Setting up online learning communities is just like learning to skate inline

This year 2011 the digital energy within the ICCO Alliance has been mostly dedicated to the setup and give life to the Learning Communities (LC’s). Several LC now have been formed around the themes the Alliance is working on together with its partners in a large number of programmes. And yes, it was confirmed again: people sometimes believe online facilitation simply happens, that it is something like breathing that everyone can do automatically. But fast skating inline down a frozen canal is a better metaphor. To skate inline you need first to learn to walk, then to skate and then skate well and finally to skate with other people. And like skating, online facilitation is best learnt with and from other people by doing it. However you always need the right weather and ice conditions to skate. Anyhow many colleagues within the Alliance have really put lots of energy and creativity in the setup and animation of their community. Need assessments have taken place, as well as discussions during face to face meetings about how to continue to deepen ideas and share experiences while working around the world. The LC’s Private Sector Cooperation, Basic Health and HIV and Food and Nutrition Security definitely have ‘taken off’.

Lately we have been talking with a quite a number of the facilitators, which was a really motivating and inspiring round of conversations. The feedback they gave us showed that most are struggling with ‘what’ and ‘how’ they need to do to energise the communities, help them become vivid and interesting for the members. The idea now is to develop, together with all facilitators, ways of working with their communities that really aim at usefulness for all members. As it is in our DNA, we’ll be practice what we preach and have started already to discuss these issues online in the ‘facilitators’ learning community’ and we’ll deepen this conversations in a couple of online sessions which will be held beginning of 2012.

First day at ICCO Introduction Training

What is ICCO? Who do we really work for? These are the type of questions that we had in mind when we were coming to the Introduction Training. And then, we are finally here, at the Global Office and finally putting faces to some names that we have been hearing for some time now.

This first day that we thought would be very long and maybe annoying did not go the way we
were expecting it. We met some very nice people from around the world. We all had to present our region which gave us a chance to show some of our creativity. It also highlighted the breadth and depth of ICCO. We had a good discussion of the current funding situation and future strategies based upon unique selling points. We also discussed the future structural arrangements of the ICCO alliance and the identities of KIA and ICCO.

The methodology of the world café made what could have been a boring set of presentations, an interactive exchange. A lot of information for the very first day, but a reflection of the passion and dedication of the ICCO global family.

Niania Traore, Jean Vernet and Lindora Howard-Diawara

Making the Connections Day 6: Dutch Treat

Sunday was a different Dutch treat from the Ecumenical Community of “Het Brandpunt.” At 9am, a group of volunteers drove us (in different cars to fit the 21 individuals from various regional offices) to the said community from the PKN Guesthouse, Utrecht to Amersfoort (about 1 hour drive). We got English translations (printed and verbal from our seatmates) of the Dutch church service with a wedding to boot. We were officially welcomed through morning greetings in our national languages. A woman “elder” from the community presided over the service, and a woman pastor gave the sermon and blessed the wedding couple (not a gay pair). The children even had an active part in the “mass”. The choir had an energetic conductor and the English songs were upbeat, with an electric guitar accompaniment which made me feel like dancing. We almost missed the song called “Better Together” due to a technical glitch. It’s not only a romantic song for the wedding, I thought it’s also a good reminder for advocates (watch here).

After the ceremony, we had warm drinks (coffee and tea) while having chitchat with the community members and our individual host families for the day. I never removed my 2-layer jacket throughout the morning since the chairs felt cold on my behind (my phone apps said it was 6°C). It helped that my host family liked sweets (e.g. waffles with cherries and cream) which gave me energy until midnight. In the afternoon, I joined the 2-hour walk, laugh, reflecting in the rain with other colleagues and host families. The walk was part of the pilgrim hosted by one of the parents of the Dutch youth volunteering to Rome (during their school break) to assist the homeless and learn something invaluable in return. It was a good excuse as well as a good exercise for us beyond the conference rooms for the past week. I saw a lake full of ducks and birds I haven’t seen before. We walked through some kind of mini-forest littered with oaks, big trees and colorful plants. After which we had warm drinks and cookies to end the pilgrim in the host’s welcoming home. In between traditional Dutch food (e.g. cheese, potatoes, pudding called “bitter cookies”), our hosts also asked us about the geographic location of and weather in Manila and Bangkok. Uncannily, their daughter was like me when I was a child years ago. She has a rabbit as a pet (hers was black, I had white), and she’s allergic to milk (she was taking soya, and I grew up with soya). Her brother is part too of the volunteering youth to Rome. We had group photos to mark the different highlights of the day. Unfortunately, my host family is not into FB (facebook) but we can at least keep in touch through email and the worldwide web of volunteers.

Romina “Beng” Sta.Clara, 9 Oct 2011

Day 5 Introduction Training - Friday, October 6th, 2011

Interesting day, sessions were designed by using the World Cafè methodology.

20 minutes in different rooms with different specialists in issues such as micro finance, liaison officers, KIA International, fundraising, communication and marketing.

In the afternoon, it was time to learn about wikis, yammers, and blogs. The difference between the three, and the purpose of each one. The system is not perfect, but it is useful. It can be used for note taking, for agenda setting, informing about changes, and sharing institucional issues, without having to send an email.

A relevant question is how can wikis improve my time management without being an extra burden to our heavy, office workload?

What sort of stimulation do I get from ICCO from using these wikis?

Wikis can be useful by the communications department in keeping us informed about changes, news, prizes, deadlines, fundraising opportunities, tools, information that the RO needs to know. The wikis could also be used so that partners can have a direct communication channel with us, and letting us know about results, sending pictures, etc.

