E.3.2.b. Financial Administration (Attaya)

Attaya is the senegalese word for the popular African tea ceremony around which care is given, information shared, and disputes are resolved. In Arabic, Attaya stands for “givings or offerings” that are necessarily unconditional.

Created during the Kyrgyzstan Assembly, Attaya, is the working group, in charge of overseeing the budget and facilitating allocations. Each member in the working group is called Attiyya and communicate with a number of AC members, playing the role of direct link.

Attaya will more specifically facilitate the collective administration of the AC collective pot distributed by DOEN to each member and composed of the sum of the collective activities’ budgets.

Until a solid and legal model for governance is settled (see E.2), some of the ‘old’ structure of AC will remain in place in which the “funder”[13], DOEN, directly contracts and transfer the funds to each organisations individually. However, the budget for collective activities, the collective pot, which was handled by DOEN and Hivos until 2015, is now becoming decentralized and divided into smaller quantities. In other words, the AC collective pot is not in one place but it is being kept in 24 AC[14] collective pots.

This mechanism allows for collectively sharing the management of the budget and for a quicker access to resources, without numerous bank transfers or proposal writing.

Each organization can withdraw the funds needed from their part of collective pot in order to pay for the costs of Assemblies, Banga Meetings, ETP’s and Communication costs relating to the AC ecosystem (including the website). When it comes to Banga and ETPs, and for coordination purposes, the member should let their Attiya know. At the end of each year, each member is still required to submit an audited financial report, which will be reviewed by DOEN.

At present time, additional funds are still being provided by DOEN for the assembly, website, communication and fundraising costs (additional from the funds drew from the collective pot).

Bangas, ETPs, advanced payments and time strikes will be based on the AC members’ needs, urgency and the availability of funds in the collective pot. It is not about give and take; it is about caring and sharing as outlined in the AC ethical principles.

AC considers it part of a healthy practice to develop a yearly financial document that is audited by an external accountant and then attached into the Resource Map (D.2), both in terms of creating a sustainable internal financial practice and in terms of accountability towards the outside. The auditing will happen according to local auditing standards and most importantly in working with auditing companies that understand the nature of the creative and self-organisational practice of the network. In case companies with this understanding don’t exist locally, AC will help develop this understanding. Attayas will thus collect all of the individual audited reports, in addition to an audited report for the external expenses of AC and present one unified audited report for all of AC.