Our partner works with various international conservation charities to help promote the protection and development of a rural province in Cambodia. They provide the community with agricultural tools, to improve food production, rice farming and water sanitation. They also run livelihood development programmes, offering access to renewable energy, microfinance loans, and vocational and skills training to people working at the organisation's income-generating social enterprise projects.
They receive donor grants, but also generate their own income through three programmes including guesthouses with restaurants run by young people from the province who are given hospitality training, a tour operator for tourists visiting the community, and a microfinance aspect, which offers microloans to community self-help groups.
You will be working predominantly with the Executive Director, the Finance Manager, and the finance team. You will be the fourth AfID volunteer supporting this partner. During the first volunteer’s assignment, it was identified that there was a great need for longer term, follow up support as the FM was new to the role. Previously there had been very little financial reporting management, and, due to a lot of duplication of work, the finance staff are struggling to keep on top of things. The volunteer believed that their processes can be significantly streamlined, but did not have time to implement all of the recommendations.
The second volunteer identified that the FM struggled to implement all of the recommendations himself. Having taken an observational role, whilst continuing to identify discrepancies and weaknesses, the second volunteer recommended that the subsequent volunteer should be more of a mentor, offering training and direction on how to implement the recommendations.
As recommended, the current volunteer has been mentoring the Finance Manager and has identified that the organisation could do with an additional finance resource. Whilst they are advertising for a management accountant, due to the rural location of the project it will be difficult to attract and retain a suitable candidate. As such, the volunteer has suggested that the next volunteer focusses on training the FM up to this level and ensure he will be comfortable assuming additional responsibilities.
Additionally, the current volunteer has been working to create a funding pipeline tool, and improve communication between finance and non-finance staff, so that all parties are aware of what funding is being applied for. There is further work required on this, and this will extend to their budget creation and monitoring, and ensuring that programmes and core costs are appropriately budgeted for and apportioned across the donors. The volunteer has also been supporting them on the microfinance and income-generating projects, ensuring that staff are recording and passing on all the relevant information to the finance staff to be inputted into Quickbooks, and been assisting with cost & profit projections and cashflow analysis.
This placement will be for 3 – 6 months, from January onwards. The partner will be able to make a contribution towards accommodation.
Please note that overseas assignments, in this case Cambodia, will incur a placement fee as per the AfID Tailored Volunteer Programme fee scale (see website for more details).
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