The idea of creating a focal point in the regions for PME is also applicable for lobbying and advocacy, private sector collaboration.

Finally, it was clear that ICCO will start making large efforts to not only communicate more efficiently, but also it is also struggling to find new ways of doing things, and maximize funding, time and resources with the regions. It is also time to get out of any confort zone that we might be in, propose good ideas in a co-responsible way, and row hard, because the storms might come hard, and we´re all in the same boat!

Caroline, Desta, and Gorge (Kuki).

Making the connections

The third day of the introduction training differed completely from what we had done in the first two days. If on Monday and Tuesday we talked about program directions and framework, within which we are working (values, mission, the future of ICCO Alliance etc.), today the training was more about practical knowledge.

In the first part of the day POs/RFOs were dealing with Planning, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (PMEL) issues. I was glad to notice that despite the weather getting substantially worse, the participants were active and interested. The session represented a great example of interactive learning.

There were many ideas and issues brought up at the session. But I would like to mention only one, which is crucial for the success of what ICCO has been doing. And the idea is that everything we do, we do for the beneficiaries. So, it is important not to get trapped in bureaucracy and donor requirements, but always keep in mind that a project should benefit the target groups, therefore they should be active at all project cycle stages. All projects should be planned, monitored and evaluated together with the beneficiaries. I hope we all will not forget about this idea while doing our work!

Elena Zakirova, Regional Funding Officer

ICCO Introduction Training: Making the Connections (Day 3)

ROSEA also tagged as the “Bali Gang” volunteered to help in the morning recap, contribute to the blog and the animation/icebreakers for the Wednesday session. Other colleagues from other ROs also volunteered to take part in the said tasks. We agreed to share the recap tasks with Ivanova, Desta, and Emmanuel. The day started with participatory and innovative recaps from the geographic regions corresponding to new lessons, ambiguities and questions, as well as content or process suggestions.

For the animation, we planned and agreed with Elena and Jean to have our energizer on the second half of the afternoon. As the sunny weather changed to darker and colder Utrecht today, realities changed our plans. FOs had separate sessions from the POs, in the morning and afternoon.

So what else is remarkable for the day according to the Bali Gang?

“Dynamics is good for projects. New Dynamics is even better! “

”It is clear for me now that there is no summing up of target indicators across ROs, instead contextualized indicators are used.”

“Dynamics is not dynamic in a way. However, it is important to support our projects. And there is still space in which we can contextualize it. But there is a need for special treatment of Emergency projects.”

”It is good to know that we can give inputs to Dynamics to help us in dealing with our practical work as well as longer term mission and vision. I am impressed with the chance to meet our colleagues in the GO, those who help us process payments and budgets.”

“The principles are clear; the tools for monitoring progress and using them for learning and results-orientation need to be strengthened. More time for PMEL please.”

“We did not have time to do the energizers. We can still do it tomorrow, if needed.”

It’s been a long day but enthusiasm remains high!

From Beng, Heny, Hien, Melva, Yuni
5 October 2011

Monday Introduction Course Session: Making the Connections

As someone relatively new in ICCO (3 months and counting), I would describe the first day of our Introduction Course with two words, change and challenges. ICCO and its alliance have its own theory of change as well as its programmatic approach to structural causes of poverty and injustice. One weird moment for me was the afternoon session where all the presenters except for one, are men. I noticed though that women are the ones leading the course (facilitation, logistics), and there are more women participants.

Anyways, change happens at so many levels and with so many stakeholders. It is good that despite jet lags and lack of individual familiarity, we had the opportunity to immediately look into the key challenges (dwindling money for fair and sustainable development and changing roles brought by these challenges) for the institution and meet the people working within or around these issues. In terms of process, our session combined short inputs, time for reflections, and co-responsibility (e.g. volunteers for the week to make the learning process lively, creative and useful for everyone). The use of the elevator pitch (7 minute inputs on different topics) and the world café method is both useful (as introduction) and limiting at the same time.

With a mixed audience from the regions performing different duties, everyone’s interests (mostly questions) have to be given space. And that would mean more follow up discussions and deeper reflections to make the real connections in the next six days. Hopefully, with such iterative process, we can collectively make a bigger dent against poverty and injustice.

Romina "Beng" D. Sta.Clara

Networked Learning for Private Sector Cooperation

Cooperation with the private sector is an explicit strategy of the ICCO Alliance. In the past years considerable experience is gained. For the ICCO Alliance intensifying cooperation with the private sector (in economic programmes, but also in other thematic areas) is the challenge for the coming years. This requires capacity building of staff, as NGO staff is not naturally used to work with the business sector. For this reason ICCO has initiated a Learning Community (LC) on Private Sector Cooperation (PSC) for ICCO, SharePeople and Yente.

The Learning community will address issues as e.g. strategy (how to get started), tools to use (e.g. the ICCO company scan), linkages with resource mobilisation.

Angelica Senders of FSAS was requested by Nelleke van der Vleuten, ICCO specialist on this theme, to assist the start-up of this LC based on the following guiding principle:

• Learning has to lead to an improved practice and a better understanding of this practice in its context. For this it is important that learning takes practice as a starting point; learning should have an action perspective and should preferably start with asking the right questions, not with knowledge. 
• A Learning Community fosters horizontal interaction between practitioners; not all questions are to be answered by ‘experts’; in an effective learning network practitioners assist each other. Networked learning can take place within one organisation, but learning is most effective if synergy is created with learning in other organisations and in other networks. 

