CIMA the ideal passport for NGO work

In the first of a series of overseas blogs, CIMA accountant Janet Humphreys describes a hectic year in Uganda.

Kampala GOAL finance team

22 May 2006, first day in a new job - just like any other really. Well, maybe not. The plane touched down at Entebbe airport, just outside Kampala, Uganda on the shores of Lake Victoria. I was full of mixed emotions. Only a month previously I had a well paid job with Xerox in New York. Now I was starting a year’s contract working for the Uganda field office of GOAL UK, a non-governmental organisation.

GOAL UK works in 12 countries implementing development programmes in response to humanitarian disasters, and helping street children and those affected by HIV/AIDS.

Among the crowd in the arrivals hall I picked out a familiar face in a GOAL t-shirt – Niall O’Sullivan, the outgoing financial controller. On the journey from the airport he enthusiastically described his time here, and gave me an insight into his experiences working with GOAL Uganda and living in Kampala. This was reassuring - I had made the right choice.

Escaping groundhog day

Roll the clock back eight years and things were very different. I was sitting for my CIMA final exams in London, working during the week and spending the weekend on revision courses. I thought I’d never finish studying. Since then I’ve travelled all over the world with my CIMA qualification in hand. The broad syllabus of CIMA has enabled me to take many roles – accounts assistant, treasury operations manager, project manager and financial controller. It has also helped me get my Association of Corporate Treasurers qualification (only 1.5 papers thanks to CIMA paper exemptions).

So how did I end up in Kampala? I took a scenic route – via Ireland and the US. After studying and qualifying for CIMA while working for Xerox in the UK, I relocated with my department to Dublin. I was in the treasury department for five years, progressing to be European cash and foreign exchange manager. I then moved to the US with Xerox and oversaw a treasury management system implementation.

NGOs need you

Once that was completed it was time for a new challenge. I recalled an earlier ambition to work in the humanitarian sector. My problem was that my talents were not in the obvious frontline activities, such as medicine or engineering. I’m a numbers girl. For me finance is not just about looking back, reporting on historical events. It is about adding value to operational activity in organisations, equipping teams with the necessary information to make informed decisions and judgements. To my surprise and delight, I discovered the NGO sector needs finance people like that, too.

The role is very - no, make that extremely – varied. It could involve safe counts of millions of shillings, preparing donor budgets, long-term strategic planning, training local NGO partners, or performing field support visits and audits. It’s a long list and life has been crazy at times but I’ve not looked back once in the year I’ve spent here.

There’s a real need for finance skills in this line of work, especially those the CIMA qualification provides. I encourage anyone to try it - you won’t regret it. That’s why I’ve signed up for another year!

GOAL UK is holding a recruitment event for finance professionals on 20 June in London. For more information visit the GOAL website. 

Full caption for picture: (from left to right) -  Florence, Julius, Maurice, Cuthbert, Moses, Niall, Janet, Rose.

June 2007