Working ON The Weekend

Work: it’s about time I write something about it, eh? Oh how quickly “working for the weekend” turned into “working on the weekend.” Ahh, well – it’s all good.

I've been working for the Poverty and Inclusion Unit at the United Nations Development Programme Nepal (one of six thematic units, which include: Poverty; Climate Change, Environment and Energy; Governance; Disaster Risk Management; Peace Building; and Strategic Planning) for a month and a half now. I didn't write anything about it at first because I didn't have much to say that was substantial – it took a while to get rolling with work. I haven’t written anything about it recently because I've just been too busy! Something I am very happy to report.

The office: UN House.

I’ll start with what my unit does, and then I’ll tell you a little bit about what I have gotten myself buried in (buried in a good way, I promise). The mandate of the Poverty and Inclusion Unit is to promote sustainable and socially inclusive economic growth in Nepal through the alleviation of poverty. There are two components to the unit’s work: policy support to the government in helping them create interventions that are “pro-poor” – in other words: ensuring that government policy and programs take the poorest, most disadvantaged and socially excluded in Nepalese society into account; and grass roots programming to support poverty alleviation in the rural areas of the country. These programs are centered on livelihood support in the most impoverished districts and communities of Nepal, including a Livelihood Reduction for Peace program (Nepal is still recovering from a recent 10 year armed conflict from 1996-2006 and income generation is one strategy to reduce incentives for armed conflict in extremely vulnerable districts) and a Micro-Enterprise for Development Programme (MEDEP). MEDEP has been one of UNDP Nepal’s flagship programs over the past 14 years of its operation, hailed for its success in over-delivering, lifting thousands of Nepal’s most vulnerable people (women, untouchable castes, disenfranchised youth, disabled, religious minorities, and conflict and disaster affected families, among others) out of poverty.  Nepal has been successful in reducing absolute poverty over the past 20 years from 42% to 23% living below national poverty line ($230 USD/year – about .63 cents per day) – however, inequality has increased and the poorest segments of society have only become more impoverished as other have risen out of poverty. That is why the MEDEP project aims to target these most disadvantaged groups.

I have gotten involved in the “upstream,” or policy, aspect of the unit’s work, by aiding in the preparations for the fourth national review of Nepal’s progress on the Millennium Development Goals, which has been a significant undertaking. We’re in the home stretch with that one now though, as it’s due to be launched on September 10^th, and then we’ll dig into preparing the Nepal Human Development Report, which will be an even larger project. I have also been involved with the MEDEP project by helping finalize documentation to bring the project into its fourth phase. As I mentioned before, MEDEP has been a very successful UNDP project for the past 14 years, and currently operates in 38 of 75 districts across Nepal. As its success has been admirable, the Government of Nepal wants to adopt its approach and take full ownership of the project, using it as a poverty alleviation tool all across the country by implementing it in every district. This fourth, and final, five year phase of MEDEP will focus on transitioning the project from implementing the model to facilitating the government’s implementation of it. AusAID is the biggest donor to this project, and has allocated about $32 million for the fourth phase. So basically we’ve got: UNDP, AusAID and the Government of Nepal, who all have to agree on the terms of this arrangement and sign the 150 page project document and cost sharing agreement in order for the project to go forward. To really heat things up as we came down to the wire to get this agreement signed, our AusAID contacts told us that because Australia was about to head into an election we had to get it signed in the next week or it likely wouldn’t happen. No pressure.

So it’s Tuesday. AusAID has agreed on the text of the project document, and all we needed was to get the Ministry of Industry (MoI) to sign off. My boss has left the office about 45 minutes earlier to take the document to be signed when my phone rings. It’s Nabina (my supervisor); she asks if I’m busy and tells me she’s going to send a car for me because she needs my help down at the MoI. When I arrive she is sitting with the Joint Secretary of the MoI, the National Programme Director (Government representative on the project) and the National Programme Manager (project lead) with her laptop open to the document. When I sit down beside her she tells me that the government wants some changes to the document, and she wants me to make them as they go through it so that we can get it signed today. Okay, makes sense, I think, and take over on her computer.  It takes all of 60 seconds for me to realize that they are currently on page 7 of 150 and reading the document line by line. LINE. BY. LINE. And she thinks we’ll finish this today? Oh my god, I am going to be here until tomorrow morning! So we start slogging through the jargon, and they are debating every tiny little detail. I soon realize that the government people are asking to change words that they don’t like, or don’t fully understand. It’s doesn’t matter if I explain the meaning of the word, they want to change it to a word they are more familiar with…as if they don’t understand that different words mean different things and you can’t just swap words without altering the broader meaning of entire sentences and paragraphs. And that’s not even the best part! The best part is that all of this negotiating is going on in Nepali. So we’ve got four people heatedly debating a massive document, phrase by phrase, in Nepali, and me, behind the keyboard, supposedly keeping up with these changes. Because everyone was aware of how much there was to do they wanted to move through it quickly and once they had agreed they would just move on, look at me quickly and ask: “Got it?”

