Dristy Shrestha

Country: Tanzania
Organization: BRAC Tanzania

DRISTY: "BRAC is the world’s largest non-governmental development organization measured by the number of employees and the number of people it has helped. It is dedicated to empowering people and communities living in poverty, illiteracy, disease and social injustice through its various programs in areas ranging from microfinance, agriculture and food security, education and more. It currently operates in 11 countries across the globe.

BRAC started its work in Tanzania in 2006 with microfinance and livelihood development programs. In just less than a decade with multiple programs in various sectors ranging from agriculture and food security, education, empowerment and livelihood for adolescents, microfinance and small enterprise program, BRAC has become one of the largest financial institutions in the country.

In June-August 2016, under the supervision of the Program Manager of Microfinance Program, I had the opportunity to work as the Summer Research Intern at BRAC Tanzania. In this role, the main task I was entrusted with was to i) assess the services offered by BRAC Tanzania tailored towards smallholder farmers in the country, and ii) make recommendations to the Country Office based in Dar es Salaam on how to better address the needs and challenges of smallholder farmers in Tanzania."

"Personally, I had an incredibly rewarding summer filled with new challenges, new experiences, and learnings. BRAC is an organization that development practitioners such as myself study a lot about, both inside and outside class. Therefore, the opportunity to experience its activities and inner workings first hand and be a part of its team was a special treat for me. In addition, it was refreshing to explore Tanzania and go beyond my comfort zone into a country, region and continent that I had never been to."

Paroma Husain

Country: Uganda
Organization: BRAC Uganda

PAROMA: "During the last summer I spent almost three months working with the Microfinance programme of BRAC in Uganda. BRAC is an NGO that started as a small post-war rehabilitation operation in the newly born Bangladesh in 1972, and grew to be one of the largest NGOs in the world. BRAC now operates in 12 different countries across Asia and Africa; taking its years of experience from Bangladesh in implementing successful models in various development programs such as health, education, microfinance, and community empowerment into other developing countries.

Uganda is BRAC’s largest and fastest growing operation in Africa. In the last decade, Uganda has grown consistently, at an average rate of 6.4 per cent. It has made significant progress towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals and is now focusing on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. But approximately 20 per cent of Ugandans still live below the poverty line and they are mostly concentrated in rural areas. While there are a number of financial institutions providing financial services to marginalised groups, they have limited operations in rural areas. With 147 branches all over Uganda and more than 180,000 borrowers served, BRAC Uganda’s microfinance program is one of the biggest in the country and it reaches out to the poorest in both urban and rural areas.1 Besides microfinance, BRAC currently operates programs in small enterprise, agriculture, poultry and livestock, health, education, youth empowerment, adolescent livelihood, and the Karamoja Initiative in Uganda. To date the programs have served 4.4 million people, which is almost 12% of Uganda’s population.2 Before Fletcher, I have been working in BRAC’s microfinance program in Bangladesh. This summer I had the wonderful opportunity to work with and learn from my colleagues in Uganda."

"My three years of experience with BRAC Bangladesh had made me curious to find out how well BRAC can apply its learnings and program models from Bangladesh in a starkly different country context. Working with BRAC Uganda gave me an opportunity to assess the success and failure of BRAC’s international scaling efforts. My overall conclusion is that while there are some things BRAC is doing quite well in its country offices, it can do a much better job in many other aspects. For instance, there is a clear cultural divide between Bangladeshi expats, who generally occupy higher management posts, and the local staff. While the highly standardised operational models were so crucial in BRAC’s amazing success story of scaling in Bangladesh, strict compliance of these standards can overlook the contextual operational needs in a different country. There is also a resource constrain in the mostly donor-depended programs of BRAC International that BRAC Bangladesh does not have to face. As a result,

many effective client oriented programs and monitoring tools that have proven to be effective in Bangladesh cannot be implemented in other BRAC countries. Based on several of these observations, I can make the following recommendations: (The suggestions made in this section are mostly based on interviews with clients and staff members and observations from field visits – which are often anecdotal and not grounded in rigorous studies.)"

Ananth Ganesa

Country: Sudan
Organization: World Food Programme

ANANTH: "My internship was with the Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping (VAM) unit in Khartoum, Sudan. VAM collects and analyses data from thousands of households every year – particularly in rural, poor and food insecure populations – to provide WFP program managers and the broader humanitarian community with information, analysis and advice. VAM’s information has direct consequences on programming, and could translate into activities such as food distribution - which could in very literal terms decide the fate of a household’s survival."

