Rasmus Jørgensen
Rasmus Jorgensen is the Head of Evidence & Learning at Save the Children Denmark, with over 14 years of experience in M&E. He has designed, advised, led, and contributed to program evaluations, reviews, impact assessments, and research consultancies in various countries. Rasmus has a Master's degree in Development Studies and a Bachelor's degree in Political Science. He is committed to creating positive change and improving the lives of vulnerable communities.
Jakob Eilsøe Mikkelsen
Jakob Eilsøe Mikkelsen is an expert in development and emergency aid in Africa with over 19 years of experience. As the team leader for Africa in Save the Children, he works to improve the lives of vulnerable children in Africa by supporting the organization's strategic and practical work in the region. Jakob often visits African countries to understand the challenges faced by children and communities and represents Save the Children in relation to partners in Africa. He specializes in political and socio-economic conditions in Africa and has worked for the UN's World Food Programme. Jakob's dedication to helping vulnerable children in Africa makes him an inspiration to many.
You need to actually do something that local actors can see is what they have wanted to happen, and of course, it also means that you have to be credible as a partner. You have to walk the talk and demonstrate that you want to do this, you are not just paying lip service to it while still doing business as usual. So, I think that's a lot of what this comes down to. Confidence and trust building, of course, is a process. You need to earn it, it's not something you just have. Maybe we are a bit lucky in the sense that we work on children's rights in Save the Children, which means that people have a very positive view of who we are. That doesn't mean that we are not making mistakes and breaking trust, but it's a good starting point.
— Jakob Eilsøe Mikkelsen
Interview transcript
Thank you so much for making the time. We really appreciate it. Just a bit of a background before everyone has a moment to introduce themselves. We are from CIID. And we're conducting more of a nonprofit research to understand better this kind of multi stakeholder approach to impact investing and we're looking to hear from, you know, people from the financial side NGOs, government organisations, we're just trying to see, oh, here's how does this place or like this field look for other people? Hello, alright,
Rasmus Jørgensen My name is Rasmus. Yaghan, Samia, and I am in my normal daily capacity hitting up the evidence and learning team in central Denmark, in our international department. Where we do a lot of research, partnerships actually with a number of institutions around the world. So lots of interesting work there. I am also, as of this week, stepping up as the acting international director for for instance, network integrity in Denmark. In the interim, until we find someone new. I have a lot of hats on right now. Thank you. Very nice to meet your
Jakob Eilsøe Mikkelsen I am Jakob Eilsøe Mikkelsen. I am the head of the Africa unit in the international programmes and Save the Children in Denmark. So sitting on the international management team with us as well.
Diana Pang I am Diana and I'm based in Hong Kong. So I am one of the researchers on this project. My previous career was in banking. So very happy to go on this project to kind of like map to two areas of my life
Simona My name is Simona and, as you can hear from my Italian accent, I've been married and living here for a long time. I co-founded the organization CIID, which focuses on social and environmental sustainability through design. By design, I mean rethinking solutions to the biggest challenges we face in a creative way, not just aesthetics like fashion or jewellery. Since 2015, we've had a partnership with the United Nations, specifically with their Europe headquarters in New York and the UN city here, working on tackling these challenges. I'm excited to be here and work with the founders of this project, Louisa via Castro and Brian Gallagher. They asked us to come up with fresh thinking and a new approach to reducing the gap between good intentions and good impact, even though we're not experts in finance. Our first step is to understand the barriers, issues, problems, and challenges in the field of impact investment, and then come up with new ideas to design new vehicles and new ways of reaching and being more impactful in our work. Today's conversation, led by the scholar, will explore how a multi-stakeholder approach can be applied to financing activities, how to empower communities, and how to use emerging technologies like blockchain and distributed internet to facilitate the process. Thank you, Iskra, and I hope we can have a coffee soon as we're so close, and maybe we can keep you close to our project.
Iskra My name is Iskra, and I am a former student of CIID. Since leaving school, I have been working in design and playing with data for the web. Today, however, I will be the one asking questions.
With that in mind, have you ever participated in a workshop where someone showed you tools and asked you questions? That's essentially what we'll be doing today. I'll be your guide through Miro, so you won't need to have anything installed. We'll take notes and have some fun along the way.
