Proposals

Whenever I meet old friends, and even a few new ones, I am always asked the question, "How did you end up with Habitat?" or something to that effect. Of course, the next query is almost always if I have met Former US President Jimmy Carter! In the popular consciousness, the name Carter and Habitat are closely associated due to several high-profile house builds that the former US President fund-raised for and personally led.

Yes, it's true, I have retired from UNDP after working in several projects mostly in South Pacific countries. I went home for good starting 14 Dec 2001. Home was and still is and, hopefully, will always be a village named Laya in Baclayon, Bohol. After three months of trying my hand in contour farming and mostly looking at our house helps raise native chickens, I felt if I had to live longer, I must go back to the chores I am used to for more than 60% of the lifetime I had lived. I need to do development work, identify problems, build a case for interventions, prepare proposals and other documents and basically move heaven and earth to get things on the ground, interest people to do their share, look back after all the confusions and resolutions and affirmations and endless reaffirmations of goals and shortcomings and new resolves and then move on to ... well, writing new proposals!

The need for writing project proposals was quite evident when I joined the provincial planning office on 01 April 2002. I looked at some office documents and felt the same way as before; this is another proposals factory. I felt the same way when I was with a public relations company that raised funds for civic causes; several NGOs in the past that were forever struggling; briefly with the National Economic Development Authority in a social mobilization project for children; and UNDP for twelve years trying to mobilize resources for atolls and other remote places that seemed invisible to planners.

Looks like the first skill to learn is how to write project proposals that will get government and external donors to fund. It is like you are thrown into the water and if you do not know how to swim, you will surely drown. Same way with development work; if you do not know how to prepare project proposals, you will not survive. Whether you are with an NGO, a government agency, a planning authority, an international UN agency or an international Christian ministry such as Habitat for Humanity International, you need to know how to put together a project proposals using formats prescribed by the donors or funders.

No way to escape this and my advice to romantics who have somehow ended up with development agencies these days; leave your literary biases behind or the illusion that you can just plunge into doing your chores based on your technical expertise. In most cases, the modality for the exercise of such skills is through projects, and you will first help produce the resources to enable you to practise such skills. Hence, it pays to know how projects get prepared, submitted, appraised and approved. Otherwise, you will have no project to hire to pay for the exercise of your skills.

Now I have not really answered how I came to join Habitat. You see, I have yet to finish this proposal I will submit to ... well, there is no end to this; I just had a break.