Partnering to build hope, capacity, and community

Almost every top international football organization consists of 100s of staff who aren't players.  For example, in 2018 Manchester United employed approximately 922 people, only 81 of whom are players.  The other 841 are doing administration, media, commerce, coaching, and technical support.  That's approximately 11 support people to every 1 player.  In the military, an average of 9 (or more) non-combat troops support each frontline soldier.  We have much different ratios at Operaiton Mercy.

At Operation Mercy's International Office we have eight non-field staff supporting approximately 300 field staff in ten countries.  I'm not saying this ratio is idea.  We could do more if we had more support staff.  However, it is VERY hard to find donors who are excited about funding the back office operations needed to support our field programs.  Thank you for being one of those rare donors.

I am extremely proud of our back office and leadership team.  A virtual team of people working from Sweden, Germany, Scotland, Jordan, and Australia.  Supporting over a hundred field projects by processing funds in dozens of currencies, debiting, crediting, balancing, traveling economy, enduring jet lag, leading meetings, writing emails, analysing issues, fixing problems (occationally causing them), Skyping at odd hours, proposal writing, fund raising, encouraging, reporting, monitoring, coffee drinking... to name a few.

At Operation Mercy, we expect lives to be transformed as a result of our project work.  Not just the lives of program beneficiaries and participants but all we expect the lives of our staff to be transformed too.  Here are a few of the things that Operation Mercy Country Directors recently told me they were learning.

Iraq  - The greatest investment you can make is time spent with people, especially those you see regularly. Therefore, one of the best investment’s you can make is through the local staff that you hire. 

Kazahkstan - One of the biggest things that I have learnt over the past year is to keep pressing on in the small things. It is nice to see a big project succeed but I am learning that over time, repeatedly doing things – even without the glamor –  progress is made and people grow for the better as they seek to learn from each other.  I have also learnt the value of partnership. There are many others that are also working towards the same goals we are working towards here. Receiving support from our close partner organization so that we could continue for another year was encouraging.

Jordan -  Have a clear policy for warning and firing staff. I had to fire a local employee in February. The policy I concluded on was: 1st verbal warning with explaination of the policy (and record the incident). 2) On 2nd repeated offense, issue a written warning (two copies) with the person’s signature, and save it in his/her personnel file. 3) Third repeated offense, issue a letter in a short meeting with the person explaining briefly they are being fired and the reason.

Afgahanistan -  A key lesson for us all has been seeing how committed our local staff have been to the needs of their communities and their desire to continue working in the face of extreme challenges and risk. 

We have been extremely proud of their perseverance and very encouraged to see their vision for transformation and change

Macedonia - Another lesson is not to allow mission-creep into a project before adequate funding is secured.  Actually and paradoxically, I don’t know how we could have avoided this.

Iran -  Our in country Operation Mercy Management Team is working well to maintain better communication for managing, leading, developing new projects and empowering staff, and maintaining, revising and making new policies as needed.  We continue to need to work on virtual team work management and follow agreed rules of the road for ongoing communication, decision making and accountability.