Addis Adventures

Tuesday

 

The reasons SC-US South Sudan has retreated to Addis for the week are still not too clear – at first I thought we were attending a conference or something – but it seems to be more of a morale-boosting exercise and an opportunity to explore some Logistics and HR-specific challenges as a group. Plus, it is evidently cheaper to fly everyone to Ethiopia and put us up at this institute, than to bring everyone from the field into Juba. All I can say after day one is that it's rather hilarious to play team building exercises, like "lost at sea," (in which you're stranded on a sinking yacht and have to prioritize which 15 items you save) with people who have lived their lives in land locked countries and have never been on/in the water. Shark repellent and mosquito netting were among the top choices of my teammates.

 

More interesting for me was the examination of Save the Children's global movement toward "Unified Presence." Currently, the organization operates under an international alliance structure, with a London-based secretariat, but great autonomy amongst the 29 member countries that operate in over a 100 countries world wide. In an effort to streamline their engagement, the organization is seeking to unify the presence of the different members operating in the same countries; 2008 will see the unification in South Sudan between Save-US, Save-Sweden, and Save-UK. This paradigmatic shift is meant to not only limit redundancies and aid in transparency, but, following global unification in the next few years will make Save the Children the fourth largest International NGO (following the Red Cross, Unicef, and World Vision).

 

Hip hip hooray for big biz-nas.

 

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Thursday

 

I've learned about the grant cycle, and procurement requests, and which program managers are better at getting things to happen. The majority of this retreat has not been applicable to me in a direct way, but it's really interesting to see what value chain of command issues plague all types of operations. It's unbelieveable how many steps and actions have to be taken to get drugs to this program, learning materials to that site, fuel for generators, R&R requests processed, etc.

 

It's been fun to run around Addis with Kate and the others from the Juba crew. Some shopping, a mani/pedi, traditional dancing, and a few altitude-impacted-hijinks here and there have been worth the trip out of Sudan alone.

 

The pool table and cold brews are calling.