Foreign Affairs Committee on May 12th, 2015

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Just out of curiosity, has anyone ever run into Help Lesotho? It's a group that's funded mostly out of Ottawa that helps girls in Lesotho. They've been doing it for 10 years now. You may want to take a look at what they do because in terms of capacity-building, there might be some things there that could be of assistance.

For three years now, I've learned a great deal about cooperatives, all kinds of co-ops. So my question is, when you're helping local farmers is the cooperative model one that you look at? Madam Brown and I have met with the representatives of the Aga Khan Foundation and they are helping rice farmers and coffee farmers develop co-ops. It's a model that helps the members but also affirms and creates greater capacity-building, if you will. Is anyone involved in this kind of thing? Is the co-op model one that you've looked at?

[Debra Kerby]

I'd be happy to turn that over to my colleague, Sohel.

[Sohel Khan, Senior Program Advisor, Food Security and Environmental Sustainability, Canadian Feed The Children]

Thank you very much for your question.

In fact, that's exactly what we're doing when we are implementing our projects, for example, in Ghana. Our focus is very much on farmer-based organizations, which are basically the farmer-led organizations. But our target is to bring them into a cooperative model and extend their capacity from the financial management perspective, and technical capacity, as well as other aspects of agriculture. We try to bring the lead farmers into being active members of the cooperative, because they can help the cooperative members, for example, with demonstrations of climate smart agricultural practice, the sustainable application of fertilizer, and so on.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

They could even own solar energy production too.

[Sohel Khan]

Exactly.

Also, they can mobilize their own resources through different mechanisms. There are two other aspects we're trying to integrate in this cooperative model. There is a risk transfer mechanism to establish, so they can absorb the risks of climate related or disaster related or any other kind of issues that come up.

So I think, yes, that is an area we would like to focus on and are focusing on.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Anyone else?

Mr. Styles.

[Bryn Styles, Trustee, Rotary Foundation]

Thank you.

Mr. Wilkinson pointed out that Rotary in Canada is working out a new arrangement with the Canadian government for some funding for some of our projects. It's going very well. We're very close to signing a final document, which is excellent.

The reason I mention this is that in December another Rotarian and I took two of your senior staff members, including the director of the partnerships for development innovation branch, to our headquarters in Evanston, in Chicago. They were extremely impressed with how we do our projects, how we evaluate them. The big thing, and this will get to your point, is their sustainability. Whenever a Rotary club is going to do a project, they have to do it with a partner club in the country they're doing it, but they also have to do a needs assessment from that community to ensure that community has a need for it and that it's not just something that the club in Canada perhaps wants to do.

One of the big aspects of this is the sustainability of the project. We don't want to do projects where there's a continued input of funds but no end to the funds going in. Part of that sustainability is ensuring that the community can carry on that project.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

And the co-op model is one of those?

[Bryn Styles]

The co-op model is a very big part of that. Many of these communities are so small that they have to work on a cooperative basis.

Mr. Wilkinson is—

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

I have to stop you there, sir, because I have only one minute left.

May I suggest that, if you haven't, you get in touch with the CMC, Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada? They're a fusion of the francophone and anglophone groups. They're headquartered here in Ottawa, and they have a very significant organization that helps internationally with co-ops. If you haven't been in touch with CMC, they would be delighted to provide and share information.

I'm sorry to interrupt, sir.

[Bryn Styles]

No, that's fine. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

That concludes the first round.

We'll now start the second round. Members will have five minutes for questions and answers.

We'll start with Mr. Trottier, please.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for coming in today.

I really appreciated your presentations. One thing I sensed in all of your presentations was a certain optimism. I know it's a real challenging world out there, and it can become very frustrating. Especially when I think about your large organizations, with all of your volunteers, how do you keep that optimism? If you take the long view and you look at the last 50 or even 100 years of human history, you see that in certain developments—access to drinking water, primary education, infection rates—we are actually making headway in many parts of the world.

All of your organizations have been successful in various ways. I think one of the things your organizations and your individual volunteers bring is this skill set or this diversity of backgrounds that you're able to deploy and focus. Management thinker Peter Drucker talked about SMART goals: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals. There are elements of all of that when you describe what you're doing as being very achievable. I think about the eradication of polio; we know it's achievable. You have a certain timeframe you want to do it by, and that's why you're able to get people to focus on these things.

Mr. Styles, you mentioned that you're in discussion with the Government of Canada right now. You have partners around the world in terms of different countries that you're operating in. When you're discussing with the Government of Canada, are there calls for proposals? Are they looking at other organizations? Is it a competitive bidding process? I always say that we don't fund NGOs, we fund programs and projects, and then we look at who is the best partner to deal with. How is that discussion taking place with Rotary right now?

