Action Researchers Programmatic Approach and Internet

The coming months a group of five young professionals is going to do action research on the programmatic approach of the ICCO Alliance in 5 different regions. This research process intends to get an insight whether the programmatic approach is fulfilling the expectations and then especially as seen from the perspective of the actors involved in the programmatic cooperation processes. The programmes the group of researchers will work are:

• The youth and security programme in Central America
• The local market development programme in Peru (organic production)
• The food and nutrition security programme in Nepal
• The local market development programme in Burkina Faso (shea butter)
• The food and nutrition security programme in Madagascar

During these first weeks of their assignment the young professionals are involved in an intensive preparation phase at the ICCO global office in Utrecht. Beginning of February 2012 they all will start their work in the regions.I had the pleasure to work with this groups of young researchers last week.

We had a very nice day in which we discussed and experimented with a whole range of web based tools which could be of use for their communication, exchanges and documentation of their researches.
We started with the question “What role will the Internet probably have in your work?”. It became clear that they all expect to use the internet for communication with the partners they are going to work with bacause of geographical distances, but also to communicate among themselves, with the ICCO Global office and of course with their friends and families.

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.

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.

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

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

Finally ... Soesterberg

by Arnel Moya Astillero

“Siempre que te pregunto que cuando, como y donde. Tu siempre me responde. Quizas, quizas, quizas !”

The paragraph above quoted from a song describes the mood and the actual situation while I was preparing for the ComPart workshop. It also resonates with my general attitude in life. Being a Christian, I live on faith and trust in a Heavenly Father who is in control of my life. So I said to myself, given the difficulty in coming to the workshop, perhaps He has other plans for me. However, I believed that God willing, I will be able to attend.

The journey actually started with a forwarded email from a colleague (he is actually my boss but given the highly democratic culture at ICCO, we call each other colleagues) in the ICCO Regional Office Southeast Asia & Pacific while I was touring the countryside in the Philippines. I was with my Dutch counterpart visiting partners to formally introduce me as the new Program Officer. The email was from Machteld Ooijens inviting the RO managers to nominate a staff to attend the ComPart Enablers Workshop. The regional office is quite new so we haven’t gotten to the point of discussing “other tasks that may be assigned”. Why the email landed in my InBox (there are actually 10 people equally qualified to attend) is another story. And so it came to pass that I have to prepare for a trip to Holland while I was working on the project transfer and relocating my family to Bali. It doesn’t matter, I wanted to attend! A workshop on an internet-based knowledge-sharing platform using the popular internet tools otherwise used for gossip and exhibitionism and voyeurism seems fun!

The journey, however, was long and full of challenges. One of Murphy’s Laws which says “If anything can go wrong, it will!” was very much evident in this trip!

The first leg is Manila to Bali. This trip however did not happen as scheduled. We were supposed to fly March 31 but our actual flight happened on April 14. The first challenge was the Indonesian visa. It took sometime before me and my family got a visa from Indonesian immigration. The staff working on the visa is not allowed to pay the usual facilitation fees hence she has to go through the slow, patience-draining process! The second challenge was the Dutch visa. The main document needed was the formal invite from ComPart. It was written March 23 but somehow got lost in transit so I received it April 10. It takes the Dutch embassy in Manila 10 days to schedule a visa interview and another two weeks to process the application so working on the visa in Manila was out of the question. We leave in four days for Bali!

And so I flew to Bali with my family. The airline companies have perfected the science of squeezing the most Euro from their passengers. They are following a Calculus theorem which says that “the shortest distance between two points is a curve.” So the flight went from Manila to Singapore and Jakarta before finally going to Denpasar (see the map). We can actually derive the equation of the curve using methods in Calculus. Why do I keep remembering lessons in Calculus that were given ages ago? Maybe the ComPart discussions triggered or reconnected some broken neural connections in my brain!

Anyway, it took us about 15 hours to complete the trip. We even had to cross a time zone even if Manila and Bali is in the same time zone. However, travelling for me is always fun – a chance to meet people and see interesting things. I focus on the trip and not on the destination and this trip is a bonding opportunity for the family.

