Photo credit: Sarah Hamm
By Sarah Hamm, MIPP
When I first arrived in Vientiane, Laos, I was eager and admittedly quite nervous to find my place within such a large organization and a completely new environment. Like many people drawn to international development, I arrived in Laos with a desire to make a difference. However, my first couple weeks felt like a crash course for how UNDP Lao PDR operates and what my role would look like for the next six months here.
At UNDP Lao PDR I work across two teams: the Programme Support Unit (PSU) as a Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Intern, and the Environment Unit as a Resource Mobilization and Partnership Intern.
At first, I wondered if the behind the scenes work done in PSU was far removed from the kind of field impact that always drew me to the UN, but over time I realized PSU is where the many moving parts come together. Much of my work in PSU revolves around supporting different stages of the programme planning cycle, which guides how the office plans, monitors, and reports on its projects. This often involves monitoring the office’s performance and reviewing data from various unit dashboards to see whether projects are meeting their targets and delivery expectations. Alongside this, I’ve also had the opportunity to support the ongoing Independent Country Programme Evaluation (ICPE). This work has become especially important this year as UNDP Laos is reaching the penultimate year of the current Country Programme cycle (2022 – 2026) and one of the strategic priorities for 2026 is to draw lessons learnt from the current phase and to conduct context scanning in order to design a well-informed and evidence-based Country Programme in the next cycle (2027 – 2031). As part of this effort, once the ICPE concludes I will help organize and analyze the data being collected so we can draw out lessons learned, good practices, and risk insights across the country office. The more I do in PSU, the more I feel like I gain a deeper understanding of the development landscape in Laos and how it relates to UNDP’s strategic priorities. What I like about working in PSU is that it offers a bird’s eye view of everything happening in the country office, as well as I get the privilege of collaborating with and getting to know a wide range of people across different units.
Where much of what I do in PSU looks at what has already happened, resource mobilization is more so about envisioning what could be possible next. In this role within the Environment Unit I mainly contribute to pipeline mapping, as well as updating the country office’s Partnership and Communication Strategy and Action Plan. This also involves supporting the transition of the Small Grants Programme (SGP) back to UNDP. The SGP provides funding to local community groups and organizations that work on environmental and sustainable development initiatives. Last month we launched a call for grant and recently held two capacity building events for potential grantees. These sessions provided technical feedback on draft proposals and guidance on how grantees can align their ideas with the Programmes priorities. I’m now looking forward to reviewing the applications and being part of the team of advisors who will shortlist the applicants before the proposals are sent to the National Steering Committee.
Living and working in Laos has ultimately been both busy and challenging at times, but also extremely rewarding and exciting. It’s been an invitation to explore not only a new country but a new way of working, thinking, and seeing the world!
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the BSIA, its students, faculty, staff, or Board of Directors.