WHAT? NO! Of course I don’t ‘got it’! How could I have it? At this point I started looking around the room thinking: Ashton? Where are you hiding? Am I being Punk’d?

Alas, by the time we reached page 30 the Joint Secretary exclaimed thoughtfully: “You know, maybe it’s better if we all go home, read over the document, make notes and come back tomorrow to go through the notes quickly at that time…”

How this was a concept that was just dawning on him is still absolutely beyond my realm of comprehension. Ahhh but alas, at the 11^th hour it all came together and we got the signatures we needed to move forward with MEDEP for the next 5 years. You can all expect Christmas gifts made by poor and marginalized MEDEP micro-entrepreneurs this year!

In my little corner at work...desk a disaster, as usual.

The final thing I have gotten involved in is a new initiative that another JCP, Tanya, and myself are trying to get off the ground. Tanya works in the Disaster Risk Management Unit, and is very interested in poverty alleviation. Similarly, I am very interested in issues of environmental risks. At the Canada Day party Tanya and I got talking about how we saw a lot of points of intersection between our two projects, and agreed to explore writing an article about them, on our own time. When I ran this idea past my boss on Monday morning she took it a step further: “Or, if you have a good idea, you could draft it and we could present it to Senior Management. If they like it we could do a pilot in the field.” What? Seriously?  I did a major double take when I heard that. Within the hour I had talked to Tanya about it and we agreed to move forward and see what was possible. Everyone we turned to for guidance and information was supportive over the next could weeks as we began to shape our ideas and draft a concept note. I was so impressed and surprised to see how much room there seemed to be for this type of initiative. What we came up with, in a nutshell, is a two part plan with both long and short term objectives to better mainstream disaster risk management principles into micro-enterprise development, in order to protect the sustainability of fledgling enterprises in this exceptionally disaster vulnerable country. We see the current status of MEDEP, a hugely successful program on the verge of being implemented nation-wide, as a perfect window of opportunity to make some small changes to its delivery that will, hopefully, have a large impact.

We presented our initial ideas at a meeting with both of our supervisors, as well as other stakeholders from both projects, a few weeks ago, and once again, the response was shockingly positive. Not only were we given the green light to move ahead, we were encouraged to back up our concepts with concrete experiences by going to the field and observing the linkages between disaster and poverty for ourselves. So that’s what I’m working on now: helping out where I can with policy and program work, as well as trying to push Tanya and my pet project out of the nest and hoping it flies in the next four months before my contract comes to an end.

Stay tuned for my report on my first trip outside of Kathmandu to Dolakha district with Tanya for our project – as well as my first bear giveaways (spoiler alert: as with everything in life, it didn't go exactly as I had pictured it).

One thing that I have really learned in my two months working here is how important building trust and good relationships is to getting work done. People here not only care a great deal about their work, they can even be very protective of it in some circumstances. Until someone trusts you they won’t let you be a part of what they’re doing. I was even once asked to leave a big meeting that was directly related to what I am working on because the leader of the meeting didn't believe there was any value in me being there (she’s not someone I work with directly). She claimed that it was because she wanted to conduct the meeting in Nepali; however, I think given my earlier story it’s fairly clear that that’s a bull sh*t excuse. That’s part of the reason why work was a bit slower to get rolling than in other jobs I have had. I spent a good amount of time just softening people up and focusing on building their trust in me. But once I got in with them, and they knew they could rely on me it was like the flood gates opened completely. Now I often find myself pulling a Nepali work week (Sunday to Friday). But it’s okay. I like what I’m doing, so it doesn't feel like a burden.