JPO Stories
From growing coffee in Sri Lanka to producing Nicaragua's first chocolate bar...
Harm van Oudenhoven's journey from producing coffee in Sri Lanka, working as a UNCDF JPO in Ethiopia and El Salvador, to introducing chocolate production to Nicaragua.
My name is Harm van Oudenhoven and I was born in Leiden, the Netherlands in June 1967. When I was six years old my father started working for UNESCO in Kabul, Afghanistan. We lived there happily for 3 years and fully enjoyed that country still untouched by war and disaster. From here we moved to New York, were my father worked for UNICEF. We moved back to the Netherlands when I was 16 where I graduated from an International Baccalaureate school.
I studied Cultural Anthropology at Leiden University, receiving my Masters after a rather prolonged study. During my student years I ran my own shop selling different ethnic goods, from Indian jewellery to Afghan carpets, Ethiopian lip plates to nail fetishes from the Congo (www.chickenstreet.com).
I met my girlfriend and current wife in Anthropology lectures. She had a similar internationalbackground and we shared the same desire to work and live abroad. After graduation it was her who received the first job offer as associate expert for a Dutch funded project. We moved to Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka were she was the gender expert in a rural development program. With time on my hands I did a few consultancies on marketing and ended up taking the initiative to form a small coffee roasting facility. With no good coffee available in Sri Lanka at the time, it was a perfect structure to link small scale coffee produces to a production facility and supply quality coffee to the local market. Hansa Coffee still exists and is nationally known for its aromatic coffee (www.srilankacoffee.com).
We returned to the Netherlands after this 3 year assignment with our first born son, Vincent. Back in the Netherlands we applied for different posts throughout the world. I stumbled across a great sounding vacancy announcement from Program Manager at the United Nations Capital Development Fund in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
I applied and six months later, December 1998, we flewinto the Horn of Africa, with blue passport in hand, for my first assignment as JPO. My assignment on paper was lengthy to say the least, five projects and an investment portfolio of $20 million. It soon became apparent that the situation was even more complicated in practice. On my third working day I asked for a meeting with my counterpart at the Ministry of Economic Cooperation and was politely informed that the Ethiopian government would rather see UNCDF leave the country than continue as it had done in the last few years.
It soon became clear that promises of project financing had not been kept, and worse, programs had been executed without the approval of the Ethiopian Government. The program was a disaster. At the end of the first year, we had to close down our major program, with projects delayed by UNCDF and the UNDP, the Ethiopian Ministry refused to sign budget approvals. It took months of negotiations to get things started again. My strategy was to fully align myself with the Ethiopian government and represent them in meetings with UNCDF. By the time I left, the program had been restarted, new staff had been recruited and we even managed to get a new $8.2 million project approved.
In 2001, the Dutch government still offered a two-time JPO contract. We were encouraged to look at other organisations and were even offered an intensive language course if we did not speak the relevant language. With my Spanish consisting of nothing more than "Si" "adios" and "vamos a la playa", I applied for a job at the World Food Programme, receiving an offer for a Program Officer post in El Salvador.
My wife was six months pregnant when we arrived and it was the hottest month of the year. Ok, I admit it. It was very difficult to start a new job, in a new country, with a new language and a baby on the way. It took some time to actually understand what people were saying. Making phone calls was even worse. The good thing was that people in Central America are some of the friendliest and forgiving people I know and I still thank them for their patience. Ricardo was born on August 1st, and all went well.
However, at the office, it soon became clear that I was not really needed. The Country Director had urgently requested a JPO, but what I faced was a winding down program, with funding decreasing rapidly. The El Salvador office was overstaffed as I was placed in a small office with the monitoring team. It soon became clear that there were deeper problems. At headquarters there was talk of closing the El Salvador and other Latin American offices.
Now this was fully reasonable. El Salvador is one of the richest countries in Central America and should be able to feed its own people and even react to emergencies with its own army and resources. If you come from Ethiopia, were people are literally dying in the street, El Salvador has everything going for it.
In response, the WFP office became what best can be said as "inventive". We were told to look for any kind of program we could assist with food aid, identify any risk or threat to food security. We offered food to any NGO, offering food for work assistance complimenting their technical input. Assessments were global and figures of needy people were rounded upwards. Not something I gladly adhere to, with so many real problems in the world.
I spent the last year working against my conscience, but ended up writing the El Salvador section for prolonged relief program for the Central American region. It was the brilliant invention of a WFP senior staff member. She argued that Central America faced repeated disasters and this therefore justified WFP presence. With Hurricanes, droughts, earthquakes and flooding as constant threats in the region, she had a point. El Salvador currently hosts one of the emergency supply warehouses for the region and is expertly run by some of my old colleagues.
