Africa - Regional coordination of ACTED's staffs in Naivasha
The latest regional coordination meeting which took place in Naivasha (Kenya) February 10, 11 and 12, gathered ACTED’s team engaged on the main humanitarian issues on the African continent. Some 40 staff exchanged during three day on their field experience, ongoing projects and on other best practices implemented from Sudan to Zimbabwe, from Congo-Brazzaville to Somalia. Since 2004, ACTED’s areas of intervention in Africa have expanded with as many different logics and priorities. Since 2008, ACTED has reinforced its regional support to follow up this overall development in Africa, with always the same logic of capitalizing on experiences with special attention to pertinence and conformity.
Coordination and global reflections
These regional meetings aim at increasing coordination between staff located in different countries but all on the same continent in order to develop experience sharing and to engage in global reflection on intervention strategies, field issues while promoting the set up of shared interventions or specific partnerships. Among the numerous working sessions and other plenary sessions, some time was dedicated to thinking on the overall project for ACTED, both at the regional and global level.
A reflection over ACTED’s values
Participants were notably asked to think over the values of ACTED and to interpret these within the logo of the NGO: efficiency, integrity, solidarity and ownership where some of the propositions made by the staff. Working groups elaborated on the adaptation and interpretation of ACTED’s main values and the results of these discussions will be debated during the next General Assembly of ACTED due in June 2010. Field operators can thus exchange their views with headquarters representatives and with ACTED members in order to convey towards a logo close to both field practices and ACTED’s aspirations.
A continuous process
The next regional meeting (RCM), due to take place in March in Sri Lanka, will gather this time staff representatives from ACTED’s countries of intervention located in the Middle-East as well as in Asia. They will in their turn contribute to the overall reflection on ACTED’s global project and values, according to their own experience. As for the next RCM in Arica taking take place next November, it should be the occasion to review ACTED’s foreseen countries of intervention, notably Burundi and other countries in Western Africa, as well to reflect upon the problematic related to the continuity of activity in the most difficult contexts on the continent.
