About My Assignment to Haiti


Daniella will be working for three months in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, as part of the MCC team, helping office staff improve accounting procedures to deal with the generous monetary response to the earthquake disaster in January 2010.

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) is a worldwide ministry of Anabaptist churches, responding to basic human needs and working for peace and justice. To find out more about MCC, visit their website at http://mcc.org/.
While wanting to share my experience in Haiti with family and friends, I've also chosen to extend the invitation to my professional network, particularly those engaged in the field of accounting. I've been thinking a lot about Accountability lately. I'd like to invite you to join me, as I explore what accountability means to us as accountants, both within the global economy and the global community. I will attempt to explore this larger issues while describing a very specific case of how not for profits attempt to be accountable to donors for disaster relief funding in a very unique context.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Transparency

Transparency is taken to a whole new level here in Haiti. In fact, a lack of transparency can be downright dangerous.

Let me back up a minute. Transparency, in the accounting world, means that financial statements clearly communicate to readers what they want to know (or should know, if they're lazy). Remember the blog on photography and telling the real picture? Well, here in Haiti, NGOs are called to be accountable, not only to donors, but primarily to beneficiaries, who want to know what we are doing with their money.

Logical next question would be "how can we be transparent with beneficiaries who live in tent camps, most of who wouldn't know a financial statement from chicken scratch?" Well, there are watch dogs here who scour websites for financial information. Word gets around, and NGOs get a reputation - which can result in rocks being thrown at your vehicle, so I've heard.

Check out the website of the Disaster Accountability Project.
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