Before we get started, I wanted to ask how you got into this field. What was the turning point that led you to join us? You already gave us a brief introduction and background, but I'm curious to hear more.
Rasmus Jørgensen It's been a while, so you may need to do some digging. You don't often ask that question, but it's very interesting. For me, it was actually a mixture of two things. Initially, I was drawn to the long-term view and started studying history. By coincidence, I started learning about decolonization and the modern history of some of these new nation-states that were taking shape after colonization. I was fascinated by their development trajectory and the challenges they faced. This sparked a professional interest in learning more about development, particularly in the human turn fields, especially the development field. This interest combined with a desire to make a difference in the world, no matter how small, which is a classic motivation in our field. Although I didn't start working with children, I now work with child rights, which is one of the most meaningful things for me. So it's a combination of an initial interest in the history of some of these new countries, a desire to work with them in real-time, and a desire to make a difference in the world.
Iskra: Well, that's a very good answer, especially for someone who doesn’t get asked that question often. What kind of work do you do, Jacob?
Jakob Eilsøe Mikkelsen Well, I can see that I developed a particular interest in the African continent as a child. I remember watching the news, which, at the time, was limited to only one channel in Denmark, so the news I received was very selective. However, I distinctly remember moments of injustice in South Africa, which sparked my interest in the continent of Africa and the inequalities that many Africans are subjected to. I carried this interest with me into my studies, where I focused on political science and took many courses related to African politics and social economics. I had the opportunity to work with the World Food Programme of the UN in Tanzania, Uganda, and Ethiopia, mainly focusing on vulnerability analysis and programming with communities. This work involved softer aspects of the World Food Programme's engagement. While heading up a section on school feeding and nutrition for children in Ethiopia, I developed a specific interest in what happens to children. This led me to take up a job in Save the Children, Denmark, where I have worked for more than 13 years. I have been fortunate enough to continue working with Africa in different capacities and have been able to visit many different communities in different African countries during my time in Denmark.
Rasmus Jørgensen That's Jakub, I've never heard that story. That's very interesting to hear from you.
Iskra Hey, everyone learns something new every day. On a different note, there is a wonderful tool associated with the first program. I don't know if you were a part of its development, but it shows in real time how different countries around the world are impacted by lack of food, and the reasons behind it, such as environmental issues or wars. The work they've done is very interesting and leads to our topic: impact investment.
For everyone we've talked to, impact investment is a topic that everyone has an opinion on, similar to design where everyone has a different definition. We are curious to know how you see impact investment within your work.
Rasmus Jørgensen Yeah, I mean, it sounds a bit like what we normally face as innovative financing, if I'm not completely off track. It's not something I've personally engaged with a lot, but I know that in our department, we've looked into exploring innovative financing and how it might look in early nation states. There's a table on that which I unfortunately haven't had a chance to read, so maybe you know more about it. But I think when you talk about the multi-stakeholder approach, yielding more power to communities, emerging technologies, and so on, that's very much along the lines of how we work in the protests we want to take forward. Especially around giving more power to communities, we are a child rights-focused organization, and we are trying to shift the dominance of us sitting in the north and making all the decisions on behalf of the affected people in the south. So a lot of our current programming and strategic objectives focus on moving more power to affected communities and populations in the south. From my research perspective, we've also looked into technologies, especially around innovation. There's definitely interesting things from that perspective as well. And of course, a multi-stakeholder approach from an innovative financing perspective would be super interesting. We're exploring how that could open new pathways for us in terms of finding new partners and new ways of funding to support people in this house.
Iskra Before we go to Jakob, I just wanted to follow up on what you said about working towards shifting dominance. I'm curious if you can give us an idea of the direction you're taking, without necessarily going into details behind the scenes.
Rasmus Jørgensen Yeah, so we actually make an effort to apply this across everything we do. Whether we work with education programs or mental health and psychosocial support, those are some of the thematic key areas we work with. In all of these areas, we are trying to shift power to the affected people we work with. We have a program called "Shift of Power to the South" that looks at how we can work more equitably with partners and communities in the south. This entails examining current procedures and processes, such as finance, that hinder us, not just as an organization but also as a sector, in terms of transferring money and power to partners in the south who lack strong local representation. Jakob, feel free to jump in here.
