In anticipation of Southern Sudan’s historic 2011 elections and independence referendum, USAID/Sudan received unprecedented levels of funding to implement programs supporting the country’s transition to peace.

But security concerns limited USAID’s total number of staff and length of stay in the country, hindered travel outside major urban centers and interrupted smooth logistics to carry out critical programming.

MSI is currently implementing the SUPPORT project – a three-year effort to assist USAID in outsourcing staff, sharing and organizing field knowledge, monitoring and evaluating projects, hosting dignitaries, and improving communications.

SUPPORT enabled the hiring of 10 staff members who worked closely with USAID experts and three news staffers to transition to full-time USAID employees. SUPPORT built a facility for USAID and hosted 300 meetings in the first half of 2010 to reach out to the agency’s business and government partners.

The project facilitates meetings between USAID diplomats and the government of Southern Sudan.

Southern Sudan officials in the Ministry of Regional Cooperation said they learned the protocol to host such events through their partnership and participation on events managed by the MSI project.

SUPPORT produced three detailed evaluations and special studies for USAID and trained eight teams to create future assessments of such projects.

The program’s experts monitored USAID projects in areas where USAID staff had limitations on diplomatic travel and assisted USAID’s partners in data quality and data systems assessments. SUPPORT also helped USAID to establish an Intranet and make improvements to its overall communications strategy, in an effort to better convey the partnership USAID has entered into with the Southern Sudanese.

Go to our Practice Areas section to access more projects by category