Casals & Associates Uganda Field Team Wins Prestigious USAID Award

FALLS CHURCH, Va. – Dec. 10, 2009 — The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) awarded the Casals & Associates, Inc. (Casals) OTI Northern Uganda Transition Initiative (NUTI) field team the prestigious USAID/OTI Field Team Award for 2009, Casals Senior Technical Advisor Christina Schultz announced today.

USAID grants this award annually to the single best OTI project in the world.

“We’re very honored to receive this recognition,” Schultz said. “There are truly a number of other deserving USAID OTI field teams that could have won this award, and that makes it even more humbling and special to us.”

OTI Africa Team Leader John Rigby and OTI Uganda Country Representative Joel Hirst presented the Casals field team the award yesterday in Gulu, Uganda.

This year’s USAID/OTI Field Team Award reads: “For a dedicated and effective team, whose superlative performance has built a strong foundation for enduring recovery in Northern Uganda after years of devastation by the Lord’s Resistance Army.”

The NUTI Project is a $37.2 million task order awarded under Casals’ Support Which Implements Fast Transitions (SWIFT) II Indefinite Quantity Contract (IQC). It is designed to leverage the current stability in the north to provide quick action to help shore up forces for peace and recovery. OTI uses the SWIFT II IQC to rapidly establish offices, hire staff and disburse small grants to local organizations in priority post-conflict countries or those that have undergone a political transition.

Northern Uganda suffered a two-decade insurgency that killed tens of thousands and displaced nearly two million people. The improved security situation in the region in recent years has encouraged hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons to return to or near their homes, which has focused the Government of Uganda and the international community on post-conflict development.

C&A is an international development and strategic communications firm delivering groundbreaking solutions to social, institutional and political challenges. Casals works globally addressing democracy and governance, rule of law and justice, conflict management and recovery, health and other urgent issues facing societies today.