[Bryn Styles]

When we were operating under the auspices of CRCID, the Canadian Rotary Collaboration for International Development, that had been in place since about 1986. It was a call for proposal method. When CIDA was disbanded and CRCID had kind of outlived its purpose—it had become too bureaucratic for Rotarians and for the government—we met with Minister Paradis and decided that the Canadian government still wanted to work with Rotarians. They're very proud to work with Rotarians. We do good work. But the model we had wasn't working.

They're coming up with a model where they will grant us x dollars a year for five years, and we will administer that through Rotary Foundation Canada, reporting to the government. So it wasn't a direct call for proposal, as such. In terms of government, it's not huge dollars, but....

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Okay.

At Kiwanis, you mentioned there was a partnership with UNICEF and also with the Government of Canada. How does UNICEF decide whom to partner with? There are other service organizations around the world. How do they arrive at that decision? Or is there more than one organization they're partnering with on this program on neonatal tetanus that you described?

[Dr. John Button]

UNICEF had partners in the private sector, and they were tapped out. UNICEF still required $110 million. UNICEF came to us with a proposal and we embraced it. They came to us, I believe, because of our success with our previous joint project that eliminated iodine deficiency disorder.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

I see.

Ms. Kerby, you talked about this idea of goal-setting and setting action plans to achieve those goals. How did you arrive at your areas of focus? There were different things that were very measurable, again, and very specific in certain countries. What's the planning process at Canadian Feed The Children to figure out the goals you're going to set and how to mobilize your organization to try to achieve those goals?

[Debra Kerby]

Well, to call on Drucker again, you can't manage what you can't measure, or is it that you can't measure what you can't manage?

When I came to CFTC in 2010, five years ago, we had a lot of good work under way, but it wasn't great work. For me, the difference between good to great in the not-for-profit sector is that good work is when you can tell a great story about it; great work is when you can define measurable impact and very clearly defined indicators.

The impetus for our theory of change journey over the last five years has been the absence of a monitoring and evaluation framework to be able to very clearly define impact. It was a very messy but very important process to go back to our community partners and the communities we're working with to talk about theory of change. It meant we needed to focus our efforts. Instead of sprinkling a bit of sugar on everything, we needed to be very focused. That was how we came up with our theory of change map. Then, we drilled down, working with the communities to talk about the clear and measurable indicators for food security, education, capacity building.

That was done in each country. Now we're coming to the end of a three-year period, and we'll be able to measure against very specific and clearly defined indicators that were developed by the community, that also link in with global indicators, to make sure we can track impact at the community level, at the country level, and against global indicators.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

That's all the time that we have.

We're going to go over to Madam Laverdière, for five minutes, please.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question is for Mr. Wilkinson and also for Mr. Button.

Do you face a large number of difficulties, risks or threats to the security of staff who administer vaccines in the field? As you know, there are many problems in a number of countries.

What is the best way of getting around and mitigating those difficulties?

[Wilfrid Wilkinson]

Thank you very much for the question.

I don't believe that we've had a lot of difficulty. I can remember being in Nigeria, and the difficulty was that the workers were not being paid.

On the other hand, I can remember an imam at one of the mosques saying that you'll never get rid of polio in Nigeria until you stop the money. I asked what he meant. He said, “Well, you know, the people here have figured out that you used to hire people to do this”. When he said “you”, it's the government, which we were supporting. They would get drops once a year. Then they were getting drops twice a year. Now you're up to immunizing them every three months, and all that. He said that they'd figured out that if they immunize all the kids, you wouldn't need them anymore.

What you have to do is to convince them that there are other things to do. That's why we have the whole area of the camps to provide not only polio vaccine but also health care in other areas, so that they know there's a future.

Sometimes governments are less than perfect, but because the members of Rotary are not being paid—they're there as volunteers—they're able to influence the local population and local business people tremendously. I think that's how we are getting around this problem. It's a problem, and it doesn't matter what country you're in. You might even say that we have some of those problems right here in North America as well. We're constantly at it.

However, our big argument is that our people are all volunteers. They are not being paid.

[Dr. John Button]

We've had no problems with security, and I think that is probably because no one wants to see their babies die. Mostly our teams are welcomed because they know what's going to happen; they're not going to see their babies and their new mothers die.

The other thing is that by using local people to provide the immunization and the education, there's a much greater acceptance. The other thing we've seen is that just like in areas of war where you have raid parties, people doing the vaccinations are also doing raid parties. When the belligerents leave an area, the raid party goes in and provides vaccination.

[Dr. Robert Scott, Chair Emeritus, International PolioPlus Committee, Rotary International]

Chair, may I answer that?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Yes.