Jakob Eilsøe Mikkelsen Yeah, I can give you a couple of concrete examples of what that looks like. And you can guess from my first answers to your questions that I will speak about Africa now. One of the things we've piloted in line with what Rasmus is saying is actually setting up what we call a local response pool fund in South Sudan. We worked with the NGO forum in South Sudan, giving them a platform and facility with some of the funding that we have received through our Strategic Partnership Agreement with the NIDA. We put that funding forward to the NGO forum, and they selected a fund manager. This is an NGO forum of local NGOs, I should stress. They set up their procedures in terms of local responses that other local NGOs would be able to apply for and get funding for. We kept at an arm's length, so they could get Secretariat support from Save the Children. But it was the NGO forum themselves running with it. Now, that's been hugely interesting, and something we want to work on. Unfortunately, in South Sudan, there has been some turmoil in the NGO forum. So we've had to put some things on hold until they sorted themselves out. But we are soon ready to restart and planning to actually build on that experience and help them strengthen the platform that they would like to put in place. The important thing here is that it's not us, as Save the Children, setting up this platform or suggesting exactly what it should look like. We're basically there to provide support where they need that for them to run with this. This also means, of course, that it gets subjected to all the other kinds of discussions that local NGOs would have with each other, which I think is healthy. The turmoil that has happened is not necessarily a bad thing. It might actually lead to a better outcome in the longer run, if you like. That's one example in terms of shifting funding away. That's funding that wouldn't have been available for local actors directly, but that we make available for local actors to decide on. I think that's one good example. Another good example is a programmatic partnership we have with the European humanitarian office. That's an echo, the echo office of the EU, where we are just one out of four international NGOs enjoying the such a pilot programmatic partnership. We've made one strong component under that to be working with local actors, enabling them to get access into the cluster systems, which they have found really difficult by themselves to do. We've negotiated that the rapid response mechanisms in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and the central Sahel can respond to education in emergencies, combined with mental health and psychosocial support. These are actions that many of the clusters did not think were very humanitarian to begin with, but which we have managed to put forward and come up with a mechanism as to how we can employ. We've done that on a number of occasions now, where local actors are directly involved in those responses, which are directed towards children who are being displaced due to the conflicts in that area. We make a rapid response to ensure that they get back into getting educational support and mental health and psychosocial support based on the experiences that they go through. I think those are a couple of examples in terms of what we can do to leverage our abilities, so local actors can get more access to direct funding and decide on how to spend funding.
Iskra I really liked the word you used, "leverage." I'm going to share my screen because I think this is a good segway to the fun part of the exercise. I wanted to ask, and sorry, I won't be able to see you right now. Please just focus on this example from South Sudan because I think there's something very interesting in how you set it up. We've put together a basic list of stakeholders that are usually involved in this kind of process. Is there anyone else that you think is missing?
Jakob Eilsøe Mikkelsen All right, I'll just have a look at you have you have the government? Do you have that same manager?
Iskra Yeah. Well, we said manager, but you can change
Jakob Eilsøe Mikkelsen NGO investors? Well, basically, I would say NGOs here refer to the NGO forum, with a concrete example from South Sudan. Local NGOs who are members of the NGO forum have selected a fund manager. So in this sense, the manager would be a local NGO fund manager, in the concrete example. I think the issue of the government has been more about providing the overall framework for the NGO forum to operate and for us, as an international NGO, to operate within South Sudan. Interestingly, the government has not been directly interfering, as we have a military government in South Sudan. It could easily be seen as interference if they were to step in and do things, but they haven't. They've actually been sticking to providing that framework for how we will be able to operate. So that's a positive thing. Not doing a lot can also be positive. And in that sense, what they have done is exactly what we wanted the government to do. I don't know how much you know about South Sudan already, so please stop me if this is very evident to you already. South Sudan is still experiencing a civil war, though it's not active all the time. Government actors at the local level are aligned to one side of the conflict one day and the other side the next day. We work with such civil servants and state agents without stepping into the politics of the conflict itself. It's really from a technical perspective. That's also what local NGOs do when they respond. It's all within the coordination framework of those local government representatives, which is important because there's a lot of politics that takes place in South Sudan, which complicates things a lot. It's important to stay clear of that but still work with local government where that is due. Just wanted to clarify the government's role here.