"My role involved travelling to field offices across the Darfur states. I learnt a lot about on-the- ground realities during such missions. My last such trip was in June, I was in El Fashir in North Darfur interviewing program staff and brainstorming on how the VAM unit can help them make better program decisions. During such discussions, I learnt extensively about the process of WFP’s programming in Sudan – from how project proposals are submitted by NGO partners to how they are reviewed, and how projects are implemented over a specific timeline and within a certain budget based on several contingent factors. Part of VAM’s role is to help identify the “who, when, where” in targeting programs, so I spent time learning how such targeting decisions are made – which gave me a good macro-understanding of WFP’s operations. Field offices in general are a great place to learn the harsh practical realities of the humanitarian experience and

I believe Sudan provided ample training ground to do so. Since my role involved extensive cross- departmental collaboration where I had to work together with several of our staff for days and weeks at a stretch, I would say my inter-personal and communication skills helped in the process. To have clarity of thought and express ideas effectively was important in my role, and this is a strength that I used to my advantage. Further, the ability to digest large amounts of information, diagnose what the issues are and creatively design solutions, is something that I have used throughout this internship . Finally, technical skills in analyzing data, writing food security reports and software such as MS Excel and SPSS helped magnify my impact in the project as well."

Liz Henry

Country: Ecuador
Organization: Root Capital

Liz Henry was assigned by Root Capital’s office in Lima, Peru to investigate and formulate a plan for expanding its loan activity into Ecuador. Using her Spanish language she was able to engage with diverse stakeholders, include personnel international: agencies such as USAID and NGOs such as Catholic Relief Services, directors at the Inter-American Development Bank, representatives from commodity trading firms, employees and consultants at Ecuadorian government ministries, CEOs of SMEs and rural cacao and coffee farmers.

Liz: “Working for Root Capital in Ecuador was a perfect fit for my Blakeley Fellowship. I now recognize the crucial role of the agricultural sector and SMEs within development, as well as the importance of promoting access to finance for such businesses.”

Bernardo Goriupp

Country: Uganda

Organization: MAPLE (Microdevelopment for the Alleviation of Poverty through Learning and Entrepreneurship), an Oregon based NGO operating in Uganda

Bernardo Goriupp worked as Project Manager, responsible for design to implementation of a small scale fish farm. This included everything from technical and business modeling to investigating potential sources of funding to developing a business plan to be used for grant applications and for expansion.

“What makes me proud is that I left behind something that did not exist before… it may well be one the the things of greatest significance I have ever done. The whole experience was also very useful in serving my own careet objectives. I have a profound interest in the synergies between development objectives and business, in particular the role that the private sector can undertake to promote sustainable and long-lasting social progress.”

— Bernardo

Arielle

Country: Thailand

Arielle worked at Population and Community Development Association (PDA) in Bangkok, Thailand where she designed a Community Development Program to target the specific needs of migrants in Thailand. This entailed creating assessment guidelines, conducting numerous interviews and researching the social, political, and economic factors at play in these communities in order to improve Thai-migrant relations.

Stephanie spent nearly three months interning at the Population and Community Development Association (PDA), a Thai NGO founded by Mechai Viravaidya in 1974. Having worked in international development before attending The Fletcher School, she was particularly eager to learn about PDA’s innovative approach to development. The organization is renowned for its out-of-the-box thinking, which has led it to partner with diverse entities (including corporations) and to engage in successful revenue-generating “social business” activities. After only ten days in Bangkok, I had the privilege of traveling to PDA’s rural office near the capital city and then to a sister project in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Being able to juxtapose PDA’s operations in Thailand and Cambodia, as well as its rural and urban offices, was an invaluable opportunity. With this experiential knowledge of PDA, Stephanie designed a community development project for Burmese migrants in Thailand, leveraging the NGO’s core competencies and comprehensively addressing the crucial needs of this marginalized, often exploited population. Inspired by what she learned with PDA, she is taking a course on Forced Migration and Human Rights this semester and will be writing a term paper on refugees’ right to work, using Burmese in Thailand as a case study.

Elisabeth

Country: Tanzania

Elisabeth worked for MicroEnsure, a subsidiary of Opportunity International, on a health microinsurance project for poor, small shareholder coffee farmers in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro. She assisted the NGO with marketing and communications.

Christine / Andrew

Country: Tanzania

Christine assisted Twaweza, a Tanzanian based NGO with operations in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, to prepare an evaluation plan and research existing data for a baseline survey. Designed a way to use cellular SMS to conduct surveys and designed a reporting system to report violence in a timely manner.

Andrew focused for CARE in remote villages where there had been no previous NGO intervention and limited government presence to develop a baseline survey, platform monitoring future progress and building local commerce.

Lily

Country: India

Lily held focus groups and interviewed members of farming communities to evaluate the efficacy of programs implemented by the All India Disaster Mitigation Institute (AIDMI), an NGO working throughout South Asia. Developed crisis mapping scenarios, held financial literacy classes and prepared proposals for dealing with major urban disasters.

Jaime

Country: Brazil

Jaime worked with Mobile Metrix to define high impact health issues to focus on, validated results of government, NGO, academia and community programs and made recommendations relating to the coordination and cooperation of private and government health organizations.

Danielle / Courtney

Country: Peru

Danielle Cooperated with ACCION Investments to analyze their micro-finance portfolio and performance indicators and to recommend client protection policies.

Courtney worked with NGO’s partnering with KIVA, a web based NGO partnering with MFI’s in over 40 countries, interviewing borrowers and evaluated their needs. She also trained local staff about KIVA.