Geographical (GIS) Mapping and Data Sharing Workshop Held On 19 and 20 November 2009 at Government Accountancy Training Centre (GATC)

The below given report presents the findings of an Annual Review (AR) of the Basic Services Fund (BSF) for Southern Sudan. The review, which was carried out in August 2009, followed DFID’s standard PRISM procedures. The review team included a Development Economist/Team Leader, a Governance Consultant and a Gender Specialist

The BSF Annual Review will take place from August 16-26, 2009.

Below, please find the terms of reference from the consultants conducting the review.

This report contains a summary of the proceedings of the Government of Southern Sudan Health Assembly 2008 (GoSSHA II). GoSSHA II is the second annual gathering of all stakeholders and partners working in health in Southern Sudan and was held in Juba from the 26th of October to 29th of October 2008. The report was prepared with the assistance of the BSF.

http://www.bsf-south-sudan.org/sites/default/files/Final Report Health Assembly 150609.pdf

One of the monitoring tools of the Basic Services Fund is a peer review. The first peer review was conducted in November 2008 by all grant recipients with a health component. The peer review was considered as a very useful tool through which all grant recipients can learn from each other. It has therefore been decided to use the tool also to the education sector and to bring the peer review in the health sector to ‘a higher level’. Therefore the BSF secretariat asked a consultant to assist in among others the following tasks:

The first financial reporting workshop organised by the BSF secretariat on the 20th of May at the BSF secretariat was a attended by AMA, CONCERN, HARD, IMC, MEDAIR, OXFAM GB,and WORLD RELIEF, and was considered as very useful.

Therefore the secretariat decided to do a repeat on Friday morning of June 5th, again at the BSF secretariat from 10:00-1230 pm. The workshop will be about BSF's financial reporting.

The Basic Services Fund uses as one of their monitoring tools a peer review. The first peer review was conducted in November 2008 by all grant recipients with a health component. The peer review was considered as a very useful tool and it was therefore decided to use the tool as well in the education sector. But, in view of the early stage of Round 3, the Secretariat considers a full peer review exercise to be too much of a burden at this stage and it was therefore decided to start with some kind of a baseline/ bench marking exercise, which can be later on used for the peer reviews.

The BSF secretariat organised on the 4th of April at the Government Accountancy Training Centre (GATC) a combined meeting for the round 3a and 3b grant recipients to kick start 5 new projects, to stock take the implementation process of the 11 projects that started up in January 2009, and to introduce the new quarterly progress monitoring report format.

Please find below the overall presentation, the quarterly progress monitoring report format, and the presentations of the 3a grant recipients on the implementation progress of their projects.

From the 1st of April the Canadian government joined, through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the Basic Services Fund with a contribution of GBP 4.2 million. Therefore it was possible to start up 5 new projects (Round 3b), which were previously already selected by the Steering Committee and were on the waiting list to receive funding from the Basic Services Fund The following projects/ NGOs received a grant for the following projects: