ComPart FAQs and guides

In ComPart, we pay a lot of attention to the need of the users and make a constant effort to provide them with the adequate support material. Even though we believe that the different ComPart tools are rather easy to use - at a basic level - we recognize the value of support and self-learning material.

In the past months, we have focussed our attention on developing a series of FAQs that can provide quick reference and step by step guidance to the use of different applications.

Do you have questions related to the ComPart Network on PBworks? Or questions related to the use of specific tools? Do you want to know how these tools can support you daily activities?

The FAQs are updated as new questions emerged. Of course we welcome your comment and suggestion - please use the comment field here or at the bottom of the FAQs page if you want to suggest a new item not currently included in the list.

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.

Introducing new 'ComPart thematic surgeries'

In the ComPart project, we are constantly looking at new ways to improve the support and backstopping we offer to our users in the ICCO Global Office as well as in the Regional Offices and in partners' organisations.

A well known element of this support system are the weekly ComPart surgeries which we are now running for several months now. We started with the surgeries in late 2008; back then, we offered the possibility for ComPart users to come and meet us face to face, bringing along the link to their wiki, a coup of coffee and a friend, to work together and learn and improve the use of wikis and other ComPart tools to support their daily work processes. With the decentralization becoming a reality, we then changed this system from face to face to online surgeries using At&T: two times a week, at different time, we are online and provide remote and virtual support to users across the globe.

During the review meeting we had earlier in the summer, we decided to improve this support system and have a thematic webinar preceding the usual surgery session. Each week, we will address a specific topic related to the different tools and approaches we use in ComPart.

This new system will kick off as of next week. Given the fact that several new people - from the Alliance as well as from partners' organisations - are joining the ComPart Network these days, we think in the first weeks should focus on 'wiki 101', exploring and explaining the ins and outs of the PBworks, and how wikis have been used to support daily activities and business processes.

The calendar of these thematic surgeries for the rest of September and October is as follows:

• 21 and 23 September 2010: The ComPart Network and the ComPart workspace - Structure and access
• 28 and 30 September 2010: Editing wiki pages and managing folders
• 5 and 7 October: Uploading, resizing and inserting images
• 12 and 14 October: Embedding images, videos and presentations
• 19 and 21 October: Working with table of contents, feeds and other plugins
• 26 and 28 October: Searching pages, files and folders

These sessions will take place every Tueseday morning (9am - 10 am) and Thursday afternoon (5pm - 6pm). The overview of these sessions, as well as the details to join the webinar, are available on the ComPart Support page.

We hope you'll find this approach interesting and that you'll join in and participate. Any additional topic you would like suggest is also very much welcome!

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