Steps taken:

• Start a Dgroup as communication channel, invite potential members and ask them to present themselves and their experiences; 27 people registered. 
• Based on the outcome of an e-survey and 3 Skype conversations (with selected members) agreement was reached on first steps to take in the Learning Community. 
• Subsequently 4 subgroups were formed around cases selected from the experiences of the members. Each group analyzed a case; communication took place by means of Skype and e-mail. Establishment of a wiki (an internet-based platform) named ‘Private Sector Cooperation and Corporate Social Responsibility’ for the ICCO Alliance. 
• The 4 case descriptions are uploaded on the wiki. In September a ‘plenary discussion’ will take place on the cases with the objective to identify shared lessons and common issues. 

This will be the basis for further work in the PSC Learning Community. This Learning Community will be closely linked to the LC on Fair Economic Development (FED) and external networks, e.g resulting from the PSO CSO-Biz event.

5 challenges for cooperation between CSOs and Businesses

On April 5 and 6, 80 and 35 people respectively, representing Dutch NGOs, learning facilitators and CSOs from the South, discussed success factors and challenges in partnerships between Southern Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and Businesses. The event, in short called: ‘CSO-BiZ’, was organized by PSO together with ICCO, the Partnership Resource Centre (PrC) and CDI/WUR. PrC in Rotterdam at RSM, hosted the event. Nelleke van der Vleuten (ICCO) and Angelica Senders (FSAS) were members the organizing committee.

Central issues in the discussions were the needs and capacities of Southern CSOs to effectively engage with business and how Northern development NGOs can assist them in that. The programme on the first day was organized around 4 learning experiences -from Kenya, India, Peru and South Africa- that reflect different ways of private sector cooperation.

Three cases were presented by ICCO partners. Inputs (click on the links for the Powerpoints) from Rob van Tulder and Shankar Venkateswaran presented a critical mirror to NGOs, the need to develop a clear stance on the issue and act upon if they wish to remain relevant. During the second day participants identified specific interests to develop joint learning.

In sum, the following key issues emerged:

1. CSOs will have to integrate a vision on cooperation with businesses in their policy, in their Theory of Change;
   
2. If they wish to engage, CSOs will actively have to learn to understand a business perspective, both parties will have to develop a common language and establish communication;
   
3. CSOs and business will have to find common ground: what are businesses looking for in CSOs and how can CSOs add value to business processes?
   
4. Management of power dynamics is particularly important for CSOs, how can they create an effective good bargaining position?
   
5. After having formulated a common goal, the management of the partnership remains a challenge: both parties will have to come out of their comfort zone, requiring new ways of doing ánd monitoring things.

The overall feeling was that there is still a lot to be learned and the need for ‘exchanging of experiences’ and ‘sharing lessons learned’ was generally expressed. Please click on this link for an impression by PSO of the day. You can find all workshop material, including a video impression on the PSO webiste.

This 2 day workshop provided a lot of input to Nelleke and Angelica to further shape the ICCO Alliance Learning Community on Private Sector Cooperation, a Learning community which will actively be linked up with learning initiatives resulting from this CSO-BiZ event.

Capacity Development of IA partners on Financial Management

On Friday March 25 Anna Lentink presented her master product for the post doc education (AMID) at the CIDIN in Nijmegen. Under supervision of Willemijn Lammers and supported by Angelica Senders (of FSAS) and Guido Hulshoff, Anna produced a policy paper for ICCO about the institutionalization of capacity development of partner organizations in financial management. The objective of this meeting was to allow for a presentation of Anna's findings and discussing follow up of this study. For this occasion around 15 people representing different layers of ICCO were gathered, including Jan van Doggenaar, programme director and Machteld Ooijens, head of P&D. 

In general the study received much appreciation and Anna’s observations were recognized. Her study again confirms the importance of Capacity Development, on financial management as sound financial management and policy are essential for effective realization of partners’ (and ICCOs) goals. Also her recommendations are supported, mainly:

1. Reinforcing ICC O's policy on financial management, which stresses the importance of developing the capacities of partner organizations on financial management.
   
2. Establishment of a Special Unit/ Knowledge Center to support Financial Officers (FOs) as well as other staff in Global and regional offices in their tasks and to exchange experiences amongst FOs.
   
3. Clarify roles and tasks of FOs and benchmarking their workload at a realistic level, which allows for stronger advice and capacity building role for the FO, beside their administrative and monitoring role. These roles should be endorsed by a clear job description and clear targets on capacity building in the partner contract conditions.

There are some challenges to realize the above recommendations. Taking into account the fact that capacity development can not be endless, especially not in times of budget cuts, there should be a balance between investing in organizations and their outcomes in terms of developmental change. It will be a challenge to develop a strategy to incorporate the recommendations, especially the call for specialized support (Knowledge Center or at least a specialist on Financial Management) and sharper monitoring and supervision of the functioning of the FOs. This work used to be done by the former HAZs in the Global Offices,.currently, a similar role is desired in the GO and RO. This will have budgetary consequences and will be further investigated.

In general the audience was positive about ongoing initiatives like the wiki on Financial Management as presented by Guido Hulshoff and the idea to establish a learning community on Financial Management.

It was agreed that follow up of this study will be discussed at management level of ICCO and that actions will be integrated in the ongoing project cycle and processes towards increased efficiency of the organizations.

For those interested in the main findings and recommendations of Anna, please find below her PowerPoint presentation.

View more presentations from ICCO Alliance.

