Interesting Newsletter PSO

Beste mensen,

Hierbij een link naar de nieuwsbrief van PSO (http://tinyurl.com/29qtau ), waarin naast updates over leertrajecten ook een aantal langere artikelen:

- Shifting Power Relations: the long road to local ownership (over programmatisch werken, met o.a. aandacht voor ICCOs ervaring)
- A Theory of Social Change, van Doug Reeler van CDRA (Zuid Afrika)
- .. en meer.

Op dit moment lopen er 16 leertrajecten, varierend van ‘programmatisch werken’ tot ‘civil society, power & participation’. Er zijn al een aantal ICCO collega’s die hieraan deelnemen of deelgenomen hebben, en die enthousiast terugkomen. Aanbevolen!

Met groet,
Herman

e-collaboration and the ICCO learning networks: Report from a knowledge sharing session at ICCO, 28 June 2007

On 28 June, some 20 ICCO Alliance staff joined a session to be updated on different learning activities in the Alliance.

The first part of the session shared the results of an e-conference on capacity assessment and development (CAD) that was held in the first quarter of 2007. Joitske Hulsebosch and Simon Koolwijk outlined the objectives, process followed, tools used (dgroups and skype) and lessons learned. The presentation provides more details. Read the full report.

The second part of the session was a presentation by Peter Ballantyne on 'Knowledge Sharing Approaches and Tools for Learning in the ICCO Alliance.' This outlined the status of the project to develop an approach and tools to support learning through more effective information management and exchange. The presentation provides more details.

Do's and don'ts of e-conferencing – based on the CAD experience

Do's

Don'ts

Combine face-to-face, dgroup, skype and other platforms as tools in involving and stimulating people to learn. Avail a budget and time for a moderator / facilitator who will keep the group active. An e-conference requires committed facilitation. Focus on a specific theme which is a priority to the users. When the theme is important enough, participants are willing to cross different hurdles to get accustomed to e-collaboration. A homogenous group facilitates communication and participation. Start with a smaller learning group or community of practice; 10 - 25 participants is optimal, but design for expansion. Thoroughly prepare the e-conference. Obtain regular feedback from participants to make the technologies and the learning processes work.

A Dgroup alone does not always work for e-collaboration Do not develop a learning environment without facilitation Do not overload people with too many mails without helping them to deal with it. (possible solutions are daily digests, online reading (not receiving mails) or separate discussion threads to which people can subscribe) Do not think that one time facilitation or introduction of e-learning tools is enough. It requires a lot of care, facilitation and attention. Don't design a rigid program whereby all participants need to participate in all steps; design for flexibility in participation.

See: http://icollaborate.blogspot.com/2007/06/12-weeks-online-conference-on-capacity.html

Issues arising from the awareness session

1. Develop a learning alliance toolkit. When to start and how to start?
2. Train people in knowledge sharing methods (Wiki, blogs, bookmarking, dgroups, etc).
3. Tp make e-collaboration work, a mind shift is needed in the Alliance.
4. What are the structural solutions to become a learning organisation? Does management create conditions/ support communities of practice sufficiently?
5. How do people learn? Info management is just one aspect. What works for partners? What are partners requirements?
6. There need to be “private” or closed spaces as well as the open forums.
7. What level and kind of facilitation is needed to support the learning networks?
8. The dream is to find a solution to all the meetings?
9. To be effective, the electronic and web-based tools require clear organisational focuses.

Both presentations are available on the learning support web site (http://iacdrc.pbwiki.com/).

Download the report.

Teamwork Soedan

,,Weet je wie vernieuwend bezig zijn? Die jongens en meisjes van Soedan.” Nieuwsgierig geworden van die opmerking, sprak ik met Mark van Dorp, relatiebeheerder Soedan. Want was is er zo nieuw aan hun werkwijze? Om te beginnen, legt Mark uit, werkt hij met een collega in Utrecht en twee in Soedan als één team, dat gezamenlijk alle besluiten neemt. ,,Wat vroeger intercollegiale toetsing was (waarbij je soms letterlijk je naaste collega passeerde), doen we nu als team. En dat bevalt uitstekend.” Daarnaast gaan ze vrij pragmatisch om met in Utrecht bedachte plannen: ,,We trainen niet alleen ngo’s, ook lokale bestuurders. Dat valt buiten het mandaat, maar als je het niet doet, komt er niets van de grond.”
,,Na het sluiten van het vredesakkoord trok de halve ngo-wereld zich terug, met het idee dat de overheid het werk zou overnemen. Dat gebeurde natuurlijk niet. Zuid-Soedan begint een vergeten ramp te worden, nu iedereen zich op Darfur richt. In die context besloten we dat we meer ‘field presence’ moesten hebben en we stuurden Jan Jaap Verboom. Al snel bleek ons doel –een sterk D&V-programma – in Soedan niet erg realistisch. Er bleek behoefte aan basisvoorzieningen. Wij vroegen ons af: waar zijn we mee bezig? We willen kostte wat kost een D&V-programma, we sturen er iemand heen, gaat die basisvoorzieningen zitten doen! We besloten niet in thema’s te denken, maar een overkoepelend programma op te zetten voor iets dat ICCO goed kan: het versterken van de civil society, de opbouw van kennis en local ownership, indienen van aanvragen bij de Europese Unie.”
,,Het innovatieve is dat we niet droog workshops en trainingen geven, maar dat lokale ngo’s meewerken en ín een project vaardigheden opdoen. Dat zie je niet vaak, want dat wordt beschouwd als het vermengen van de rollen van funding en capacity building. Het zijn vaak jonge jongens met leuke ideeën, maar ze missen nog veel vaardigheden zoals het opstellen van een visie en boekhoudkunde. Wij zijn een soort mentor.. Neem onze partner Scope. Zij hebben een vocational training centre voor jongeren, die leren stenen bakken, meubels maken en andere technische vaardigheden. Het is niet gebruikelijk dat ngo’s zélf opleiden, meestal schakelen ze daar weer een ander voor in. Maar Scope haalde binnen een jaar haar eerste eigen financiering binnen, terwijl we ze aanvankelijk te zwak vonden om mee in zee te gaan. Dat we het toch deden en dat het slaagt, daar word ik heel blij van.”

