Guyana has capacity to compete for big developmental projects

Jan 19, 2018 News

Guyana could be a major beneficiary of finances to aid many developmental projects but may be lacking some of the crucial requirements to take advantage of such offers. This is according to Dr. Brian O’Toole, Director of School of the Nations, who claims to have a keen understanding of how a number of donor agencies operate.
At a media conference, recently, Dr. O’Toole disclosed that currently there is a great deal of developmental monies being offered to Guyana.
He said that although Nations, through its own Research Institute, has dealt with a number of donor sponsored projects over the years, efforts are currently being made to revamp the Institute. In so doing, he said that Nations is looking for full-time staff to help take the Institute to even higher heights.
Currently, Dr. O’Toole is serving as the Programme Manager for a community development grant from USAID. The grant valued at more than $11 million is aimed at helping to improve the lives of youths within the communities of Sophia and East La Penitence.
So skilful was Dr. O’Toole in his interaction with the representatives of the donor agency [USAID] that he was able to persuade them to add a segment to the project that was not even originally intended.
This aspect, according to the Nations Director, is one that includes offering the youths a programme in entrepreneurship.
“We told them that unless we can get money into the pockets of these kids, life is not going to change. So now we are going to train them on a programme from the Association of Business Executives [ABE] in England…”
At present, there are about 1,000 individuals undertaking the ABE programme at Nations. This has been recognised as the fourth largest ABE centre of the 230 centres in 40 countries. “We are going to train the 15 and 16-year-old participants of the developmental project to start very simple businesses themselves and then we will invite people like the Institute of Private Enterprise Development [IPED] and some other donors to put a little bit money in…
“It could be a juice stand outside a school; it could be making cassava balls, it could be keeping pigs, it could be hair dressing…it could be a whole range of different things,” said Dr. O’Toole.

Dr. Brian O’Toole

But according to the Nations Director, without proper measures in place to manage such funding, Guyana could miss out on a great deal of available support.
“We have met some of the donors and the mantra that they have is that Guyana does not have the absorptive capacity to take the money they want to give,” said Dr. O’Toole.
He continued, “So many times the money they [donors] earmark for Guyana end up going to another country because in their opinion, Guyana doesn’t have the infrastructure, the Non Governmental Organisations [NGOs], the capacity today to spend the money that they want to give and we would like to show them we believe that is not correct,” said Dr. O’Toole.
Through its Research Institute, School of the Nations has been able to work on many projects including: an International Labour Organisation [ILO] project at Parika to look at child labour; a special education programme in the whole of the Caribbean and even a disability project in Kosovo.
“We have been involved in a lot of different programmes…the UNAIDS programme even asked us to undertake a one year evaluation of 17 HIV/AIDS programmes in Guyana to see if the money was well spent…So Nations Research Institute has quite a long history of working with big international donors.,” said Dr. O’Toole.
The Institute has reportedly been able to handle more than US$3 million in development grants over the past 25 years.

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