Business and Human Rights through the perspective of the Ruggie framework

The 'Protect, Respect and Remedy' report prepared by Special Representative of the UN Secretary General, Prof. John Ruggie, aims to lay the foundations of a system for better managing business and human rights challenges. What are the opportunities and limitation that this document provides to companies, governments, civil society organisations and communities?

On 16 February 2011 ICCO hosted a one day work session to discuss the main elements of the framework and their practical implications on business and human rights. The session saw the attendance of some 40 participants from in and outside ICCO. After a presentation of the Ruggie framework and a critical look to its guiding principles, participants split in groups to discuss examples of Human Rights abuses and protection related business practices, debating the case of Brazil national agreement to eradicate modern-day slavery and the state obligations under land and water rights in the context of land grabbing. Further food for thought was provided by a presentation on the concept of Human Rights due diligence in supply chains and complaints mechanisms in the global garment industry. The closing plenary discussion aimed at defining actors and roles in the context of the Ruggie framework and the core elements of an agenda on Business and Human Rights for ICCO.

David Vermijs has been part of Prof. John Ruggie team in the development of the 'Protect, Respect and Remedy' framework. David underlined the importance of the framework in clarifying the roles of States, Governments and other parties in the business and human rights debate. In this sense, it is now clear that governments have the duty to protect human rights and business has to respect human rights, while victims of alleged corporate human rights abuses have an avenue to seek remedies for these abuses. The Ruggie framework has also managed to bring the parties to a common platform in a multi-stakeholder way based on evidence and research and therefore follow an inclusive process on how to move forward to reduce corporate related human rights abuses.

From his side, Rolf Künnemann, Human Rights Director at FIAN International stated that the work behind Business and Human Rights aims primarily at creating a culture of human rights in business. Civil Society has a big role in this as it also emerges clearly from the Ruggie framework. However, according to Mr. Künnemann, states and companies have obligations that CSOs cannot take on: it's the role of states to protect citizens and make sure that companies respect human rights, also outside the territories where they are located and registered.

Finally, according to John Morrison, Executive Director of the Institute for Human Rights and Business, the discussions in the seminar covered a lot of ground, focusing in particular on how the Ruggie framework on Human Rights and Business can be applied in concrete terms. There is now a big challenge and opportunity for the development community to re-apply the right-based approach to development in a business context. He concluded encouraging ICCO to take the lead and develop a position paper on this specific issue, also to create a bridge between the human rights and development communities.

Pier Andrea Pirani

Programme régional de promotion de la SDRS chez les jeunes de 10-24 ans dans cinq pays de l'Afrique Francophone

2eme CONSULTATION DES PARTENAIRES SRDS 2011-2015

Cotonou, 6 – 10 Décembre 2010

INTRODUCTION
Le plan stratégique 2011-2015 de ICCO accorde une place importante à la promotion de la santé des adolescents et des jeunes tel que recommandée par les résultats de l’étude commanditée par ICCO sur le sujet dans 5 pays d’Afrique francophone en 2009. Une consultation des partenaires de ICCO, tenue en Novembre de la même année à Bamako, a permis entre autres aspects de partager les résultats de cette étude. A l’issue de cette rencontre, les partenaires des 5 pays se sont engagés, avec l’appui technique et financier de ICCO, à faire une analyse plus approfondie de la situation des jeunes de 10-24 ans sur le plan santé sexuelle et reproductive par pays et aussi à élaborer un programme de promotion de la santé et des droits sexuels et reproductifs de cette tranche d’âge.

Depuis janvier 2010, ce processus est en cours : toutes les études de base ont été réalisées et des propositions de programme multi acteurs par pays ont été soumises à ICCO. Une rencontre des PFN était organisée en Juillet 2010. La présente rencontre, deuxième consultation des partenaires du programme SRDS de ICCO, se veut un espace d’échanges et de réflexion sur les interventions de ICCO et partenaires en matière de promotion de la SRDS des jeunes, tant sur le plan national que régional. Finalement, un programme SRDS 2011-2015 sera développé.

OBJECTIF
L’objectif général de cette consultation est de développer les principaux contours du programme régional SRDS 2011-2015 intégré dans les programmes d’éducation, aussi bien au niveau national que régional. Les stratégies et activités régionaux, un premier cadre pour le suivi évaluation et une structure de coordination régionale sont développés.

OBJECIFS SPECIFIQUES/ RESULTATS ATTENDUS

1. Evaluation et partage des leçons de la phase préparation (2009 – 2010)
2. Les partenaires ont connu les axes principaux des différents programmes nationaux à travers des présentations et discussions
1. Brève présentation par les partenaires des axes / interventions/ acteurs principaux de leurs programmes nationaux, suivie de feedback (pair évaluation des partenaires), des questions et discussion. Stratégie d’intégration de programme SRDS dans les programmes éducation est claire.
2. Echanges sur les modèles et modalités de gestion des programmes.
3. Travaux du groupe (par pays) pour finaliser les programmes nationaux
3. Un programme régional (à travers des activités régionales) est développé
1. Révision / consolidation de la vision, mission et orientation stratégiques basées sur les orientations des programmes nationaux. Vérifier si les programmes nationaux contribuent à cette orientation régionale.
2. Identification des besoins d’appui du niveau régional, y compris le renforcement des capacités, lobby/plaidoyer, communication, réseautage etc.
3. Développement des objectifs et activités régionaux
4. Responsabilisation : identification des responsables par activité
4. Un système de suivi et évaluation (indicateurs, gestion) est développée
1. Développement des indicateurs nationaux et régionaux
2. Planification de baseline (collecte d’information basée sur les indicateurs développées, selon les exigences de notre bailleur de fond) :
3. Gestion et responsabilisation (identification des responsables par activité)
5. Un mécanisme de coordination sous-régional est mis en place