Upon arriving in Bali, the first order of the day is to resettle the family and catch up with work at the office. A couple of days passed before I had a chance to go to the Dutch consulate and apply for a visa. In a very nice way, the visa officer told me that it would take them a month to process the visa. But I only have three weeks before the workshop! Then you have to go to the Dutch embassy in Jakarta! They can do it in two weeks! So I sent all documents to a representative in Jakarta. It is a business related trip so the office can work on the visa. Or so I thought! I am working with a Dutch NGO funded by the Dutch government so the visa officer needs to see me in person! Life is good, another reason to travel. And so I got the chance to soak in the culture, taste the food and breathe the fumes of Jakarta.

The visa officer asked me three questions: when is my trip, what is the purpose of my visit to Holland and why am I applying very late! These are questions of national security! Then she said she needs to consult her boss. Maybe my responses to the questions were sensitive in nature! A Dutch guy took a peek, sized me up and maybe thought “ICCO is indeed downsizing, from 6’4” to 5’4”. I am no threat!

Anyway, the visa officer finally told me that they will give me only a BeNeLux visa and it would take three days to process. I’ve had enough of Jakarta in one day so I gave an authorization for somebody to claim my passport and courier it to me in Bali. The interview was scheduled on a Friday, so the work on the visa only started the Monday of the following week. The release date was a Wednesday but my representative had medical emergency so he failed to go to the embassy. Thursday happened to be a holiday (Ascension Day – the day when Christ, after his resurrection, finally ascended to heaven) so Friday is the last chance to get my passport in time for my May 16, Sunday flight! I left the office that day still uncertain if I’ll be able to go!

Meanwhile colleagues in the Global office who were arranging for the plane tickets were also facing their own challenges. Because of the uncertainty of the visa, they did not buy the tickets yet and seats for the flights were fast disappearing. I finally got my passport evening of Saturday, May 15 and a ticket departing in the evening of Monday, May 17. The delays were actually a blessing in disguise because had I left on the original date of departure, I might have been stuck of a day in another airport since Schiphol was closed on the date of my arrival due to the ash clouds from the volcanic eruption in Iceland.

And so finally, I’m here is Soesterberg!

It was a tiring journey but being met by Maxime at the airport and being welcomed at the workshop venue by a roomful of smiling and friendly faces of beautiful/handsome and seemingly interesting people somehow gave me a boost of energy. I am optimistic, that the trip would be worth it!

And now the headache starts. It takes my body a couple of days to notice that it has crossed several time zones… but this is another blog story!

Regional Context for Central & Eastern Africa

Janet Achola and Jennifer Kironde from the Central & Eastern Africa Region attend the ComPart Enablers Workshop in Soesterberg.

Each region was to talk about their context so that others would understand the conditions we are or will be working in especially elements that favor or complicate the use of compart or ICT.

Our presentation was summarised in a poster (see image on the right) and the following outline:

The Geographical Region of Central and Eastern Africa: The Region covers 8 countries of Burundi, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda with the RO in Kampala and 2 suboffices in Juba and Congo. According to the concept of trilocation, these 3 offices together form one regional organization even though they are geographically separated.

ICT/Gender Policy:
In E.A, all the 3 countries have a draft ICT policies, ministry if ICTs, ICT Parliamentary committees.
Attitude towards learning or exchanging information:
Poor culture in information exchange exists and the use of compart should play an important role in solving this problem.

Connectivity:
The existing state of telecommunication in the country leaves much to be desired as a gate way to internet. On the whole, internet diffusion is severely constrained by low levels of telephone penetration, the high cost of telecommunication connection, lack of telephone service to homes and businesses , frequent and long power interruptions among others. On average cost of internet connectivity in Uganda ranges between USD 100-1600 and monthly subscription can go as high as USD 2400 a month depending on the bandwidth and service provider.

Availability and usage of internet: Internet statistics
The Regional Office has 48 staff out of whom 36 accesss and use computers/internet, the other 12 staff who don't have computers don't actually need it for their work and atleast all the staff have the basic knowledge on how to use internet. This is different for our partners in the remote areas who are affected by a number of factors ranging from high costs, slow and unreliable connections, lack of power and frequent power interruptions among others. The penetration rate of internet in Uganda per say is very low for example in the year 2000, there were only 40,000 users out of a population of 24.4m people and by the year 2009, only 2.5m users were registered visa vis a population of 32.3 million acording to the International Telecommunications Union publications 2010.