Nog niet duidelijk? Meer weten? Vraag het mark.van.dorp@icco.nl

What's -in- the name?

Knowledge Centre Democratisation and Peacebuilding kick-off
June 26 2007

It finally happened! After months and months of waiting, thinking, and meeting up now and then, the knowledge centre on Democratisation and Peacebuilding issues will get started. The participating members of the network are Cordaid, IKV/PaxChristi and ICCO/Kerkinactie. That’s just for now, probably more members will join when the knowledge centre will be a bit more settled in our organisations. Because that is what it is all about; the centre should strengthen the work of our organisations, as well as in the Netherlands as in the South. The other function of the centre is to ‘pick up’ interesting topics, circulating in the ‘world’ of D&V. The attending employees of the members of the centre were enthusiastic, although much has to be said yet about the topics the centre will discuss. The list ranges from issues like Counter Terrorism Measures to Identity and Conflict. The next step for the centre is to determine a research list and to develop a website to share information on these issues. But; first of all, we need a name! Any good ideas?

Gender dimensions of post-conflict reconstruction

One of the challenges I face as an advisor on gender and partner policy is how to interweave a gender perspective at various levels in ICCO's programmes: from the conceptual level to the practical implementation level, and within a variety of themes.

A useful report I recently set my eyes on is "The Gender Dimensions of Post-Conflict Reconstruction. The Challenges in Development Aid" (by Marcia E. Greenberg and Elaine Zuckerman). It gave me ideas on how to systematically address gender issues and promote gender equality to make peacebuilding work. I would love to share the document with whoever is interested.

It argues that achieving successful reconstruction and maintaining peace requires attention to gender in the post-conflict arena. The framework proposed consists of three interrelated essential gender dimensions: (i) women-focused activities, (ii) gender-aware programming, and (iii) gender role transformation to heal trauma, build social capital and avoid further violence.

Read the paper.

By Janet Rodenburg

Human Rights and ICCO's Learning Programme

If there is one truth in working on rights-issues, it is that cooperation is indispensable: individual organisations – in the South or the North - cannot realistically hope to achieve much by themselves.

Especially in the field of Economic, Social and Cultural rights (ESC-rights), more and more experience and insight is being gained in the struggle to gain recognition of these rights. Experience shows that information-gathering and analysis of decision-making processes, (both local and international e.g. the machinery of the UN), lobbying at local and international level with the results of this analysis, and defining joint strategies (for example in preparing parallel reports) is sharpening NGO-agenda’s.

All of this requires actively seeking complementarity and extremely agile information-sharing across continents and specific fields of ESC-rights. Good examples of where that can lead is in the broad and empowering process involving many local NGO’s in the preparation of a parallel report, (as in the case of Brazil) and the preparation, under discussion now, of an international database and monitoring system for the Right to Food.

ICCO's active membership in the International Network for Economic, Social & Cultural Rights, and other examples point to the growing influence of multi-partner initiatives to ‘make rights real’ also show that the human rights movement cannot do without effective, flexible tools for communication and joint learning.

We have foud that the use of Dgroups greatly helped participative preparation of nearly 60 human rights activities organised by more than 80 organisations from four continents during the World Social Forum in January of this year: a sub-group of 25 organisations used the same mechanism for organising specific gender-related HR-activities.

More and more, the results of research, among others to understand the implications of judgements by regional Courts of Human Rights and UN-institutions and their mechanism is becoming available. We will also need systems to disseminate and work on the insights gained and translate them into increasing institutional capacities to effectively occupy the space available.

This will be one of the main challenges for the short term in which ICCO needs to combine the efforts of it Capacity-building and Knowledge units, with our programme specialists and related partners in South and North. One example of such an effort going on right now is to define how we will participate in building the monitoring system for the Right to Food.

by Pim Verhallen

KM4dev workshop 2007

KM4dev is a community of practice about Knowledge Management for Development. It has about 800 members from all over the world, although mainly form the US/Canada and Europe. Since I joined this community somewhere in 2005 I really learnt very much from all discussions and information generated on the list and its wiki .

Creativity in presentations

Once a year the community organises a face to face workshop. In 2006 I participated for the first time and really got thrilled. It is so inspiring to talk and share experiences with peers and work together on developing new insights and learning new ways of working. That was the reason that I joined the ad-hoc organising committee for the 2007 workshop which was held the past days in Zeist, The Netherlands (sponsored by ETC, PSO, IICD, IRC, Hivos and ICCO). Also this time it was a very inspiring meeting in which again I learnt a lot, I met many interesting people and I received an overwhelming quantity of useful information. I am sure all these lessons and wise advices will be useful for our work, and you can be sure I will use them and try to make them accessible to all of you as far as you are interested. But as an overall impression I really got the impression that we are “on the right way” with our CDP within the ICCO-Alliance, and for me that is really motivating.

You can find more information on the workshop on its blog and on the KM4dev-wiki mentioned above. Although I must admit this wiki is not a very good example because it is not very accessible ;-), plans to improve the wiki have been made though! Therefore here the direct links to two concrete examples of the results on Benchmarking and on Graffic Facilitation.