A rich exchange at Compart South workshop

The ComPart South workshop in February 09 brought together people from seven Southern organisations with colleagues from ICCO and a team from Euforic. Our aim was to discuss and plan how best to extend ComPart to the areas in the ‘South’ in which partner organisations of the ICCO Alliance work. There was a rich exchange of ideas, including in face-to-face meetings between Southern participants and ICCO staff in Utrecht. Six blog stories were written and thirteen blips were made by participants during and in preparation of the workshop, which helped grow awareness of the ComPart south workshop. Concrete proposals for next steps were developed.

A one page summary of the report is available here, and the full report here.

The Southern ‘enablers’ brought new perspectives to ComPart and helped develop the approach. Awareness was raised within ICCO about the enabling organisations and their potential role while the participants from those organisations gained a much deeper understanding of ICCO. Their expertise and experience convinced participants at the ICCO group workshop of the positive role they can play in supporting ICCO Alliance programmes.


“I especially liked the fact that five organisations from the South are involved and seem to have so much expertise on the subject and who have been working on this issue for a couple of years. So I am quite confident now: my question mark has turned into an exclamation mark!” (Irma van Leeuwen, Learning Facilitator, SFED: )


In looking at how ComPart could support different parts of the development programme life-cycle we have “tumbled the approach”, “putting the needs of the people in the first place … what do people in a certain context or moment need and how can different tools help them” (Henk Gilhuis).

Planning

During the next phase of Compart in 2009 and 2010 we propose to connect with ICCO’s major change processes in a number of ways:

• Work with ICCO’s Regional Working Offices (RWO’s) to set common goals and milestones.
• Develop pilot activities in three thematic areas globally, to be identified with teams
• Arrange in-country meetings, to get to know the partners, adapt ComPart to the reality on the ground and share findings across the community.
• Arrange regional thematic meetings, to map actors and identify champions
• Through surveys of ICCO partners and other civil society actors deepen our understanding of e-readiness and ks-readiness
• Continue to develop the Compart resource and support materials, ensuring users can identify relevant tools and approaches for their specific needs and tasks through an additional view onto the materials - web2do

Concrete proposals developed with ICCO Programme or finance staff

• In South Asia SAP International (SAP I) will be supporting the ICCO programme, ‘Food Security for Ultra Poor Women in Gaibandha’.
• In Central America, there is a proposal for a ComPart workshop for internal staff and partners when the new office in Managua is operational.
• In Andes Rimisp will provide help/assistance with “mesas financieras”, currently being conducted in Bolivia, strengthen organizations’ capacities and prepare the other countries (Peru, Ecuador, Nicaragua) to implement “mesas financieras” in the future, with a regional workshop planned for later in 09.
• In West Africa Christophe Hien and Oudou Bengaly continue to provide support to the Education programme, feeding and moderating the blogs and wikis established at the Burkina workshop. They will also be exploring how they could collaborate with ICCO’s junior professionals placement programme, beginning with needs analysis amongst NGOs for junior professional skills.

......oh, and perhaps arrange the next workshop somewhere a little warmer and drier ...