Iskra No, that's very clear. It's a very good point because we have the chance to speak to different organizations where, sometimes, the government takes a more prominent role in enabling these things, but also in being involved. So, I think it's good to understand the nuances as well. How would you say the correlation between local communities and the fund manager and the NGO forum is? Let's start there. That might be an easier way.
Jakob Eilsøe Mikkelsen Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I think one of the things that there has been a lot of discussion about is that local NGOs are often considered to be closer to the communities that they work with in many ways. They are from the area, they know the people there, and they work very closely with them. Now, that's maybe part of the whole discussion that has been going on here, related to the fact that it is true in many cases. But you also have local NGOs where it is not the case, and whether they are actually as removed from the local communities as an international NGO would be in some cases. So, I think it's important to look at the specific cases and interventions here. One thing that we've certainly learned about in this process is that assumption has to be tested. You cannot just have a blanket assumption that local NGOs equal better support to local communities in a context like South Sudan. This is exactly why some of the turmoil has happened as well, because some people have seen money going to certain organizations and maybe not seen it benefit those communities in the way that was envisaged in some cases. Whereas in many other cases, there has been a direct impact on local communities. But it just means that you can't take things for granted. You need to find the mechanism on a concrete basis, and this is exactly what they've been looking at. How can they, as a fund manager, being a local NGO, have the authority to check what another NGO that gets the money is actually doing with that money, vis-à-vis accountability to watch the communities in this sense? So, this is where we are trying to reset things. Hopefully, they will come up with something that will provide the answer to that.
Iskra What would this role be? It's kind of interesting. How would you describe it? What would you say the role of Save the Children is? Is it like an investment for an investor? Or is it something else?
Jakob Eilsøe Mikkelsen It was certainly our role as investors to solicit the funding and put it on the table. Interestingly, this relates back to what was discussed earlier in terms of our journey here. We also had some internal discussions about how to deal with this, as there were people in our country office who were understandably concerned. How could we hand over all this money to local NGOs without a direct monitoring framework and accountability linked to it? Some of our systems, as an international NGO, have traditionally been more geared towards making a contract with a local NGO, which makes it clear how to govern that relationship. However, we wanted to move away from that approach here. This is not to say that there should be no accountability, but rather to shift that accountability one step further out, so that the fund manager is accountable for the funds coming in towards us, and then manages the funds vis-a-vis the other local NGOs. In this sense, the local NGOs applying should not be overlooked, but monitored by the fund manager. This was the whole idea - to make it as localized as possible. We knew that this approach comes with risks, and we have been transparent about this with our back donor, the Danish MFA. We are testing something out, and we are running a risk because we don't know exactly what will happen since we haven't tried it before. However, this approach is in line with the Danish government's ambitions to give more decision-making power to local actors. In many cases, from what we have seen, it has worked well. Until the turmoil, which put things on hold for a bit.
Iskra This is something I wanted to ask later, but it seems like the right time. He said, "It worked well, until you know, allegations arose." Why do you think it worked? Well, because it seems, and I haven't tried to map this as you were talking, but we'll have to go back to the notes to map it correctly. It seems like it's a fairly complicated web in order to ensure that the power lies within the local communities. And when I say local communities, I mean the NGOs that are representing it. So that doesn't necessarily involve the financial decisions on your end. And that is, for sure, difficult to manage in many ways. So I'm very curious to see from your perspective why you think it was successful. I'm not saying that it wasn't successful, and you seem very hopeful for it. So I'm curious to know what we can learn from it.
Jakob Eilsøe Mikkelsen I think that when I consider our success, it is linked to the fact that our NGO was set up in a way that allowed the fund manager to allocate funds to local NGOs. From what we have seen in the report, those local NGOs have been able to support communities with local responses. In most cases, they have been successful, but there have been some suspicions that some NGOs have received funding that has not directly benefited the local communities. This is not a particular issue for a local NGO, as it can happen with any operation in a difficult context like South Sudan. However, what we liked about our system was that the local fund manager and local NGOs were deciding on what was going to happen, not us as Save the Children. This, to me, is a success.