PARTICIPANTS

Il est attendu au total 37 participants repartis comme suit:

• 4 personnes de ICCO : 1 Spécialiste/ Programme Coordinator d’ICCO Utrecht (Willeke Kempkes), 2 Chargé(e)s de Programme d’ICCO Bureau Regional (Mr. Adaffana Noh et Mrs. Manon Stravens), 1 Coordinateur SRDS (Dr. Habibatou Diallo-Sylla)
• 3 facilitateurs externes : 1 Modérateur (Mr. Bertin Affognon) + 1 Rapporteur/spécialiste Wiki (Mr. Oudou Bengaly), 1 Spécialiste suivi/évaluation (Mr. Mathias Finoude)
• 27 participants des ONG partenaires:
  Bénin (6 personnes)
  Burkina Faso (5 personnes)
  Cameroun (4 personnes)
  Mali (5 personnes)
  Sénégal (7 personnes)

Stepping-out Prostitution: Supporting young women to reclaim their rights and change their lives

Mudando de Vida/Cambio de Vida: Aprender de Programas que Apoyan a la Salida del Trabajo Sexual Comercial de Mujeres y Menores en América Latina. Programa de las Religiosas Adoratrices -Bolivia, Sodireitos –Brasil/Surinam y Tesis –Nicaragua con financiamiento externo del Gobierno Neerlandesa a través de ICCO& Kerk in Actie.

Since early 2010 three ICCO/KiA partners have access to specially earmarked funding from the Dutch government (made available to implement the motion Van Staay/CU) to address the needs of children exploited in commercial sex trade and support women who - voluntarily - wish to leave prostitution. In the Cambio de Vida project TESIS, in Managua-Nicaragua, Sodireitos in Belem-Brazil and the Sisters Adoratrices in Bolivia draw on their experience and research and are engaged in a systematic process of collaborative learning-by-doing. Early March 2011 staff from the three organizations will come together at an learning event hosted by the Adoratrices. Together they will share their experiences and the lessons they learned over the past year(s).

And they have a quite some experience, very diverse experiences. TESIS supports - mostly young – women that, as they phrase is – are in a situation of prostitution. Where the women work may actually vary from an upscale nightclub via low-end bars to the street of the city of Managua and though their situation has some communalities there are also vast differences between these women. Sodireitos works with (young) women that have been, or are at risk of being trafficked to brothels in Surinam. Sodireitos applies a rights-based approach and – working together with its Surinam counterparts - aims to support women so they can actually claim their (socio-economic, sexual and other) rights, including the rights they have as workers and migrants. The Sisters Adoratrices generally label their target group as “women and children that are prostituted”. A large part of their work is dedicated to attend to minors – as young as 13 years old – that are a brought to their care, often by the police with whom they also work to ensure the treatment by the authorities does not further traumatize these children. In their work in support of prostituted women, the Adoratrices also coordinate with local organizations that defends the rights of commercial sex workers.

The main goal for the regional event in March will be learn and share experiences. High on the agenda will be how to improve our monitoring and learning. Much information is gathered to be able to report and comply with the need for transparency, but how can we make use of this information and learn and actually improve our practice on the ground? For example, while we may know how many women participated in a particular event, do we also know which women did or did not complete their courses and why? And what does that mean for how we work? Besides monitoring practices and learning, another important agenda item will be the issue of trafficking, which – with the borders opening up more every day in Central and South America - is a common concern

Civil society is diverse and approaches to sexual exploitation and commercial sex work vary broadly. Even the actual words used to talk about what whom we work with and what we do, carry political and moral connotations. In this ICCO/Kerk in Actie program the focus is on acknowledging such diversity and drawing on that diversity, promoting effectiveness and learning to capitalize on all the energies and strengths of civil society.

The regional program event is scheduled for 28 February – 3 March in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Participation is by invitation only. If you are interested in more information on the program or the event please let us know by posting a comment.

ComPart Evaluation - Three key roles to support collaboration and learning

We are still thinking through the implications of the recent ComPart evaluation, first announced on this blog, We know it wasn't the perfect time, given the changes the ICCO Alliance has been going through lately, but if you have been able to contribute to the evaluation in one way or another, we really want to thank you for your time and effort.

One of the suggestions of the evaluation team was to develop and work with three key roles (though not necessarily three distinct people) to support this way of working. If you're somewhat familiar with ComPart, you probably know the ComPart admin team (based in Europe) relies heavily on the continuous efforts of the ComPart ambassadors (personnel of the regional offices) and the ComPart enablers (web 2.0 and collaboration experts in the regions).

The evaluation suggests working with three 'roles':
converer - technology steward - facilitator

The evaluation team suggest a somewhat different constitution of the roles: conveners, facilitators and technology stewards. The conveners are the ones that bring people together and they make sure that there is trust among the group. The facilitators focus on the processes and the activities that come with it. The technology stewards, in their turn, will assist the group on technological issues, but without loosing the community perspective.

We believe that these three key roles can have a big impact on the adoption and implementation of new ways of working where collaboration and learning are vital. When looking back at our own experiences with ComPart, we have seen several examples of how this can work in practice.

