Project Management

Media Support Solutions (MSS) has a strong history of managing long-term media projects in Afghanistan, Botswana, Zambia and Mozambique, as well as advising local partners in Somalia, Zimbabwe and Guyana. This work has focused on conflict and post-conflict issues, and HIV/AIDS. Media Support has plans to develop work in the new area of media support for small enterprise development.

MSS specialises in management for empowerment – giving local managers the capacity and freedom to take day to day decisions themselves without expensive expatriate managers breathing down their necks. International specialist consultants visit for specific reasons - for instance to run training courses in scriptwriting and production, to provide advice on evaluation or to assist local organisational development. MSS staff based in Scotland and Zimbabwe will visit on a regular basis to advise on management issues, and ongoing support is provided through emails and telephone calls. Book-keeping is handled in-country, but the increasingly complex process of reporting to donors is handled by the MSS Finance Director, Neil Shaw, from Scotland, who also monitors local financial management.

MSS's goal for all projects is sustainability. This means building the capacity for in-country teams/organisations to set themselves up as autonomous local non-profit companies. In Botswana (see case study) this was achieved in five years. Makgabaneng Ltd took its name from the highly popular radio soap opera focusing on HIV/AIDS and other social issues it had created and nurtured with the financial support of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US CDC).

Media Support Partnership Afghanistan (MSPA) is registered as a local NGO in Kabul, and is in transition to becoming fully independent (see capacity building), as is Gama Cuulu in Zambia. There are plans for Media Support’s activities in Mozambique to be brought under local control in the same way.