I agree that the process was complicated due to the way funding operates and the systems we are under. We have accountability towards our back donor and need to demonstrate that we are following the funding we are giving out. However, we did not want to sit on the shoulder of all the local NGOs and see what they were doing. We wanted the fund manager to do that. I think that, in the setup itself, it ended up working out nicely, despite its initial complications.
Unfortunately, an issue with the fund manager put things on hold, and we were obliged to investigate and find out more about it. We then put it back to the NGO forum to look at how they could reset themselves, as a lot of it is about confidence as well. It's about the confidence the local NGOs have in the fund manager they have appointed in this sense.
Diana Can I jump in and ask a quick question? Who is actually holding these NGOs accountable? When you think about accountability, what are your thoughts on it?
Jakob Eilsøe Mikkelsen So basically, there are two layers of accountability. The first is the accountability of local NGOs receiving funding towards the communities they are supposed to serve with the funding they were given. The second is the outward accountability to watch the fund manager who allocated the funding to them. In most cases, in typical partnerships with international NGOs, the accountability would have been towards Save the Children instead of the fund manager. The fund manager is accountable towards Save the Children for the funds that have been given all together. This is why I called it an arm's length in this case. We are one step further away from the accountability towards the local NGOs and towards the local communities. If we were going into a direct sub-granting kind of partnership, we would be more accountable to them.
Iskra Do you have anything to add before we continue? You've been a bit quiet, so I wanted to give you a chance to share your thoughts.
Rasmus Jørgensen I'm on mute. No, I think Jakob has brought up a very good example, but it also illustrates some of the challenges we face. This is something that, as I mentioned earlier, is a cross-cutting goal across everything we do. Therefore, we are also working hard to develop models and, most importantly, to figure out how we can have better systems, procedures, and processes in place. That is a big focus of our next strategy period. Currently, there are only a few good examples of how it can be done, but hopefully, in three to four years, we will have many more.
Iskra When you say "models," I assume you mean data models that understand the different types of models.
Rasmus Jørgensen Like Jakob explains here, this approach involves handing over power to local NGOs while maintaining an arm's length distance from them. This approach is more in line with our local leadership principles and involves true power transfer. The Aghabullogue also mentioned other models and approaches that may pop up across our various areas of programming in the next few years. We can examine and learn from these approaches. However, it is also up to us to push the envelope with our donors and encourage them to be more open to piloting new approaches. We need to address the risk averseness of donors like NIDA and EU. We are focusing on two rather large programs that emphasize this: Local Easier and Youth and Shifter Power. Both of these programs examine the more structural side of things as well.
Simona So, when shifting power and engaging communities more, what do you see as the biggest risks? In other words, why don't more people and organizations do it? What are the potential costs and risks, and what could go wrong?
Jakob Eilsøe Mikkelsen I think I meant that we had a conversation this morning with some colleagues about the same issue. We were looking at what it takes for organizations like Save the Children to change their role. It's about understanding what is required to shift power towards organizations in the Global South and have them in the driver's seat of the whole project cycle. This means a different role for international NGOs. It doesn't mean that they won't have a role to play, but they will have to adapt to this new reality. We hear from actors in the South that they're still interested in having international NGOs play specific roles with them. So it's not so much an issue of international NGOs thinking that they won't have a role to play, but there is a shift in understanding what that new role will look like. Embracing this shift and adapting systems to it is a bigger move for some organizations, like Save the Children. It's not so much of an issue for us in Denmark and the Nordic countries, where we've been able to attract that type of funding. However, we see with some donors that fund our work that there is no risk appetite when it comes to this. The accountability is very strict. If we do things like what I explained earlier with the local response pool fund in South Sudan with EU funding, we might end up having to pay a lot of money back. Even as an international NGO, we are not just sitting on gold. We are investing in the work we are doing. Shifting power has to go all the way, and this is going to take some time. Specific donors will have to change their frameworks. For example, we've been giving input to the localization guideline that ECHO is coming up with, which is great. But still, the EU is governed by rules that are decades old, and there are other political interests that may make them not want to open up that box for discussion. I see a lot of this coming down to power politics. As long as it doesn't completely shift power 100%, our donors will still be happy with doing some initiatives on this. But when it comes to completely shifting power, we just have to look around the world and see what is happening in those countries that are trying to challenge the power balance. It's not an easy thing. I think that a world where Global South organizations take decisions on all issues could be fantastic, but there are limitations that will be there until there are some more fundamental structural changes that happen in the world.