Related Gender Issues:
Government has intervened by promoting internet at Multipurpose Community Telecentres (MCTs). MCTs represent shared internet public access facilities aimed at providing access to advanced information and communication services in rural and remote areas as well as deprived or underserved urban areas which also takes into account the women in development.

Government is also in the process of rolling out 1 computer per child in UPE schools with an American company. This has advantages because it favors those who can't afford including women.

For more information look out for background information on regional contexts under May 2010 Soesterberg NL

By Jennifer Kironde

ComPart wiki structuring workshop

As testified by the Q1 report on stats and traffic, the usage of the ComPart wikis has increased quite substantially in the first three month of 2010. The decision to use wikis in the process of writing the ICCO Alliance business and strategic plan contributed significantly to these positive results.

However, this is only part of the story. Over the past months, several teams and departments have been introducing wikis to support their daily activities, adapting their practices and moving part of their work-flow onto workspaces created on the new ComPart network platform.

As clearly emerged also in the ComPart lunch time meeting in February, two main issues need to be addressed at this stage:

1. How best to structure the different workspaces so that their navigation and usability can be improved?
   
2. How best to structure the 'ComPart wiki garden' in its all complexity, improving the linkages between the different workspaces?

To answer these questions, on April 20, 2010, we organised a wiki structuring workshop with some 15 ICCO staff from the Global Office in Utrecht.

Walk in the shoes of your readers
In the first part, ICCO colleagues were divided in small groups, and were tasked to look at one specific wiki of their choice through the eyes of the end users.

Beforehand, we had developed different personas and shared them with participants. Each persona exemplifies a potential ICCO staff in the Global and Regional offices, their task, their working habits, their personalities, and their needs in terms of information that they would like to find on a specific wiki.

We asked each group to choose one persona and review a wiki through the eyes of this character. Will he/she be able to find the information he/she's looking for, in an easy way, avoiding the feeling of overload and the subsequent "death by wiki"?

In a nutshell, the groups come up with the following recommendations:

• Wikis start from content, and not from people: it would be good to improve the use the social networking functionalities already embedded in the PBworks platform and focus more on the community aspect behind a workspace;
• It is sometimes difficult to get a clear overview of what a wiki is about: 'you get a lot of documents and information, some of which is outdated'. This calls for more 'gardening', better document management and a clearer file storing system;
• There is a need to develop better introductory pages that explain in a nutshell what each wiki is about. At the moment we often have lengthy information pages;
• The same goes for sub-level pages: Each page should have a quick intro text, a table of contents, and a clear message about what readers can find.
  

Do you use scents or the paths to find your way round a garden?
The second part of the workshop instead focussed on the whole 'ComPart garden', to see how this could be better organised.

At the moment, out of the 100 created wikis, some 70 are in use (at different levels). Are we on the right track? Which workspaces are we still missing? Which other should be merged? Which to be archived or deleted? And how can we improve the linkages between the different workspaces?

Working in groups, participants were given series of cards with the names of the workspaces, divided by colours for the different themes/issues covered, and departments they fit under. Starting from this, we asked ICCO staff to review what we have, and come up with suggestions on structuring the whole.

As a result, different perspectives emerged:

• For some, the structure of the garden has to be as flexible as possible, using tags and combinations of tags to make sure the wikis (and their pages) can easily be findable from users coming in from different perspectives, and with different needs.
• Others suggested a model based more on a 'corporate perspective' derived from ICCO Alliance strategic plan, clustering wikis by activities of the global and regional offices, strategies and thematic programmes. A top level wiki on ICCO values and identity could be developed.
• A third group proposed to structure the garden around programmes, strategies, and department of the global office that provide 'services and support' to the regional offices.

The ComPart team really appreciated the valuable suggestions and the conclusions that emerged from the workshop, and will take these recommendation forward in the support we are providing to ICCO staff, and in the ComPart enablers works planned for 18-21 May 2010.

India Conference on Fair Economic Development and Entitlements going ComPart wise

The National-level India Conference on Fair Economic Development and Entitlements, organized by ICCO -South Asia is going to be plugged to ComPart wise, from Surajkund in India. The ComPart approach will be supporting the conference in wide range in-depth consultation with the partner organizations and generate an agreed and common agenda.

