Decision Making Bodies: Baidarie has following three tier leadership and governance structure comprising of GB, Board and Management.
a. General Body of the organization comprises of programme beneficiaries (32 women + 8 Men) and it meets once a year to formulate and approve organizational policy.
b. Board is a mix of social development experts, practitioners and beneficiaries dedicated to the advancement of gender equality, empowerment and justice. It meets quarterly to determine strategic dimensions of the organization and grants approval to programme designs in accordance with the mandate and the policy approved by General Body.
c. Management comprises of six (6) women/girls + one (1) man beneficiaries turned to social development activists. It meets monthly and/or on the basis of need to take care of routine financial, administrative and operational affairs.
Participation of the programme beneficiaries including women groups in all of the above listed three decision making bodies helps in identification of their right based needs and demands, sorting out solutions to their problems, themselves becoming part of the solutions and in maintaining continuous connectivity of the organization with communities.
2. Project Management Support:
A.Operational Structure:
a.Leadership: It comprises of Vice President, Executive Director and General Manager.
b.Regular Staff: The organization is currently having 22 paid staff members comprising of 16 men and 06 women. They include graduates and post graduates in health, social sciences and finance. All of them have received trainings relating their professional responsibilities. As of now their association with the organization ranges from 4 to 18 years.
c.Volunteers; Organization is privileged to have strong working relationship with 57 CBOs/NGOs, 389 Community organizations, 6 District Level Vigilance Groups, 12 Youth Vigilanc e Groups, 1 Division Level Monitoring Group and 46 community vigilance groups working in its operational areas in six (6) districts of Gujranwala Davison (Punjab) . In addition, it has created rich treasure of social capital in the form of young women & men volunteers who always render their services for promoting social and human development agenda of the organization. All of them live in remote rural areas of Gujranwala Division.
B. Project Management Controls
a.Project Operations: Baidarie has developed following measures to produce desired output/outcome level results in quantitative and qualitative terms within the stipulated timeframe by using the allocated technical, financial, human resources.
1.Before commencement of the implementation of the project activities, senior management of the organization imparts training to the project team (employed in pursuance of the organization’s HR & Admin policy) on the backdrop, rationality, objectives and methodology for in time accomplishment of the desired output results in quantitative and qualitative terms.
2.Project implementation team develops comprehensive master plan of activities to meet the project objectives. Workload is distributed on quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily basis with defined roles and responsibilities of the implementation team. Area mapping is done and working areas are allocated to each of the team members.
3.Daily work plans and progress reports are prepared by the members of the operational team of the project and submitted to supervisory tiers in the team for review and prompt necessary feedback and advice.
4.The project team meets regularly to plan and review its performance. Such meetings are the main instruments of enhancing coordination, experience sharing, mutual support and to keep track of the progress. The vice president and/ or Executive Director Baidarie may on the basis of need join the staff meetings and give their input for overcoming the problems, encountering the challenges, situation handling and making up the shortfalls in capacity. The capacity gaps are identified and shortfalls are made up through on-job training. If felt necessary, special training sessions are conducted to give boost to the performance potentials of the team.
5.Field monitoring plan clearly reflecting objectively verifiable performance indicators in respect of each and every activity to assess quantitative and qualitative achievement of output level results is developed and implemented after getting necessary approval from the management.
6.Monitoring officer conducts announced and/or need based unannounced monitoring visits to check the conduct of the project activities in accordance with the pre-defined objectively verifiable performance indicators. She/he generates real-time monitoring reports and submits to Executive Director who after necessary review of daily monitoring reports issues necessary immediate advice for the corrective measures.
7. Senior Management of the organization in its monthly or need based meetings convened on urgent basis carefully reviews the progress update, flow of activities, monitoring reports, feedback from the right holders and the relevant stakeholders. Senior staff in the operational team of the project is also invited in these meetings. Quantity and quality of the performance during the field operations is matched with the pre-determined operational targets. Shortfalls and areas for improvement are identified. Necessary instructions, if required are issued to the project team to improve the quality of the performance for accomplishing the objectives of the project in the best possible way. Approval to work plan for next month is accorded after adjusting variances, if any.
8.Optimum efforts are made that that back-logs in conduct of activities are not created. If some changes in the work plan, strategies, activities or financial allocations are felt necessary in wake of field realities/obstacles etc., these are submitted to the funding agency along with the supporting logic for the proposed action, and only after their approval the modified plan is taken up for action.
The organization puts in place horizontal hierarchy of management so that efficient decision making assuring timely risk mitigation may be done.
Financial Control is put in place by taking up the following measures.
1. Finance and Accounts Section submits financial forecast to the support agency in complete respect of the prescribed time frame.
2. Finance and Accounts Section of the organization releases funds only for the activities approved in the project document and in line with the approved work plan.
3. Disbursement of all the project funds for carrying out the activities is made in accordance with the organizational SOPs approved by BoD and financial guidelines provided by the support agency.
4. Yearly audit of the project is conducted by the Chartered Accountants Firm approved by the organization’s BoD. The yearly audit report is submitted to funding agency in accordance with a mutually agreed timeframe.
5. Any financial monitoring to be carried out by support agency as part of the project protocol/contractual arrangements is qualitatively entertained and facilitated.
Information Management: Following arrangements are put in place for the purposes of information management;
a.Baseline Assessment Report reflecting socioeconomic conditions and training needs of the direct beneficiaries of the programmatic interventions.
b.Technical progress reports documenting the conduct of the project activities
c.Field Monitoring Reports
d.Minutes of the meeting for conducting assessment of the overall progress of the project.
e. Financial Record of the project
f.Monthly, quarterly and yearly financial reports
g.End-of- Project Evaluation Report, if required.
h. Any report that may be compiled by some third party evaluator.
All of the above listed document /reports are made available for review and assessment of the relevant stakeholders of the project.
C. Internal Controls
The organization has effective internal controls and the project management arrangements in place for taking up the proposed engagement with UNFPA through fully developed and capacitated systems i.e. comprehensive Finance, Management & Administration policies and SOPs approved by its BoD. They cover finance, HR, Admin, Procurement, result-based management, environment, Gender, governance & safeguarding. Qualified and adequately trained staff with clear job descriptions and the well-defined reporting channels is in place to ensure the effective and efficient functioning of the systems for timely execution of project activities to accomplish value-added results. An automated financial information system is used to document financial transactions. Financial audits are conducted annually by the firm of auditors approved by the Board. Project-based/ third party auditing is also conducted, whenever required.