Right now we work in nine countries: Bolivia, Colombia, Honduras, Haiti, Guyana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Senegal, and the Philippines. These are all CIDA-funded projects. Since we've been in existence, basically, most of our funding has come from CIDA. Given the challenges we have now with funding and shrinking of those resources, we are looking to other sources outside of Canada, such as the World Bank or other international sources.
Basically, we're guided by needs: if we're approached by a certain country or government looking for help. Then, based on those contacts we've made, we would try to find funding. Of course, first we'd go to CIDA. If it's not available there, we would try to go elsewhere.
You asked if we have ever refused.... There are cases where we've been approached by countries for assistance when we don't have a source of funding and the countries themselves don't have funding, so in those cases we can't. But if we do find funding, the needs of the country are where we have our strengths, and we know we can do a good job, we would go ahead with it.
But the big challenge now for us is funding. For example, if the Government of Mongolia were to approach us and if they had funding to implement and we could get support from CIDA, we would assist.
As you probably know, CIDA has a list of 20 focus countries where most of their development assistance is targeted. To a lesser extent, there are countries that are eligible for assistance, that are given a smaller level of funding, but most of the assistance goes to the 20 focus countries. I don't think Mongolia is a part of that at the moment.