The conference will span over three days. Approximately forty five reputed partner organizations (who work directly with tribal communities, women, dalits and minorities in poverty-stricken areas of India) from India, along with specialists from ICCO Global Office will be participating in the conference. This will be yet another important opportunity to share and develop a strong ComPart enabled community in the region.

For more updates and further information, kindly visit the Conference page on the ICCO SA workspace.

Hempal Shrestha, India

ComPart comes of age

"We've stopped playing and now we've started the game", said Reinier van Hoffen after the ComPart lunchtime meeting last week. He was referring to one of the themes that emerged at the ICCO Alliance Working Conference last year.

For the last two years ICCO staff have been working with the ComPart team to explore how best we can support collaboration and knowledge sharing across the Alliance using modern online tools. Browsing through the over 100 wikis, regular blog posts and collections of conferences and workshops material from events across the globe, it's clear that we are in a new, more advanced, phase.

A key indicator of this, of course, is that the ICCO Alliance Business Plan is being developed in a wiki, which means easier management of documents and comments than is possible in the traditional approach that has large numbers of documents flying around the organisation by email, risking confusion over which is a current version and increasing the email flood. At the same time several teams have developed workspaces to support their everyday work, with rich and varied content, using a number of tools.

Just do it!

To share the work that is being done across ICCO, ComPart organised a lunchtime 'show and tell' on Tuesday 23 February 2010. It was a well attended meeting, with staff from all areas of the organisation. The central activity was a chat show - a presentation from three teams of how the the ComPart approach is supporting their work. As you can see from the recording below, the teams are gathering a wide range of material and using several tools. Possibly more important is their enthusiasm for their work. All of the presenters echoed Mariken Gaanderse when she said, "For me the best advice (to my colleagues) would be just to start using (ComPart), because only then you'll find out what it provides you."



However, in spite of the progress and enthusiasm, many challenges still remain: not all staff are at ease with technological changes and the learning curve seems to be a bit steep for some. Moreover, some desktop or web based applications are not easily available for staff inside the ICCO building, limiting for example the use of Skype, the synchronization between Outlook and Google calendar, or the availability of AT&T Connect. Lastly, the enormous pressures on the Regional Offices during their set-up phase means many haven't yet been able to explore in any depth the ComPart approach and toolkit. ComPart is especially relevant in the new decentralised ICCO. So it is good to hear that regions such as Central Asia, which are more established, are now keen to engage with the programme, as Pepijn Trapman confirmed on his recent visit to Utrecht.

The debate and lively discussion offered us as ComPart Admin Team a great deal of insight in terms of expectations, challenges and issues that ICCO Alliance staff are facing as far as information, communication and knowledge sharing are concerned, and how ComPart can further support their work. The recommendations and issues raised are being integrated into our plans for 2010, and will be reflected in the way we support ICCO Alliance staff and partners.

Sharing of responsibilities

The ICCO Alliance started a process of change five years ago in which key elements are a programmatic approach in which we try to influence systems rather than supporting individual projects, a sharing of responsibilities and a decentralization of ICCO's work to the regions. The South Asia regional conference on food security and conflict transformation was for me how these changes can be put to practice in the South Asia region.

The interaction and level of discussion during the first day made clear to me that South Asian civil society organizations are strong and definitely have the potential to take their work to a more advanced and strategic level with a matching increasing impact. Yet their are also still questions, challenges and uncertainties that can not simply be answered by the ICCO Alliance. It requires vision and above all courage from both members of the ICCO Alliance and their partners to develop new roads.

During the first day of the conference some very wise remarks were made about the existing divisions in the South Asia region. Yes there are political, ethnic, economic and religious divisions that do trouble the relations between governments in the region. But, as it was stressed, civil society organizations are well placed to overcome such divisions and point at the strengths of plurality. As they do not represent their governments they can transcend borders and come up with strong visions that reflect the will of the people to bring peace, harmony and respect for differences.

If such wisdom is to continue to dominate the conference, I'm very confident that the conference will prepare the ground for more successful cooperation within countries and within the region.

Harry Derksen
Projectleader Business Plan of the ICCO Alliance

Workshop on the WRR report on Dutch development aid

Today, a very lively ICCO Alliance debate on the WRR report on development took place at ICCO/KiA head office. The 40+ participants did represent the broad range of organisations in the Alliance. Not everybody had read the –extensive- report, but most were well aware of the major issues and the implications of the report's conclusions.

