Cover photo: Emily Tagliaro (Head of E&ID), Dr Monique Éloit (WOAH Director General), and Dr Hans Wyss (Chair of the Advisory Committee and WOAH Delegate for Switzerland) © WOAH

The 18th meeting of the Advisory Committee of the WOAH World Animal Health and Welfare Fund (World Fund) was held on the occasion of the 90th WOAH General Session held in Paris (France) on 23 May 2023.

The World Fund is WOAH’s multi-donor trust fund which collects voluntary contributions by entering into grant agreements with Members as well as international organisations, philanthropic foundations, the private sector and other sources. The Engagement & Investment Department (E&ID) manages the World Fund and is supported in this effort by the WOAH Director General, a Management Committee, and an Advisory Committee.

The Advisory Committee is composed of the World Fund’s resource partners and meets once a year to review the Fund’s financial performance, present strategic priorities requiring either financial or political support, and identify opportunities to leverage funding and donor support.

Survey to the Members of the Advisory Committee

In preparation for the Advisory Committee meeting, all resource partners were sent a survey designed by the E&ID team to better understand their motivation for investing in WOAH.

The data collection ran from February to April 2023 and resulted in 25 responses which were analysed anonymously in aggregate. The survey received a 78% response rate and the organisations represented by the survey respondents accounted for 83% of investments through the World Fund since its establishment in 2006. The survey queried the resource partners on their priority topics of investment and their motivation to invest in WOAH.

Lorenz Nake and Liana Mehring, Resource Mobilisation and Grants Management Officers within E&ID, introduced the results and analysis of the survey at the 18th World Fund Advisory Committee.

The first section described WOAH’s areas of work within Animal Health and asked resource partners to rank the importance of each area of work relative to their own organisation and strategic priorities. 

Resource partners consistently rated One Health, standards setting, transboundary animal diseases (TADs), notification and emergency preparedness as the most important areas of work to their organisations.

In contrast, biological threat reduction, animal welfare, aquatic animal health and wildlife were rated as less important.

In the second half of the survey, resource partners were asked to strongly disagree, disagree, agree, or strongly agree with a series of statements about their work with WOAH. These statements related to WOAH’s administration, results from delivery, relationship with the resource partner, and project implementation. Resource partners indicated agreement and strong agreement in nearly all the statements proposed and affirmed their overall satisfaction with WOAH’s performance. They expressed that WOAH is a good project implementer, easy to engage with administratively, shares timely and transparent information on the use of funds, demonstrates strong technical expertise, and provides a unique service that cannot be provided by other organisations.

Priority needs for investment

Following the survey results, Emily Tagliaro, Head of E&ID, presented six key future investment priorities for the Organisation. Two of these top priorities reflected the results of the survey (TADs and One Health), while an additional four were identified by an internal needs analysis (aquatic animal health, veterinary systems strengthening and capacity building, digital transformation, and animal welfare). To fund these priorities WOAH requires total additional investment of approximately 19.1 million euros per annum. The E&ID team hopes to use the data gathered through the survey and its investment priorities analysis to further improve its resource mobilisation and grant management efforts in advance of next year’s 19th meeting of the Advisory Committee (May 2024). The minutes of this meeting are available on WOAH’s website and E&ID thanks our Resource Partners for their continued support.

Photo: Lorenz Nake (Resource Mobilisation and Grants Management Officers within E&ID) presenting the findings of the Survey to the Members of the Advisory Committee © WOAH