One such case was when ComPart went global for the first time. During the Conference on Informal Education and Literacy in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) several sessions were to be held in which the participants would be introduced to ComPart with exercises to get acquainted with this new way of working. The very first day of the conference, however, the people who had organised the workshop came to us with a problem. During the presentations, the three countries had so many interesting questions about the others' programmes that they needed to spend at least an additional two hours to this session, which, in turn, would seriously mess up the schedule. So we were asked if ComPart couldn't solve this urgent problem. And it could...

We quickly created wiki-pages for the questions per country and instead of starting a 'ComPart session', as we had planned, we briefly introduced the event wiki as a way of getting the work at hand (i.e. answering all the questions) done as quickly as possible. So instead of having a seperate ComPart session about wikis, we integrated it in the session Presentations – part 2.

The wiki was used to let the participants of the
different countries asked and answer each others questions

There were several reasons why this worked so well. First of all, we were lucky to have conveners and facilitators like Machteld Ooijens (ICCO) and Tine Veldkamp (IC Consult) present. They knew the group very well, spotted the need for a ComPart intervention and had the authority to suggest and introduce this 'new way of working'. Local enablers Christophe Hien (Burkina Faso) and Oudou Bengaly (Mali) had good knowledge of the ComPart tools but also had a perfect understanding of the local context, the technical difficulties people might encounter during their daily work and they were acquainted with the theme of the conference. The results of this experiment (it was improvised after all) were remarkable. All questions were answered in less than an hour, where it would have taken more than 2 hours to answer them in the 'traditional way'. Everybody had used and contributed to the wiki without it feeling as a burden or something 'extra'. Instead, it was seen as a real time saver and something that helped them get on with the job at hand.

We think this example not only shows the validity of working with conveners, facilitators and technology stewards. It is also linked with other recommendations of the evaluation team, like blending learning with getting work done, create time-delimited experiments or change one thing at a time.

The evaluation has a lot of valuable suggestions for the ICCO way of working. Luckily, we don't have to start from scratch and we can build on previous experiences (successes but also failures) ComPart and ICCO have had. And that's what learning's all about...

Danny Aerts

Evaluation of ComPart kicks off

Even if the name ComPart - Communication with and amongst Partners - came in only at a later stage, at ICCO we have been busy with this project since 2007.

The main idea behind this project was that it would contribute to ICCO Alliance capacity building, learning networks, and knowledge in two main ways: first, by supporting the information, knowledge and communication capacities of partner organisations in the south; second, by supporting these same activities within the current alliance members.

During the implementation of the project ICCO was undergoing a profound organizational transition process. One of the major elements of this process is the decentralisation, which means that much of the daily work is being transferred to Southern based regional offices, with the transition of ICCO from a Dutch-based and located organisation to an international decentralised network organisation. This meant that new (internal and external) communication issues arose. Already in its early stage it was foreseen that ComPart could play a role in helping to address these communication issues.

The ComPart project has been designed and implemented with the strong support from Euforic, a cooperative of European Development organizations mainly supporting their members with relevant information and the use of information management tools. This cooperative closed down in the end of 2009 and fortunately part of the involved staff could continue the support to the ComPart project by way of the newly created consultancy firm Euforic Services.

During the 4 years of the projects, as documented here in this blog and in the ComPart timeline, numerous achievements have been reached, and different challenges emerged as well. More in general, a great deal of learning has been done as far as introducing and applying social media and collaborative tools in an changing organisational context is concerned. It seems now a good moment to look back at what has been done so far, reflect on the project sore assumptions and implementation patterns and learn from our achievements and, more important, form our mistakes. Therefore, since a couple of week, the ComPart project is undergoing its evaluation phase.

The purpose of this evaluation is twofold. In the first place to get an appreciation of the ComPart approach itself, the way it has been introduced and the results of the project until now. In the second place it is expected to get practical recommendations on how to further improve and implement the “ComPart way of working” within ICCO, the ICCO Alliance and among their partners. This implies that it is expected to get an overall validation of the project towards its objectives and based on this to get recommendations on how to better use and introduce internet based tools for an open, collaborative and learning culture within the decentralized organization/alliance and also possible (technical) improvements on the tool-set itself.

Nancy White and Marc Coenders are leading this evaluation, and we're glad we can count on their knowledge and expertise to help us learning and reflecting on ComPart.

The methodolgy follwed for the evaluation comprises the review of the documentation, plans and the ComPart tool-set; the preparation of a learning history for this project; a web survey; individual and collective interviews with champions and active users, new users, users who aren't very active, non users, the ComPart admin team and ICCO management; a 'findings validation' workshop with users, the admin team and others involved to share findings and gather feedback.

Most of the above is already happening these days and the evaluators are busy reviewing the documentation available, as well as interviewing people in ICCO Global Office in Utrecht and in the Regional Offices. The validation workshop will be held in Utrecht on 9 December 2010.

As usual, we'll use this blog to document on the progress of the evaluation and report on its finding and the validation workshop.

