Thursday 25 October 2012

Finally, a post about my work


In my posts so far I have not made much mention of work but that will change today.

I am working in the Directorate of Financial Resources of the Ministry of Health and Sanitation.  The objective of my role, Finance Manager, is to build capacity in Management Reporting.  When I arrived there was a lack of any type of management report on health sector expenditure as the historic role of the finance directorate has been to raise payment vouchers.  This is changing however and my boss is pushing for the directorate to produce more analysis of spending in the health sector.  Seven months in I have produced reports for the first and second quarters and am starting work on the third.

As a VSO volunteer I have an aim to build capacity within the staff of the Ministry.  A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to work on this aim at a workshop held in Bo.  This was a workshop to train health finance officers in the basic requirements of their roles and to introduce them to Excel so that cashbooks and other books of record can be maintained electronically. 

The workshop was held over three days with finance officers from all over the country attending.  They work in hospitals, district health management teams and headquarters.  The level of computer knowledge varied greatly across the group so three days working on the basics was highly valuable.  We had managed to source a number of computers so the training was actually hands on.  The next step shall be to hold smaller follow up workshops so that everyone has a chance to improve their skills.

Here are some images of the training in action




No comments:

Post a Comment