Tanzania Newsletter March 2006

Letter from the Director

Our annual meeting came and went well. I want once again to thank all of you who contributed and helped MS Tanzania to continue the process of focusing our partnerships and strengthen our support to and collaboration with partners. As I mentioned during our annual meeting we are living in increasingly competitive times – and for civil society organisations increasingly challenging times. Government and its donors are still talking about the importance of vibrant civil society/marketing/producer/farmer organizations, but in action there is very little to demonstrate that they actually mean it. The Tanzania NGO legislation and actions against specific NGOs speaks a clear language. For the donors, the drive towards budget support for government will inevitable reduce the overall funding for civil society organisations. At a recent partner’s forum one bilateral donor representative announced that funding for civil society in future will be channelled through government as budget support! NGO representatives present clearly stated that it would mean the end of support to civil society!
JAS for NGOs
As we likely are entering a dry spell for funding for civil society organizations for some years to come, until the strong donor focus on government budget support will ease – and it eventually will as political pressure in donor countries for more visible results will mount – we will have to do more with less to meet increasing demand from an awakening civil society in Tanzania.
Government and its donors are working on formulating a Joint Assistance Strategy (JAS) aiming an enhancing efficiency in Government-donor relationship in terms of planning, monitoring and funds management. Not considering the ultimate aim of the JAS – budget support which as mentioned above is no good news for NGOs/CBOs – the JAS makes a lot of sense and we in the NGO community must move in the same direction.
Two of the MS Tanzania partners have already conducted joint partner consultations and for one of them the majority of ‘donors’ together with the partner have agreed on working towards joint review, reporting, accounting and auditing – in other words; we want to enter into a basket funding arrangement. Only by so doing can we effectively build up partner capacity to plan and manage resources and only by so doing can partners effective ‘handle’ multiple donors. Too much time is spent by many NGOs on meeting various reporting and accounting standards and overall transparency is low as one donor do not know what others are doing.
While encouraging our partners to work towards a JAS with joint reporting and accounting in a basket set-up we must stress that the standards for transparency and accountability must be very high for this to succeed – and certainly higher than what donors are demanding from Government! We cannot accept anything less than full transparency – no hidden incomes and no second set of ‘political accounts’!
There can be little doubt that partners who can meet these high standards will be the ones that come out on top as far as funding and long term sustainability is concerned. MS Tanzania will work hard on supporting partners to meet such standards and on getting prepared for taking on a JAS approach. Clear focus and strategies must be developed in collaboration with donor-partners in order to create commitment – no donor-partner likes to be put in a ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ situation.  MS Tanzania will in future demand partner commitment to work towards a JAS approach as a condition for continued partnership as we believe it serves the best interest off all. We obviously accept that it cannot happen overnight for all – a lot of strategic and organizational issues must be clarified before many of our partners are ready for such an approach. But let us together commit ourselves to reach such standards.
In-house news.
As announced elsewhere in this Newsletter, MS Tanzania is welcoming two new Program Officers, Mrs. Florida Henjewele who started on March 13^th and Mr. Andrew Lewis Mhina who starts on April 2^nd. We are very happy to be strengthening the Country Office with two very experienced Program Officers. Florida will be heading Topic Team III and Andrew Topic Team II. Topic Team I will be headed by the only remaining ‘old’ PO Mr. Maselle Maziku.
Sadly we have also had to say good buy to Joan Lohay as Program Officer. Joan has been with MS for the last 2.5 years and has done a great job. She leaves for family reasons – to join her husband who works in Durban in South Africa. We thank Joan for a job well done and wish her all the best in her new matrimonial life in South Africa.

We have received a new short time DW, Tina Fromberg Arvid who since March 1^st has been working for Teachers Coalition Centre. Tina has been working in a similar organization in Namibia and we are very happy to invite her onto our team for the next 9 months.
Finally the process of reorganizing our strategies and working modalities is continuing. We plan to invite Topic Team members for a workshop in early June to finally formulate content and work plans for each Topic Team and by August we should be ready to start working through the Topic Teams. One of our long-term DWs, Henrik Zilstorff has been granted a four months short term contract to assist us in this big task. Henrik will be with us until end June.