Rasmus Jørgensen And adding to that, Jakob, is that complexity also arises from the fact that entities such as the media and the EU, among others, will say that we are accountable to our Parliaments and taxpayers. Therefore, we cannot simply transfer all that flexibility and risk to them. There are many levels of complexity in all of this. It is often necessary to answer that we can only go so far because we are also accountable to our Parliament and their requirements regarding this matter. So, we really have to shift the needle at the highest level of this as well.
Iskra It's interesting because, to be honest, I was thinking about this as preparation for our call. I didn't initially consider risk mitigation on this level, because I thought it was just our money and we should have a say. However, I forgot that NIDA and the EU, among other organizations, have someone else to answer to in order to receive funding. This is very interesting.
Also, did you mention that you're looking into technology that can support this? Have you seen any examples where this was successful, even if it wasn't a complete solution? It would be helpful to have some direction in this regard.
Rasmus Jørgensen What I mentioned was that within our work, we've looked at innovative technologies that support child rights and Children on the Move. So it's not specifically about Yakubu, maybe you remember otherwise. As far as I know, we haven't looked into any technologies that can help with the shift of power to the south. But it's something that would be very interesting to potentially look at.
Iskra As we only have six minutes left, I wanted to ask if you both had a magic wand. If you could wave it and create all the positive impact in the world that you ever dreamed of, what negative things would you remove? How would you use it to create large-scale impact?
Jakob Eilsøe Mikkelsen Wow, that's a good question. Yeah, oh, good questions, by the way. I mean, all your questions have been very good, I think. Well, I mean, do you mean within the realm of shifting power? Or could it be about anything?
Iskra This is a unicorn type question. It can be anything?
Jakob Eilsøe Mikkelsen Well, I believe that our mandate as Save the Children is to protect children's rights. We strive to ensure that children's rights are fulfilled in accordance with the UN Child Rights Convention wherever we work. Ideally, all governments should be held accountable by those who value children's rights to ensure that children's rights are met worldwide. It would be wonderful to see this become a reality. This was a very organizational response.
Iskra "No, that's a great answer, but how would you use your wand to get there? If you had a magic wand and could do anything to achieve that goal, what would you do?”
Jakob Eilsøe Mikkelsen Wow, yeah, I mean, well, we certainly know in Save the Children that there are a lot of things that would have to happen at the same time for that to occur. I don't know if all of that fits within just one attempt with a magic wand, but we are a rights-based organization. One thing is that governments would be living up to their responsibilities as the duty bearers with children's rights, meaning that all child rights are incorporated into laws and practices and monitored and followed up on. The other side of it is, of course, perpetrators against children and children's rights violations would have to stop doing that. This includes everything from recruiting children into armed forces to sexual and gender-based violence to keeping schools closed so that children won't be able to attend school to ensuring that children survive after their first five years of life, which is the most critical for children. It's a lot of different things that would have to change at the same time for these things to happen, and that is exactly the reason why, even with shifting power and so on, we know that we are going to be busy for many years to come.
Rasmus Jørgensen Yeah, sorry, if I may just add for the last two minutes to that. I completely agree with Jakob, not surprisingly, on the ambitions. But I think we have had a lot of focus on this in the last maybe 5-10 years, with a lot of focus on local leadership and transmission. However, if we can take that leap in a relatively short time by, for example, looking at risk aversion and all these things, systems, structures, and procedures, we can go far away. I think the whole Sister Bane and sustainability issue is key here. The only way we can create long-term sustainable results is if there is good governance. However, one thing that I think we're missing a little bit is the government side of this, the good governance issues and questions around this, especially when you think about the sustainability of any of this. We can work a lot with civil society, we can build and shift power to the right kinds of people, but it doesn't have that much long-run impact when we see the issues we see on governance in many of these places. In my personal opinion, I think that's one of the big obstacles, and I think that we have somehow in the sector not been focusing so much on this anymore. For example, there's no one talking about direct budget support as they did in the old days anymore because it didn't really work. But that's also localization, right? I think without that element, without our perspective, it's difficult to see any long-term sustainable change. So I would like us to look more at that also.
