Volunteers in Overseas Cooperative Assistance (VOCA) : final summary report for cooperative agreement no. FAO-0192-A-00-4052-00

Soon after the core grant was scheduled to be implemented, VOCA, with USAID concurrence, cut the number of proposed volunteer projects from 113 to 24 projects and used the grant to fund personnel and other attendant costs specifically dedicated to program development and resource enhancement. Unfortunately, the amendment to the agreement took approximately a year to accomplish. In addition, only $400,000 of the $525,000 authorized was actually obligated. The remaining amount was finally obligated when the agreement was extended for 2 months. Nonetheless, in the final 2 years of the grant, much was accomplished in the area of program development and institutional capacity building. VOCA aggressively pursued every opportunity to develop new, unsolicited proposals for project activities in nearly all the regions where it was authorized to do so. Many of these efforts have come to bear fruit. VOCA-inspired projects have leveraged resources from USAID missions as well as from multilateral donor organizations such as The World Bank, Sasakawa/Global 2000, Soros, UNDP, IFAD, World Resources Institute, and OXFAM. Additionally, VOCA improved its organizational infrastructure (computer equipment upgrades, software innovations, database modernization, etc.) and personnel profile in the area of business development, resource enhancement, and program management. These improvements have been undertaken, in large part, in order to be more responsive to USAID"s requirements in terms of program management, monitoring, evaluation, and reporting. (Author abstract, modified)