Rencontre SRDS Bamako Juillet 2010

Les 19, 20 et 21 juillet 2010, s'est tenu dans une salle de conference de l'hotel Massaley à Bamako, la rencontre des points focaux du programme SRDS/ICCO

INTRODUCTION

En Novembre 2009, ICCO s’est engagée avec ses partenaires du Bénin, du Burkina Faso, du Cameroun, du Mali et du Sénégal dans un processus de conception d’un programme sous-régional de Santé de la reproduction et droits sexuels des jeunes (SRDS) dans les cinq pays. La tenue à Bamako, du 19 au 21 Juillet 2010, de la rencontre des points focaux nationaux s’inscrit dans le cadre de la mise en œuvre de ce processus.Les points focaux nationaux du programme SRDS, les points focaux nationaux du programme Education de ICCO et d’autres partenaires pays engagés dans le processus ont participé à cette rencontre dont les objectifs étaient les suivants :

• Partager les principales conclusions/recommandations des études de base sur la SRDS dans les pays
• Identifier les axes potentiels d’intervention en matière de SRDS pour les programmes pays
• Identifier les approches/stratégies à mettre en œuvre ainsi que les portes d’entrée/liens avec l’éducation
• Développer les concepts de Santé de la Reproduction et Droits Sexuels des jeunes
• Proposer un modèle pour l’élaboration des programmes pays
• Proposer des axes de renforcement de capacités des partenaires en SRDS
• Identifier les activités régionales à développer
• Echanger sur le mécanisme de la coordination régionale et sur les rôles des points focaux
• Partager les informations de base sur le wiki

Les travaux de l’atelier se sont déroulés sous forme de présentations orales suivies de discussions et de brainstorming par rapport aux points essentiels abordés avec un accent particulier sur le partage d’expériences en matière d’intégration des services destinés aux jeunes. Les questions sur l’approche programmatique et la cadre de partenariat multi acteurs ont été également largement discutées. Ces échanges ont permis d’aboutir aux principaux résultats suivants:

• Les principales conclusions/recommandations des études de base ont été présentées par chaque pays ;
• Des réflexions ont été entamées sur les axes potentiels d’intervention et les approches/stratégies de mise en œuvre ainsi que les portes d’entrée avec l’éducation pour les programmes pays ;
• Les concepts de Santé de la Reproduction et Droits Sexuels des jeunes ont été définis et discutés avec les participants
• Quelques axes d’intervention ont également été identifiés pour les actions à mener au niveau sous-régional;
• Des pistes ont été dégagées pour la coordination régionale du projet ;
• Les informations de base sur le wiki ont été partagées avec les participants et une page Wiki pour le programme SRDS a été créée.

Les participants ont ensuite été invités à approfondir un certain nombre de questions relatives aux axes d’intervention, aux modalités de mise en œuvre notamment par rapport aux groupes cibles spécifiques et à la participation de ces groupes, aux stratégies d’intervention appropriées, aux portes d’entrées potentielles avec l’éducation, aux axes de renforcement de capacités des partenaires et à la mobilisation de ressources additionnelles au niveau pays.Cette page Wiki réalisée au cours de cette rencontre des points focaux donne un bon aperçu des activités et des différentes productions de l’atelier des points focaux nationaux du programme SRDS.

PADEV - Participatory Assessment for Development

On 15 September 2010 ICCO hosted a public seminar titled 'Insight in Complexity - Possibilities for scaling –up a bottom-up evaluation approach'. The main purpose of the event was to present, review and discuss the findings of the research project on participative impact assessment from a beneficiary perspective, carried out since 2007 by Tamale University of Development Studies, Ghana and UvA, Amsterdam and supported by the ICCO Alliance.

After the welcome and introduction to the event by Jack van Ham (Chairman ICCO Board of Directors), Professor Ton Dietz from the University of Amsterdam who coordinated the research projects, presented the PADEV manual and its main findings. Roger Bymolt (master student International Development studies UvA) offered some critical remarks from a field perspective. Further, Agnieszka Kazimierczuk (former master student UvA) focussed on her findings in the use of the methodology with ‘the (very) poor’. Lastly, Robert Chambers (IDS) and Irene Guijt (Learning by Design) presented their critical comments on the research project and the PADEV methodology.

A lively plenary discussion moderated by Kees Biekart (ISS) followed this round of presentations and allowed participants to debate around issues related to the methodology proposed in PADEV; the results that emerged in the research and what their follow up will be; the issue of relevance of PADEV and who will benefit form it.

The PADEV manual, as well as a set of multimedia outputs from the seminar are available on the ICCO Policy and Development workspace.

Preparing the ground for ComPart in the second half of 2010

In last week blog post, I announced the interim review meeting organised to "see how we are doing against the targets and objectives set at the beginning of the year for the ComPart project, and plan activities for the remaining months of 2010."

In less that 1.5 days, we had a very busy agenda to go through - discussing stats and tagging structure, wiki mapping and surgeries, activities in the regions and support to the global office, budget and deliverables...

A complete meeting report is on its way and it will be soon circulated and linked from here too. In the meantime, here a few highlights of what we discussed and agreed upon:

• From 'open' to 'thematic' surgeries: We'll continue with the online 'surgeries' 2 times a week; however each week we'll have a theme or topic that we will address in the first part of the session - we'll use this blog, the ComPart calendar and ICCO intranet to announce the weekly themes.
• Wiki mapping and tagging structure: We did quite some work already on both these aspects, but we need our findings and ideas to be validated, by colleagues in the Global Office as well as in the Regional Offices. For this, we'll organise a workshop in Utrecht, as well as online sessions with the different regions to move this further.
• Calendars and maps: Responding to the requests of several users, we'll do some more work to introduce and integrate the use of GCalendars and GMaps across the different offices and teams.
• Toolset and guides: We'll make sure that all ComPart tools and processes have an introductory page and relevant sections in the FAQs - all in the 4 working languages of ICCO.
• External Review report: This will be commissoned to get an appreciation of the ComPart approach itself, the way it has been introduced and the results of the project until now. In the second place it is expected to get practical recommendations on how to further improve and implement the “ComPart way of working” within ICCO, the ICCO Alliance and among their partners.

