
Change the specific objective to something that is deliverable to the community such as that mentioned
under General objective
Results should be explained as specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bounded, so
change accordingly
Indicators should reflect the results once results are made SMART
Include activities that reflect water provision such as water trucking, borehole construction, etc
5) You are meeting with a humanitarian donor who plans to fund a significant response in Somaliland.
However, the donor is hesitant about including some innovative WaSH (Water Sanitation and Hygiene
promotion) approaches proposed by Oxfam’s team within this response.
Exercise: Detail how you would ‘sell’ the appropriateness and timeliness of these WaSH innovations,
mentioning the ideas in your explanation. [20 points]
Response:
Explain the importance of conducting WASH promotion activities to save lives as the area is prone to
waterborne diseases. Show assessment reports, facts and case reports to the donor
Explain that WASH promotion activities will definitely optimize the use of WASH facilities and that will
lead to greater achievement
Explain on how the Innovative ideas will help to build capacity and resilience of community to manage
crises in the future and hence more sustainable
Explain that WASH promotion activities could benefit the entire affected community and hence are
effective
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FIELD COORDINATOR –TEST (2 hours)
CANDIDATE DETAILS
INSTRUCTIONS
You have 2 hours in which to respond to the following five questions. Please try to answer all
questions, even if some of your answers are quite brief.
To ensure your test is easy to read, please leave some space between each answer. Make
sure to include your work on Excel as well.
A % is indicated for each question. It shows the weight of that question in the overall amount
of points available in the test (100%.)
Important note
The country chosen for this test is Kukuland (a fictitious country). Please beware that the information be
is not a true reflection of the situation, and has been developed for the purposes of this test. Beware to l
your interpretation of the context to what has been written below. A reasonable assumption to help ans
the questions given is acceptable.
General Context
Kukuland is a country in a political, economical and humanitarian crisis following the breakout
violence in September 2015. The political impasse between the two main political parties is furt
complicated with the DSPR rebel groups in the South expanding the territory under their control.
estimated 2.8 million inhabitants in the South are dependent on humanitarian aid, with the numbe
persons in crisis or emergency estimated to be over 1 million (an increase of 35% since Septem
2015).
The current crisis mainly attributed to the conflict in the South is further exacerbated by the impac
unpredictable climatic conditions mainly resulting in droughts, estimated to affect more than 350,0
people, with the remote districts of Legie and Shortie most affected. The drought situation is biti
really hard the pastoralists, with FAO and local government sources estimating a loss of livestock h
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A draft Budget:
Vehicle repair and fuel 1 Lumpsum 6 1000 6000
Warehose rent and running cost 1 Lumpsum 6 200 1200
Total 349960