Iskra "That's a fantastic answer. I'm always interested in hearing this because we ask everyone. It's like asking, 'If you could do anything, what would you do?' It's interesting how emotional some of those answers can be because it's not an easy thing. As you said, there's no button you can press to magically sort everything out.
Before we go, do you have any last comments or anything to add? Thank you for your time and insights on the matter of data."
Diana Pang Thank you for your time today. I do have one last question. In our earlier conversation, you mentioned that competence is very important in this exercise. Can you share a little bit about how to foster trust between donors and local NGOs?
Jakob Eilsøe Mikkelsen Yeah, that's a good question. I can certainly start out and then you can compliment me as we go along. I mean, I think a lot of it is really about ensuring that you demonstrate that you are serious about shifting the power and the local leadership itself. For example, we talked about South Sudan or the echo programme. You need to actually do something that local actors can see is what they have wanted to happen, and of course, it also means that you have to be credible as a partner. You have to walk the talk and demonstrate that you want to do this, you are not just paying lip service to it while still doing business as usual. So, I think that's a lot of what this comes down to. Confidence and trust building, of course, is a process. You need to earn it, it's not something you just have. Maybe we are a bit lucky in the sense that we work on children's rights in Save the Children, which means that people have a very positive view of who we are. That doesn't mean that we are not making mistakes and breaking trust, but it's a good starting point. Often, when we talk about working with governments and others, children are a very good entry point. Everyone wants to support children in different ways, even when they do bad things. Actually, that's often not seen in their own view as bad. It's just that there are some objective things on children's rights that we need to hold people accountable for.
Rasmus Jørgensen And maybe our role is exactly that. Jakub, as you said, is to be the facilitator of trust between local partners, NGOs, and donors. I'm wondering, Jakob, who was the guy presenting on local leadership? Dylan something?
Jakob Eilsøe Mikkelsen Yeah, that's right. From CIVICUS, CIVICUS.
Rasmus Jørgensen I don't know if you have been or if you're familiar with them, but this is one of the most enlightening presentations I've heard on the role of international NGOs, the role of Northern-based NGOs, and the sector's direction vis-a-vis local leadership and transferring power. So, I thought there might be something that a group and a person like you would benefit greatly from reaching out to.
Diana Pang Yes, you mean, Dylan? Matthews? Yes. Okay. Great. Thank you. Yes. Do you know him? No, I just Googled his name. Okay. Yeah. It's quick.
Rasmus Jørgensen They have some really transformative ideas and some very good ideas on what sets them apart and what that means in terms of roles for the future, including some very concrete roles for INGOs, such as Save the Children.
Jakob Eilsøe Mikkelsen If you haven't spoken to them, I think you would definitely enjoy it. Dylan is actually fantastic, too.
Iskra Great. We will definitely thank you for reaching out. Thank you so much. I don't want to go over time because I know it's five, and it's already very late for Diana. So I just wanted to say thank you so much for your time today. This will be extremely helpful, and the whole idea is to define potential opportunity areas. So if later down the line we think we might be able to use your input, would it be okay if we reach out again?
Jakob Eilsøe Mikkelsen You're absolutely. You're very welcome. Great.
Iskra Thank you so much. Have a good day
Diana Pang to you. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Jakob Eilsøe Mikkelsen Thanks, bye bye.
Iskra I'm kind of curious. In the sense of what you've just said, who was responsible for figuring out the best mechanisms? Is it a fund manager, someone from the safety children, or someone else to be a referee in the situation?
Jakob Eilsøe Mikkelsen And that was exactly one of the good questions. It was actually one of the questions that came up when things got a little bit difficult. There was a board set up by local NGOs that appointed a fund manager. It was agreed that the fund manager could not apply for funds because they were the ones managing it. One local NGO volunteered to be the fund manager, but they put themselves at a disadvantage by not being able to access some of the funding that they were managing. When things got a little bit difficult, they turned to us at Save the Children and said, "We have this problem, we have that problem." We wanted this to be at arm's length, so we wanted them to sort it out amongst themselves. However, there was a point when allegations were made towards the fund manager, and we were directly asked to investigate whether those allegations were correct or not. We were seen as a neutral player and had the apparatus to do that. We found that the fund manager was clean and that the allegations were not substantiated.