Some other tasks and activities were listed to be completed by the end of the year, differenciating between what we 'must' do and what we 'would like to', if the time allows and other conditions independent from our will are met.

Overall, as we have busy months behind us, it seems we'll have an even busier time ahead - but we stay confident we can deliver on what we promise, and we can continue fostering the way ComPart is used and applied across the new ICCO, the partners and other Alliance members.

ComPart updates: Interim review and stats 2010 Q2

On Tuesday 20 and Wednesday 21 July 2010 Maarten, Pete, Danny and myself will meet at the ICCO Global Office in Utrecht for an interim review of the ComPart project, to see how we are doing against the targets and objectives set at the beginning of the year, and plan activities for the remaining months of 2010.

So far, 2010 has been a busy year for ComPart, and the sign of its coming of age are visible throughout the organisation.

The Lobby and Advocacy team uses a wiki as core element in their workflows, as well as videos to produce guidelines and manuals, and delicious to share and organise links. Other departments, like FED and Mission, are also developing a similar strategy. The Conflict Transformation and Democratization workspace has been heavily reorganized, providing users with informative news and documentation of ICCO work in the area. Wikis have been used to write the funding application proposals for two alliances ICCO is involved in, the ICCO Alliance and Connect4Change. We have been supporting users from outside these groups in our weekly surgery session, and supported, facilitated and covered and face to face events, also with social reporting.

A major milestone for the project has been represented by the Enablers workshop held in Soesterberg last May. For the first time, we brought together representatives from 6 of the 8 regional offices, and the network of enablers that are supporting ComPart in the different regions. New friendships, connections and plans have been made during the workshop, with the result that ComPart is now much more known and understood across the whole decentralized organisation. And it is taking off in the Regional Offices, with trainings, introductory sessions and implementation in Delhi, Bali and Kampala.

The statistics from the first two quarters of 2010 confirm this positive trends and clearly show how wikis are now at the core of several business processes of the organisation. We have already reached almost the same number of pageviews as for the whole 2008, and we hope to reach the 100,000 by the end of the year.

We are doing less good on blogs and blips, but this might be related to the fact that - shame on us! - we haven't been doing much of this lately. More important, we haven't been able to identify yet other ICCO staff that could champion the use of blogs in the organisation.

Presentations, instead, are still very popular: some 20 new ones have been uploaded onto SlideShare, but because of the fact that most of them are kept private (i.e. only for ICCO staff and not for the wider public), the number of views has declined compared to last year, but it is still strong against 2008.

However, in spite of these numbers, and the growing interest and usage of ComPart, much is still to be done; in the review meeting we will discuss and focus on upcoming activities, improvements and pending issues to finalize and resolve, as well as carry on with some more strategic thinking for the next year, and what the project might look like further down the line when the decentralisation process will be completed.

Closing the ComPart Enablers Workshop 2010

The ComPart Enablers workshop 2010 has come to an end last Friday and everybody is heading home again. The day before all finished the assignments, after which we went to the ICCO offices and had the opportunity to visit the city of Utrecht. We had a lovely dinner in a restaurant on the ‘Old Canal’ in the centre.

The last day was mainly used for the planning of the follow up. For every region the representative of the ICCO office and the enabler(s) for that region worked together. This resulted in a set of very concrete and realistic plans for the activities to undertake during the coming year aiming at the integration of the ComPart way of working in the daily work of all ICCO staff world wide.

The great thing is that all participants now have gained the skills to be able to support and together with the enablers train their colleagues. All have got the ‘ComPart Driving license’ with at least the basic level for working with: wikis, blogs, delicious and feeds.

As told earlier, the participant who would produce the most complete and technically well made multi media trip report on the blog and wiki would be awarded. The quality of the end products really surprised us. We were amazed by the technical quality but surely also by the content itself. It was a pleasure reading, seeing and listening to them. This made it a very difficult job for the jury to choose the winners. Only looking at (minor) details, distinctions could be made. And by doing so the prize for the best blog and wiki in the category ICCO regional staff went to Jennifer Kironde (Kampala - Uganda), and with Diego Reinoso of Rimisp (Santiago Chile) we had a deserved winner in the category "Best blog and wiki – Enablers”. Congratulations for both!
Now looking back at the four days it is clear all participants are trained, good follow up plans have been made and we do all feel part of the ‘ComPart enablers team’ which means all objectives are reached.

Personally it was really a joy to participate, meeting (again) with the participants and getting to know new colleagues. I was impressed by the commitment and hard working and the fast way all captured the idea of the ComPart way of working. Perhaps as an afterthought (also expressed by one of the participants) the competitive element could have been used also in another way. Although the working ‘together alone’ (each working for themselves on their product during free hours until late in the evenings) also helped to build the team, it might have been good to include a collaborative element in the assignment, as collaboration is a key word in the ComPart way of working. This might be something to take into account for the future.

Anyhow I can say that my expectations where more than fulfilled largely thanks to the great group of participants whom I want to thank again for their commitment and all the nice and inspiring contributions. And of course this all could not have been achieved without the much appreciated support, facilitation and contributions of the Euforic Services team (Pier Andrea Pirani, Pete Cranston and Danny Aerts). Many thanks to you!

Maarten Boers

PS: Unfortunately two of the offices were not represented because of visa and flight problems; but somehow we will make sure these offices (and enabler) will catch up and join the team.

See more posts about the ComPart Enablers workshop 2010