We asked the Executive Directors to attend at least for the Tuesday, although many stayed all week. This gave us a total of 87 participants for Tuesday with 8 staff members and slightly smaller numbers on Wednesday and Thursday. It was the largest training course I've ever organised and the only residential one.
The objectives were around communications and closer working between Finance and Programme teams, Understanding finance for the POs and the role of the ED in financial management.
All of the sessions on Tuesday were for all participants, although we broke into 10 smaller groups for the case studies. After the welcome and introductions we spent the morning talking about the Importance of Financial Management with a special focus on the role of the ED and the Board of Trustees. I had the idea of colour coding the name badges so that these also worked as the key to the group each person was in. This worked really well cutting the time taken to get into groups after the break to work through the case study.
After lunch I led a session on Practical Monitoring and then the Finance Manager looked at Procurement Best Practice. There was a real buzz through all of the sessions with everyone saying that they had found them useful and also enjoyable.
With so many partners together we decided to also offer a social programme, including aerobics sessions in the early evening. On the Tuesday we had a BBQ and a very good Congolese band. With Ugandan weather we were able to hold it outside on the grass by the swimming pool. It was great to see so many people dancing, although the wonderful African natural sense of rhythm always makes the Muzungu dancing look so ungainly. Here everyone, male and female, needs very little encouragement to join in the dancing and we all had a good time.
On Wednesday the energy levels dropped as everyone was tired after putting so much into Tuesday. We split the group into 2 halves. I worked with the POs and some EDs on Understanding Finance, working through the Minimum Requirements as the hallmarks of an effective finance system. My finance team colleagues ran an Excel Workshop for the FOs.
On Thursday morning one of the EDs ran an interactive opening session on reviewing the previous day using an ingenious ball made up with paper and masking tape. You can just see it in the middle of the picture, held by the man with the microphone.
I ran a small session on Overhead Analysis and Full Cost Recovery in the morning. This has not yet reached Uganda but some of the FOs of the larger groups have expressed an interest so I ran through the principles, with a small example, and some of the challenges.
After lunch we had a debate! This has worked so well at the Charity Accountants conferences in the UK I decided to give it a try. The motion was: 'This house believes that coding should be done by the Finance team' and it certainly initiated a lively debate. I was a little worried as it started to turn into a heated discussion about the role of the POs v that of the FOs. But a few contributors pulled it back to the motion being discussed. The motion was defeated and we then considered it again and agreed that both finance and programme teams were needed to effectively manage and account for the programme.
Lots of participants left on Thursday evening to travel back, but a core group of 16 took part in the quiz after dinner with the winning team taking a large box of chocolates and mixed sweets.
All in all a hugely successful conference. I was tired on Friday and just worked a short day reviewing and consolidating all of the evaluation forms. These were overwhelmingly positive about the course, although there were a few negative comments about the venue. One participant described it as the best course so far!
I'll finish with the view from my hotel room during the conference. The hotel was on the side of a hill, in common with many hotels and apartment blocks in Kampala, so the view was spectacular. Great to relax and look at at the end of a long day.
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