What's it like to work in... an NGO in uganda

‘I can’t understand why more people don’t work in the NGO sector,’ says Janet Humphreys, financial controller for Irish aid agency GOAL. And as she sits at peace in a Ugandan village, with Mount Kalongo looming in the background, it’s difficult to imagine why a recruitment problem would exist.

But there are good reasons why some may be put off. Janet has to be back within the confines of the town by 4pm for security reasons. If she is outside the town’s limits, she has to be in radio contact at all times. Once back in town she has to be safely locked up in the Irish NGO’s compound by 9pm.

The area she works in was once at the heart of the Ugandan government’s 20-year war with the bizarre but brutal Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which launched raid after raid on the local population perpetrating massacres, raping indiscriminately and kidnapping children to become child soldiers. Peace talks with the LRA are well underway, and despite the poverty there is an air of optimism in the area. But security remains high, with remnants of the LRA thought to be camped in the bush outside Kalongo.

CIMA-trained Janet has been with GOAL for two years, having spent nine years with Xerox as a currency manager in the UK, US and Ireland. She says she used to be very well paid, but working for an NGO had been a long-held ambition.

The difficulties under which she now works seem justification in themselves for stepping out of the high-paid corporate post she once held. ‘I could have taken a good job in New York, and it would have been very different. There are stresses and strains here, but that’s what makes it worthwhile.’

Those ‘stresses and strains’ are self-evident. For starters, there’s the much more modest pay, then the task of being financial controller for a budget of $7.8m (£5.8m). Then there’s the difficulty of working with local culture, customs and administrative regulation. Finally, there’s the unexpected. As if to underline this point, as she arrived back from Kalongo Janet learned that GOAL’s project in the west of Uganda, at Bundibugyo, had closed down following an outbreak of Ebola, which reportedly killed 16 people. No staff were affected.

With all these difficulties to deal with, it wouldn’t be a surprise if the accuracy of the accounting was affected, but Janet insists this does not slip. ‘NGO work in the new millennium is all about accountability, accountability, accountability,’ she says. ‘We are responsible to donors, and even more responsible to the beneficiaries.

‘There are not enough donors in the world,’ says Janet. ‘Budgeting and making the most of the funds we have is the biggest challenge I have as a financial controller.’ You can’t imagine she would have it any other way.

Financial rigour in rural Uganda

Four hours east from the Ugandan capital Kampala is Bugiri, a rural district where GOAL works with local partner organisations providing funds and technical support. John Sheahan, controls officer with the charity, sits in a tiny office in a dust-covered town, discussing contracting a local auditor, examining the cash book, going over reconciliation statements, and generally testing the partner group’s accountant on record keeping and procedures. GOAL doesn’t tell partners what procedures to have, but they do insist they have something, and that those procedures hold water. It is work any accountant steeped in the need for strong controls could appreciate.

In Kalongo, internal auditor Jerry Cole questions a local woman over whether she had received all 25 goats the charity had provided, where they were and how they were. It was a tough line of questioning for her and for the local GOAL workers involved in the animal husbandry programme. Processes are put in place by programme managers for things like contract tendering and for aid proposals for local partner organisations. All of them detailed, rigorous and capable of soaking up time. It is a difficult balance to get the right processes in place while still providing aid in a timely manner. The accountants and administrators are very much aware of reaching the right balance. Their focus is on integrating processes and provision of aid so that one serves the other.

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