mikocanares Financial Management

Step Up signs 2 new financial management contracts

Step Up Consulting Services starts today work on 2 new financial management contracts that involves preparation of financial statements. The contract signed between the firm and two repeat clients was intended to clean up financial data and prepare financial statements for three periods.

Financial management has been a core expertise of the firm for more than 10 years. The primary services offered by Step Up Consulting when it started in 1998 was training (what Step Up now calls as capacity building) and financial management.  It started with small contracts until of small firms until such time that it was able to handle corporate accounts.  The experience of Step Up on financial management is also extensive – from government institutions, to corporations, and non-profits.

In the past, Step Up has several companies – Save and Earn, Alona Palm Beach Resort and Restaurant, Dagohoy World Travel, Sparks Financing Corporation, Feed the Children Philippines among others. As it embarked on new forms of services, more particularly research, Step Up decided to streamline its financial management services and accepts only select clients in the recent years.

mikocanares Monitoring and Evaluation

Managing Consultant of Step Up an Associate of ClimSystems

Mr. Michael Canares, Managing Consultant of Step Up Consulting Services, is selected as one of the associates of ClimSystems.

CLIMsystems was incorporated on 14 April 2003. The Directors of the Company are: Richard Warrick (Chairman of the Board); Peter Urich, Wei Ye, Thomas McClunie and Subramanyan Kanakasabapathy.

CLIMsystems and the SimCLIM software system have evolved from a research-based program called CLIMPACTS that began at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand.

CLIMsystems Ltd, a company based in New Zealand, is dedicated to providing state-of-the-art climate change risk and adaptation assessment tools and services for a wide range of clients.

Mr. Canares is one of the associates in Monitoring and Evaluation.

mikocanares Facilitation

Step Up Assists Bicol Center for Community Development

Step Up Consulting Services assisted Bicol Center for Community Development (see logo in this post) in its recent Strategic Planning Workshop held in Daraga, Albay last June 23-24, 2012. The workshop was attended by its board headed by Mr. John Abejuro and the organization’s staff headed by its Executive Director Ruby Desolo.

The workshop intends to craft the organization’s directions in the 2013-2017 by revisiting its vision, mission, and goals, analysing its current context including its organizations capabilities and the challenges confronting the communities that it served or intends to serve.  These two processes led to the redefinition of BCCD’s core services, the criteria for outreach, and the strategic directions that the organization wants to pursue in the next five years.

Ruby Desolo, ED of BCCD expressed appreciation to Mr. Michael Canares, Step Up Managing Consultant and lead facilitator of the 2-day workshop and reported that BCCD Staff and Board were so happy of what they have accomplished in two days because of the latter’s excellent facilitation.

Step Up Consulting Services has long years of experience in strategic planning exercises.  The firm is committed to assist organizations in their pursuit of better performance and the attaintment of organizational directions.

mikocanares conference presentations

Step Up Managing Consultant in Swiss Conference

Michael Canares, Managing Consultant of Step Up Consulting Services was invited by the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne as one of the presenters in the conference “Technologies for Sustainable Development: A Way to Reduce Poverty?”.  The conference was held in the beautiful city of Lausanne, in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and was attended by close to 250 participants from around the globe.

“The conference was multi-disciplinary and I was fortunate to be the only Filipino in the conference”, Mr. Canares commented.  He mentioned that in the conference, there were economists, political scientists, agronomists, architects, urban planners, biologists, neuro-scientists, medical doctors, among others, who wanted to answer the question as to how  technology development can be advanced so that it can respond to the challenges of poverty, more particularly in the global South.

Mr. Canares presented his paper, “Difficulty to Connect: Impediments to Collaboration for Knowledge Creation Among Developing Country Scholars” in the session on Education and Cooperation.  The session was chaired by Helvetas Board member Dr. Rudolf Dannecker. Other presenters were from India, Moldova, and Vietnam.

Mr. Canares was among the 25 scholars awarded full conference grants to attend the conference and present their work.

mikocanares Capacity Building, Facilitation

Step Up Consulting Trains Jagna Community Development Facilitators

ImageStep Up Consulting Services assisted the Municipality of Jagna by training 20 municipal government employees as facilitators. The training, entitled Facilitating for Development, intends to equip  facilitators with the necessary skills in facilitating participatory community development sessions.

Facilitating development in communities is a crucial process that entails maximum preparation on the part of facilitators.  As distinguished from training, facilitation involves not an instructive approach in bringing about learning from individuals but a bottoms-up approach in drawing conclusions based on participant’s knowledge, feelings and experiences.  Facilitation, as a process entails a lot of listening, not only to verbal but also the non-verbal cues happening at group processes and requires appreciation and not judgment of participant’s responses. The training covered these theoretical grounding.

Participants expressed appreciation to Step Up Consulting Services team for the efforts in making the training enjoyable, productive, and enriching.  The firm handled content as well as administrative arrangements for the total three-day training.

mikocanares Capacity Building, Internships, Student Training

Step Up trains three new students in various consulting work

Step Up Consulting Services trains three new students in various consulting works starting last April. The three students are incoming senior accountancy students of Holy Name University – Mari Abigael Antoni, Anthony Tanio, and Joseph Lago.

The students were exposed to the use of accounting software Quickbooks, preparation of tax returns, and other administrative works. They were also engaged in financial management, more particularly in the review of financial statements of 10 provincial government units across the country.

As the managing consultant is consistently on travel, the trainees were managed by remote and physically supervised by the administrative officer of the firm. This is a new arrangement where all meetings, outputs, and instructions are done online.  There were only limited times when the trainees were supervised physically by the managing consultant.

This is a challenging set-up. But Step Up is not new to this arrangement. In 2011, Step Up evaluated a three country program with a team composed of Dr. Lawrence based in the UK, Ms. Soriaga based in Manila, and Mr. Canares based in Bohol who also travels to Cambodia and Vietnam.  The engagement was completed in 6 months with the consultants only meeting online.

The trainees said that they learned so much, even under this set up. A processing of learning will soon be conducted with the trainees at the close of their engagement with the firm.

mikocanares Uncategorized

Step Up Assists Metro Naga Development Council

Step Up Consulting Services was contracted by the Metro Naga Development Council through the GREAT Women Project to facilitate the conduct of a Trainers’ Training on Results-based Monitoring and Evaluation. The training was conducted in Macagang Business Center in Nabua, Camarines Sur and was attended by selected representatives from local government units, national government agencies, non-government organisations, and academic institutions.

The training intends to capacitate future trainers on results-based M&E in the analysis, planning, design, conduct, and evaluation of capacity development interventions for local government units and common service facilities.

mikocanares Uncategorized

Step Up Managing Consultant is guest lecturer in UP Baguio

Michael Canares, Managing Consultant of Step Up Consulting Services was invited by Dr. Analyn Salvador-Amores of University of the Philippines Baguio to be its guest lecturer on a class on Development Theory and Practice last March 9, 2012. The class was attended by graduate students in the College of Social Sciences.

Mr. Canares’ talk was on the topic “What is the relationship between government and international agencies in ‘development practice’? How alternative is alternative development?”.

mikocanares Uncategorized

Step Up signs new contract with SWCF

Step Up Consulting Services signed a new contract with Soil and Water Conservation Foundation to write a profile report for its newly-assisted barangays in the municipality of Batuan, Bohol.  The report will present the socio-economic condition of the barangay residents prior to project implementation.

Assigned to the engagement is Marijoe Narca and Michael Canares, with the administrative assistance of Marilou Epe-Sale.