The editor of Vice Versa, Marc Broere, interviewed Harry Derksen, Jan van Doggenaar (both from ICCO) , Henk Jochemsen of Prisma and Ron Rijnbende of Edukans, who also acted as moderator for the two-hour session. They were asked to pinpoint the convincing issues in the report, the missed opportunities but especially to identify those themes in the report the Alliance would have to take seriously. These issues where then defined as the agenda for four break-out sessions, which gave the staff of the organisations present a good opportunity to discuss while at the same time getting to know each other.

The main conclusions the break-our groups came back with referred, amongst others, to the obvious lack of depth in what the WRR had to say about civil society and NGOs and the strange impression that, although the authors of the report say they don’t subscribe to the notion of grand projects, at the same time they seem to be advocating for such a grand design for Dutch development aid.



Jan van Doggenaar, ICCO Alliance


Ron Rijnbende, Edukans

Many people also pointed to the fact that poverty in the report is treated as a neutral phenomenon requiring ‘technical’ and organisational answers. That, together with an obvious lack of understanding of civil society operating between the state and the market, is evidence of the de-politicisation of poverty-related problems and, therefore, of development cooperation itself. The Alliance will have to engage in this debate publically, especially in these issues.



Henk Jochemsen, Prisma


Marc Broere, Vice Versa

Marc Broere gave Jack van Ham (ICCO Director)the opportunity to reflect on the issues coming back from the groups which he did with his usual enthusiasm.

The material coming out of this session will be used as input for information to be passed on to the the Alliance’s International Advisory Group meeting at the end of February and for the Partos-document that is being prepared in response to the WRR.

by Pim Verhallen

Related posts:

• The future of development cooperation
• Debating the future of development cooperation

Public consultation on the World Bank Group Environment Strategy 2010

What should a new World Bank Group environment strategy look like? Which principles should form it? And which approach should the strategy propose to achieve the environmental sustainability of the WBG's portfolio?

To get feedback on these elements, the World Bank is currently engaging in a series of multi-stakeholder consultations, aiming at "building consensus on and ensure quality of the new Environment Strategy", to be completed and approved by December 2010.

Against this backdrop, on 2nd February 2010, ICCO hosted a multi-stakeholder public workshop with representative from the World Bank Group and some 40 participants from civil society, government and academia. The Environment Strategy Concept Note provided the basis for the discussion. Jeffrey Brez and Ywende Awe from the World Bank Group presented the main elements of the Concept Note, and explained the process that the Bank is following in order to develop its 2010 environment strategy - see their presentation.

The session proved to be very lively and interactive, with lots of inputs coming from the audience as well as from the discussants.

In particular, for Paul Wolvekamp, Deputy Director at Both ENDS, 2 key questions emerged. First and foremost, in 15/20 years, how the Bank will position itself, given the fact that its traditional line of business might get out of work? When it comes to the most pressing challenges of this century, where will the Bank find its own niche and be true to its own mission (to help people help themselves in the environment to be sustainable). Secondly, how can the Bank to allow indigenous people, farmers, women to be part of a decision making process the outcome of which will affect their future? Will the bank be able to ally itself with new partners, besides the "usual suspects"?



From his side, Prof. Ekko van Ierland (Wageningen University) thought that the public debate turned into a very productive afternoon. He stressed the importance of an ecosystem based approach for economic development and he hoped this concept will be integrated in the final World Bank environment strategy. He also commented on the initiative of the World Bank to involve multiple stakeholders in a consultative process to shape the strategy: only with public support for its activities, the Bank can play a stronger role in the future in the protection of the environment and poverty alleviation.



For Ywende Awe from the World Bank a variety of messages come up and she was very grateful for the inputs received. These include: the need to collaborate more with other development institutions; the urgency for the Bank to define the niche it wants and could fill; the importance to increase in a more structured and formal way the participation of civil society organisations in achieving environmental sustainability. In particular, the idea of an 'ecosystem based economic growth model' impressed her in a positive way, and she'll bring this back to Washington and feed it in the discussion with her colleagues at the Bank.




Lastly, Ad Ooms was very positive about the level and content of the debate, and was please that ICCO could contribute to and support the Bank public consultation by organising such an event. He also expressed ICCO interest in hosting another public workshop when a draft strategy is available.



See the video recording of the workshop.

See more video interviews with speakers at participants.