We moved back to the Netherlands, taking some time off for ourselves and getting to know our own country once more. We started applying and this time Anita got an offer. Excellent!. It would give her the opportunity to again be active professionally and it would give me chance to do something on my own.
We moved to Matagalpa, Nicaragua; a small, taking our needed supplies from the Netherlands, including 5 kg of dark chocolate, for those lonely TV nights in mountain villagers. Even in El Salvador there was no chocolate, so this was a prerogative. Coincidently, two months later, driving around during the day with my two kids in the back, we stumbled upon a few abandoned cacao trees with cacao fruits rotting on the forest floor below. There was opportunity here, I knew it.
I started El Castillo del Cacao with a kilo of cacao, a pan, somesugar and a litre of milk. I worked in the afternoon, trying to make something edible. At the end of the dayI had a soft mush that tasted oh so not like Toblerone. It was good though and I still remember the curious smile on Anita's face when she tried a piece coming home from work (www.elcastillodelcacao.com).
In the coming weeks, months I worked on different recipes and the idea of forming a business. My best encouragement came from my son who, after eating way too much chocolate, offered to buy some more. I sold my first bar for to him for 50 cents.
I made an alliance with two friends of mine and we worked towards a business idea, investing in a small trial kitchen and essential tools. We started selling simple chocolates in town and in the capital. Our best break came a year later. The Bid Challenge was launched. It consisted of a competition for business ideas to combat poverty with a 20,000 Euro first prize. Using all my skills gathered in the JPO years I wrote a formable business plan that incorporated no less than four UN Millennium Goals. We won!
Three years later, after some successes and loads and loads of problems, El Castillo del Cacao is up and running and is the only real, but small, chocolate factory in Nicaragua. We supply supermarkets and small shops and give steady employment to 7 staff members. We receive visitors to our chocolate museum and give tours of the factory. Furthermore, we have trained at least a hundred cacao farmers on the basics of chocolate making. There are now at least three fledgling chocolate enterprises in small villages started by this initiative.
In my career El Castillo del Cacao has probably been my most enriching experience so far. It has given me a very deep and practical insight into the difficulties and restraints facing small and medium scale business in developing countries. It has become much clearer why these economies do not function and why development interventions are sometime ineffective or even damage the road to progress. I find that the combination of UN and private sector has given me a unique vision in regard to development interventions.
After nearly five years in Nicaragua, the time has come to move on. I hope to hand over management of the factory to my business partner. My wife and I are both looking for a new position in another country. I like the World Bank; she is looking to move up in her organisation. We will see what happens and hope for the best.
Lessons learned during my career:
The JPO positions gave me a great opportunity to expand my knowledge. Not only in getting to know two new regions in the world, but also the incredible experience to work on an equal footing with people from all nationalities. The chocolate factory pushed my nose in the dirt of economic reality in the third world, but gave me a freedom to do something original and something that is having a clear impact. Both have showed me that development is not easy. Both have given me skills that I will use for the rest of my life.
Advice:
Being a JPO is not easy and sometimes very frustrating. Not taken seriously, they are often put in assistance positions, unmotivated by endless talk and no action in the huge bureaucracy of the organisation. A JPO should remember that he or she is also there to learn. Take advantage of this opportunity, try and travel in the country were you stay, get involved in different units of the office and don't be afraid to speak your mind. Yes, the UN can be slow and tedious at times, but it is also one of the greatest organisations of all time. And remember, you get paid a fat salary, so stay positive and get the job done!
BY THE WAY...
1. Your crowning glory: My two kids, Ricardo and Vincent and my wife Anita
2. The last favourite book you read: A Fine Balance by Rhinton Mistry
3. Behind the suit: There is this hippy guy with a slight radical tinge.
4. Favourite quote: Nothing is worth having if you don't need to fight for it.
For ideas:
Ranil Senenayake and his ideas on Analogue Forestry: (http://news.mongabay.com/2006/1106-interview_ranil.html).
For comparison:
On a UNDP/ UNCDF mission: an Ethiopian lady who had lost 7 of 8 children living in a mud and straw hut in the Simian Mountains. Her house overlooked an unfinished school, a project abandoned by the UNDP due to pressure from the GEF (Global Environmental Facility). GEF had blocked the project 4 years earlier because of concerns that more people might come and live in and around the National Park.
Having seen hopes for her children's education shattered, even while they lay dying, she was still able to smile, and while holding her youngest malnourished son, she offered us some food and tea.
Harm van Oudenhoven, November 2008
