Mr. Gunnar Andersen is the new Country Director of the unified Save the Children (SC), an organization that fights for children’s rights in over 120 countries. Recently, Save the Children organisations working in Nepal established one unified programme delivery structure called the unified presence (UP). In this regard, Mr Andersen talked to Anand Gurung of Nepalnews about uniting into a single entity and other aspects of the organisation. Excerpts of the interview:

Save the Children organizations working in Nepal formally united into a single entity from April 1. What is the main objective behind this move?

Gunnar Andersen, Country Director, unified Save the Children (SC)

Gunnar Andersen, Country Director, unified Save the Children (SC)
Not only in Nepal, but Save the Children organizations operating in various countries in the world have already united or are going through the unification process. The plan is that by 2012 all the countries where Save the Children operates will be under a single entity. It will not be working independently from country to country, as it did before. There will be one office of Save the Children in each country and it will have one programme. In a unified presence, one Save the Children member acts as a Managing Member (MM) on behalf of all Members operating in a unified country, and in Nepal’s case it will be Norway . Save the Children USA and Japan will be Participating Members while Save the Children Sweden, which has a regional office in Nepal, will be a Project Participating Member.

Of the 120 countries it is working in, Save the Children has a unified presence in countries like Angola, Nicaragua, Haiti, Mozambique, Bolivia, Peru, Haiti, Myanmar, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and now also in Nepal. Similarly, few more countries are also going through the unification process.

The purpose of the unification is to create a stronger voice for children in the countries where the organization is working. And the main idea behind the United Presence was that we wanted to work as a single entity, and in a combined, comprehensive manner so that we will be able to smoothly coordinate the different programmes in the country concerned and accomplish even more for children.

Why do you think a single entity is in the best interest of the organization?

See, if you look at different Save the Children organisations that had been operating side by side in Nepal, you find that one member might have more expertise on health, and another on education. Similarly, there might be another which might be doing good on organizational management.

So after unification we hope to put theses expertise together and work towards delivering immediate improvements to the lives of children in Nepal. Similarly, we also want to pool the resources into one place and hope to utilize it in a more coherent manner so that we don’t overlap in each other’s working areas or double up with resources in a single programme, as we sometime did when we used to work independently in Nepal.

But unfortunately, we have had to lay off some of our existing staffs while going about the unification process. However, we have accepted it as an unfortunate consequence in our effort to make our delivery structure and mechanism better and more efficient. Hopefully we will have some reduced administrative costs because of this and be able to utilize more resources for our programmes. This was also part of the purpose behind the unification.

Additionally, since we work very closely with the governments’ of the countries where we are working, the unification of Save the Children organizations operating in Nepal will also enhance our cooperation with the government here. It is indeed confusing for the government to relate to multiple Save the Children. Now after the unification, the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education, Central Child Welfare Board and other government institutions with which we closely work will need to deal with only one Save the Children. By doing this hopefully we will make things easy for the government and our donors as well.

What does the unified presence mean for children in Nepal? Can we expect to see dramatic changes?

No, I don’t think so. Because we are very clear regarding the areas we will continue working on in Nepal, and basically it would be the same – education, health & nutrition and protection. And under each area, for instance, when it comes to education, we will continue supporting the local education offices, we will continue our support to local schools where we are engaged in construction of school building and training of teachers. So in that sense there will be no changes in our programmes. It will be pretty much the same.

However, to adapt to the increasingly globalised world, there is lot of push towards making Save the Children a global unified entity, and this will obviously reflect not only on its programmes, but in its approach, the advocacy it does and the way it raises funds for its programmes.

What I want to say is that of the multiple Save the Children organizations working in Nepal, Save the Children Japan have had a very grass root approach into their work. I think that will be something which will influence the whole programme of the unified presence. Save the Children US have had a very strong reporting and monitoring mechanisms, and which I hope the whole organization can easily benefit from. Similarly, Save the Children Norway has had a very strong education programme. I hope this will also influence other parts of the programme, like, for instance, health and protection. So, I see only positive elements in this unification, I don’t see any problems with it. And ultimately the beneficiaries are the children.

We will continue to work closely with the government in the central level and local level. Our plan is to continue to reach out to the children as we did in the past and try to do even more for them. But there are no big changes as such in our plans and programmes. There’s won’t be any dramatic changes. But our ambition is still to do more by trying to be creative in our approach, be more efficient, and try to attract more funding.

But I hope Save the Children will take a leadership role in Child Rights sector. I think we already have, and in the coming days it will be more so since after the unification we have more resources in our disposal to immediately work towards improving the lives of Nepal’s children.

Since now you are working as a unified organization in Nepal, will there be any cutbacks in your programs?

Well, I hope not. One of the main objectives behind the decision to have a unified presence is actually to be able to further increase our programmes since we will have more resources. So we will of course depend on our donors and the interest of members of Save the Children. Our ambition is to grow, but things might not be as smooth as I am saying because our donors may reduce their funding because of the global financial meltdown. But still I hope we will be able to attract more donors, and we would have more combined resources to provide hope and opportunity to Nepal’s children and engage in advocacy for them.

How do you evaluate the work of Save the Children organizations before it became a unified entity?

Save the Children organizations have had a very strong presence in Nepal for more than 20 years and it will continue to have so in the coming days also. And interestingly if you go to many of the rural areas, we have been doing quite a lot of work in health, education and other related areas. And I think some of the results are quite good. But of course we also depend on our operational environment. The country went through a long period of conflict in the past and now there again there is some political instability. Though there are many grievances, still over the years we have improved children’s access to education and health facilities. So overall I think we have done a very good job.

One of the things which we are obliged to do is also to have external evaluations, and I am quite happy to tell you that those evaluations have been mostly very positive. We are very proud of having brought half a million children in Nepal into the education system. We have supported the government very closely on education and health. Yes, we are happy with what we have done and the results we have achieved so far. But we believe that we can always make things better. nepalnews.com Apr 06 09