3. Analysis of fact project of Concern Worldwide in Malawi from the project management perspective

   1. Fact Project Overview

FACT project was a food and cash transfer project of Concern Worldwide, which was realised in Malawi from December 2005 to April 2006, when Malawi suffered from a severe food crisis, the second in four years. In spite of some relieve programmes organised by government and some NGOs, the provision of food was not sufficient and the situation continued to deteriorate. In October 2005 the President of Malawi declared “a State of Disaster” and appealed for an emergency humanitarian help. Thus, Concern Worldwide (further referred to as “Concern”) decided to launch its own programme of cash distribution.

During this project lasted for 4 months, 5050 households receive the food and cash aid each month in 3 districts in central Malawi.

All the information about FACT project was taken from the reports of Achtell (2006) – a report prepared by Concern Worldwide, and Devereaux et al. (2006) as an independent evaluation of this project.

FACT project was also compared with a similar project of Oxfam run in Malawi during the same period of time.

It is important to point out that FACT project was the first experience of Concern Worldwide to use cash distribution in addition to food distribution. Lack of experience in this field can partly explain the organisation’s difficulties in some areas of project planning and implementation, in spite of using help of an external consultant during all the process of the project preparation and implementation.

2. Project Planning

The project objectives were defines as follows (Devereau et al., 2006)

1. “to provide nutritional support to targeted households” that were overlooked by the

Government of Malawi’s emergency response;

2. “to provide a temporary safety net to minimize the need of households to resort to

destructive coping strategies during the lean period”;

3. “to explore the effectiveness of cash transfers in addressing food insecurity in humanitarian emergencies in Malawi”.

While the project was finally successful and got a very good feedback, there was a number of issues in the each stage of the project, including its planning stage.

As it was shown in the report of Atchell (2006), the planning process was not so smooth and straightforward and contained a number of important changes related to different aspects of the project.

Thus, following the project approval by the donors, the organisation decided to change the initially planned amount of aid dedicated to each household selected for the participation in the programme. It was also further decided to divide the targeted household into 2 groups in contrast to initially planned 3 groups. Besides, it was decided to give up a goal of targeting at least 1,500 households female- or children-headed. Instead, it was decided to focus on those most in need. (Atchell, 2006)

Other important decisions regarding the project planning and further implementation were about the volume of the food component of the humanitarian aid, which was decided to be the same for the households of any size and the application of bands system when calculating the cash equivalent to be distributed to the households of different size. Both these decisions were questionable. While the first of them was supported by reason of simplifying logistics and was accepted by the participated households without any problem, the second decision regarding the band system for the cash calculation caused a lot of disappointment among the beneficiaries. At some point the representatives of Concern Worldwide even had to explain the band system using a role play. (Achtell, 2006) However, such performance would hardly change the people attitude to a poorly designed system, which the participants considered to be unfair.

There were also some failures with the plans to include in the program up to 1,000 clients of Malawi Red Cross Society (MRCS). Lack of coordination with MRCS, incomplete information of MRCS client which Concern received and location of a considerable part of those MRCS clients in distant areas, made those initial plans unviable. Thus, Concern has to make fast changes in its lists of beneficiaries. (Atchell, 2006)

Other issues were related to the definition of the cash equivalent depending on the month. Concern designed its scheme of cash distribution by month in accordance with the expected fluctuations of the food price in the market, precisely, they expected the prices to stabilise by February and to considerably fall down by March. However, it hadn’t happened. Vice versa, the prices continued growing. This situation cause another disappointment of the households receiving the cash aid in the later stages of the project as its amount was considerably less of the initial sums, distributed in the beginning of the projects. Thus, Concern took a decision to setup the amount of cash for each band in March without taking into consideration either the previous forecast or the recent marketing data, establishing them as follows: (Achtell, 2006)

Band 1: MK450

Band 2: MK1800

Band 3: MK3150

The subject of price fluctuations was also covered by some authors. Thus, suggests that no price fluctuation should be used in the calculation of the planned cash amounts. Instead organisations are advised to use other available data in order to define the amount of cash aid.