Photo exhibition made by children

15 orphans from Friends of Don Bosco and Friends of Tanzania had their week of fame in the end of February. They had taken the photos for an exhibition in a gallery in Dar as Salaam, and they were interviewed to television and magazines.
The exhibition is called Kuwa Thamani (Being Worthy), and is a project initiated from a project group in TAYEN. It was supported financially by Tanzania Cultural Trust Fund.

Every child borrowed a camera and took photos of their daily life and environment. Afterwards the discussed the photos and selected the ones for the exhibition.

Beside the empowered children the project had some good side effects. The two organisations for orphans now work together. Good networks had been built.

The exhibition might go to Denmark to be shown to a Danish audience afterward.

Donor conferences

Youth Action Volunteers tried a new approach to contact donors in March this year. And director Irenei Kiria rapports, that it was worth the big work.
YAV has finished an elaborated strategic plan for the coming years and send it to 14 donors, together with an invitation to participate in a donor conference. YAV wanted to bring the donors together, because YAV wanted basket funding for the implementing of the strategic plan, not project support.
The approach and the conference had Rakesh Rajani from HakiElimu as facilitator.

At the conference eight donors showed up and some promised to go into to basket funding, among those MS. Because of the time of the year some could not promise anything for this year, but were positive about next year.
- Because of Rakesh Rajani and the trust he enjoys in the donor community we got a very positive conference. Now we have to go to every single donor, who expressed positive will to fund our basket, and negotiate the amount. So I still don’t have a sum to show our success, says Irenei Kiria.

Changes in the volunteer programme – hosts needed

MS Denmark has for the past year send 21 young Danish volunteers to various organisations in Dar es Salaam for a period of 2-3 months working primarily with children as (pre-school) teachers.
Now it is time to expand and integrate the volunteer program into our partnership program.
So far a typical volunteer is a female around twenty who comes directly from high school or with a few years of work experience. She wants to work with children, help others and experience Tanzanian life. We will still receive this type of volunteers. However, MS Tanzania wishes to broaden the programme to include university students by introducing a new partnership between Tanzanian and Danish university students.  The idea is that small cross-national teams will work together on research and/or analysis work identified by the partners, a feature requested by partners at the annual meeting.
Future steps from the country office will among others be to identify suitable partners who have the need and capacity to host a volunteer.
If you find this appealing and think you can host a volunteer, please contact Country Office for further information.

New Danish NGO founded by former DW

Ingeborg Ellegaard was a DW in Mwanza with the partner Popular Culture and Sports Projects.
But before she left she talked a lot with Mrs Salalah on the International Language Training Centre about the need to support people learning English.

Back in Denmark she founded a NGO called “Training and development in Tanzania.” The aim of the NGO is to find Danish private sponsors to specific persons in Mwanza, to sponsor project in training and education, and to facilitate contact between Danish institutions and private persons and Mwanza.

The NGO has a website www.uuitanzania.com

Two new Programme Officers

Florida Henjewele will head the topic team III about networking, strategic planning and fundraising.
Florida has a MA in public administration, and three years of experience in REPOA, a NGO specialised in research and networks.
Florida specially worked with research on “Local Government Research Project”

Andrew Mhina will head the topic team II on Civil Society in public-private partnership.

Andrew has an MSc in agriculture. He is coming from a position in BasicNeeds Tanzania. He was programme officer for the programme of Sustainable Livelihood in the Mtware Region.
Before that he was the regional executive officer for the Tanzania Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture in the Tanga region.
Here he worked with getting out information on public private partnerships to business, associations and trade unions.

New DW

Tine Fromberg Arvid started in March on a short term contract at TRCC. Tine is MA in Educational Studies and she has previously worked with TRC in Namibia. Tine already lives in Dar es Salaam with her husband Jørgen, who is a Danida advisor. They have two teenage children.

MS Copenhagen is currently selecting five new DW´s to start working in Tanzania in July.

For contributions to the newsletter or further information please contact lisbeth@mstan.or.tz