Confessions of a humanitarian: 'This proposal was written by committee. So it doesn’t make a lot of sense'

Please find below a series of unauthorised reflections meant to provide you, the donor, with more detail on the narrative portion of our recently submitted proposal, “Holistic and Positive Parenting of Youth and Children” (HAPPY children).

Quality of overall design

I think we can all agree – with the exception of my boss, who doesn’t agree with anyone about anything – that the quality of this proposal is low. As in, even lower than our usual.

But in our defence, what maniac releases a request for applications over the Christmas holiday? Are you trying to rend whatever fragile family structures we aid workers have left?

Thanks to you, we wrote this proposal in an empty office while listening, like prison inmates, to the sounds of unattainable merriment outside our barred windows. My boss – a woman who can kill off anyone’s belief in a benevolent God – banned chocolate, alcohol, and even secret santa day, so our New Year’s toast was tap water in Nalgene bottles. Our grab bag gifts were desiccated maize from the guy with no legs.

The intern wept. My boss put her in the corner. It was a sad time.

Objectives and logframe

This proposal was written by committee. As a result, you will have noticed that it doesn’t make a lot of sense. We found it particularly hard to get consensus on the more pernickety issues – strategic objectives, outputs, targets, and the like – so I scattered around text boxes to disorient you.

I know this is pathetically similar to what I do in my quarterly reports. I apologize for that. But do note that the 3D-effect border is a custom orange.

Marketing

We have underlain the proposal document with an illegible 10% transparency watermark that tells your subconscious to “fund me!”

Fight Club inspired this and other aspects of the project design (ie soap making for vulnerable youth; blind obedience to a brutal dictator – in this case my boss). We did not, however, insert pornographic images the way Brad Pitt did in the movie. Well, except on page six, because the IT guy insisted. You know what IT people are like.

Monitoring and evaluation plan

None of us knows how to monitor what we’re doing or – even harder – evaluate if a project achieves anything. Usually we just count up how much money we’ve spent.

The M&E guy was supposed to do it, but then he said he had tonsillitis – an obvious lie to get out of working over the holidays. I mean, his doctor note said he needed to recover on Zanzibar. As if!

So I copy-pasted the M&E plan of that agriculture project you funded last year. Everywhere the plan said “chickpea” I changed that to “child”.

Will we really reach 3 million chickpeas children and make them HAPPY? Probably not. But we both know you’ll keep funding us anyway.

Sustainability

Are you familiar with that Zen parable, “how long is a piece of string”?

Gender

I expect you’re pleased with our promises to 1 employ women in important positions;2 engage women in key project activities; and 3 ensure the project is sensitive to the unique needs of women, men, boys and girls.

This is one of those times when you have to read between the lines. What we actually mean here is:

1 Employ women in important positions = 50% of our cleaners are woman

2 Engage women in key project activities = the person we buy samosas from is a woman

3 Ensure the project is sensitive to the unique needs of women, men, boys and girls = all the wives of the managers are women, and all of their daughters are girls

Formatting

I know there are a lot of run-on sentences. That’s because the pedants in HQ think that grammar is kudzu. Their tracked changes, once merged, were blinding. Microsoft actually ran out of colours to express them all. Even worse were the comment boxes, wherein each reviewer argued – hysterically! – that her/his input was essential enough to make you, the donor, welcome a narrative that exceeds your page limit by a good 800%.

This is the sort of megalomaniacal delusion one sees amongst people with consistent access to doughnuts.

Naturally I wanted to hit delete and be done with it. This was Christmas Eve, after all, and I had made Congolese eggnog (UHT milk + a bottle of Primus). Unfortunately, I was required to write a lengthy justification for every deletion, and send it in copy to 18 people, 15 of whom are prophylactically mean to me in the hopes that my boss, thus sated with my blood, will not sink her talons into them too. I simply didn’t have the strength. I left it all in. I am truly sorry.

Case study on Miriam, the local widow who dedicated her life to saving street children

This appendix is a bit of sleight-of-hand to distract you from the complete mendacity of our needs assessment data. It’s based on a picture book my mother Miriam used to read to me as a child. I am sure that people like Miriam do exist, and if my boss ever allowed me to be seen in public I might meet them – though presumably not on Christmas, when only the Mistress of Hades and her spineless humanitarian supervisees are keening, fully sober, over Excel spreadsheets.

Budget

Our staffing plan is under-budgeted. This was intentional. My boss believes a real aid worker can do three people’s jobs. Something about commitment and compassion (read: cocaine dependency). My boss is an American, obviously.

Implementation plan

None of the people who designed this project will be involved in implementing it. However, HQ experts will likely come down during the northern winter so that they can eat mangoes and be expensively annoying about it.

Our implementation plan is, therefore, the product of my shallow imagination plus sleep deprivation plus a YouTube video of singing cats. The community-level implementation will be done through an obscure sub-granting mechanism that allows us to take a 35% pass-through fee. As per usual.

A final note

I hope that you will welcome these notes in the spirit of constructive transparency with which they are intended. I also hope you will not share them with my boss, as she has a disembowelling knife and itchy fingers.

We look forward to receiving your issues letter and encourage you to send it, if possible, over the next major family-oriented holiday. I’m thinking next Christmas.

Dara Passano is a pseudonym.

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