IMA International, set up as Ian MacDonald and Associates, was established in 1983 by the late Ian MacDonald, a rural development and natural resources consultant with overseas experience stretching from Gambia to Kenya to Thailand. In the early days of IMA, much of our focus was on building technical skills through consultancy and training inputs mainly working in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sudan and the Middle East.
   Our training courses at that time ran for up to three months, and included topics such as rural development and radio communication, and IMA was among the first to recognise the importance of women in development, offering a scheduled course on this topic from 1987.
  In 1989, David Hearle became Managing Director of the company, and our operations expanded into Malawi and Indonesia. At this time, we also began a 10-year commitment to the development of Human Resources in the Agriculture and Fisheries sector in Bangladesh.
   From the early 90s, David introduced courses more focused on management skills, scheduling our courses in other countries, the first being Thailand in 1994, and in 1995, Ian MacDonald Associates became IMA International. By the end of the 90s, half of IMA’s courses were about managing development projects and programmes, and the other half covered technical skills for agriculture, aquaculture and seed technology. In 1996-97, IMA International received accreditation from the International Standards Organisation (ISO) and from Investors in People (IIP).
   In 2001, David moved to Australia, and remains a key part of our core training team. Chris Grose, who’d been working with IMA since 1997, took over as IMA’s Managing Director, and in response to changing markets, IMA began to offer courses in Monitoring and Evaluation for Development. Our popular Issues, Themes and Strategies in Development Management also started around this time. In addition to our UK and Thailand courses, we delivered courses in new countries: Australia in 2001 and South Africa in 2002.
   Ian MacDonald had stayed in touch with IMA through the years, often meeting participants on the courses, and was always very pleased that his organisation had continued to grow and develop as a leading training and consultancy provider in the development world. Sadly in September 2006, Ian passed away, and many participants wrote in to us to offer condolences to his family.
   From 2007, again following client demand, we set up our People Skills courses, which had previously been covered only briefly in other courses, and they were immediately very well subscribed. Our consultancy expanded further to cover capacity building in disaster areas including tsunami-affected Aceh and earthquake-affected Pakistan, working closely with the UN.
   Today, we continue to listen to the needs of the development world, and aim to offer relevant, high-quality services to meet those needs.
   IMA has now grown to 12 core consultants and 9 office staff, working from our headquarters in Hurstpierpoint, UK.