Enjoy catching up with what is happening in ICAs across the globe.....If you wish to SEND a report...send to your ICA contact person OR...go to the members section on the ICAI web site

Weekending: Saturday 2009 05 02

BANGLADESH:

Location: Dhaka

ICA Bangladesh organized an action-planning session on 1st May followed by the extra-ordinary general meeting EGM at the ICA office in Dhaka, attended by 15 ICA general members and staff. The meeting started remembering the significance of the day towards establishing the labor law and rights. The main agenda of the EGM was the election of the treasurers position of the Board and also the necessary formalities for Society and NGO Bureau Registration requirements.

Fuad welcomed everyone and presented the monthly financial statements from January-April 2009, which were prepared by our accounts person, Nurul. They were based on our new book keeping and management policy following our meetings with Maria and Richard. The EGM decided that Mr. Sheikh Mohd Faizullah Shipon will succeed Mr. Md. Moniruzzaman as treasurer.

Aziz facilitated the action-planning meeting. He reviewed first the victory, strengths, weakness, opportunities and dangers for 2009, which was facilitated by Evelyn on 15 April. Then Aziz facilitated to add new ideas. The participants also added their contribution. Later Aziz facilitated what, when, where and how, with commitments. Later two conversations were made on the street children project and the sidr orphan high school project. Taskforces were also made for those projects. Galib, Sarwat, Fuad, Selina and Aziz are members of the street children taskforce. For orphan sidr children, Farhad, Kabir, Aziz, Indrajit, Shipon were included in the taskforce. Fuad and Aziz are recording the sessions and soon we hope to pass the information to colleagues via email.

Shamim brought a book for the street children project and worked from it on 1 May. Aziz, Fuad and Galib are going to develop ICA educational and life skills training module for the street children project. Fuad is creating a name for he street children, we decided to use PHULKI Spark. On 2nd May classes start at Surjodoy Sangsad building with 30 street children under the TUC Japan supported project, Improving the quality of life of street children through educational development and life skills training in Dhaka City. Fuad and Galib attended two classes on 2nd May, Galib on 3rd May.

Staff           admin@ica-bangladesh.org

ICA ASSOCIATES INC. (Canada)

Location: Canada

Reporting for several weeks

Jo Nelson and Duncan Holmes successfully debuted a new course. Organizational Transformation combines our social process triangle work, material from Prisciilla Wilson's book the Facilitative way and our organizational Journey lab in a 3 day advanced facilitation course. Other course in the series of 3 day advanced courses include, Advanced Facilitation Tools and Human Development.

ICA Associates was very active at the IAF North America conference in Vancouver. Jerry Mings and John Miller taught Group Facilitation as a pre-conference course. Jo Nelson and associate Lucile Michaud taught Meetings That work, and Group Facilitation for project managers. Jo led a reflection on the keynote speech. We also led a special symposium on edges and innovations in facilitation.

Bill Staples taught Group Facilitation in Ottawa. Jo Nelson taught Group Facilitation with a group of trainers from the Southern Ontario Aboriginal Diabetes Initiative.  She then boarded a plane that evening and did a presentation on Meetings That work for the Regina Saskatchewan Board of Education. She taught Group Facilitation for Educators to a group from Regina Bd of Ed the next 2 days.

Bill Staples, John Miller and Martin Galbraith form ICA UK, visiting following the IAF conference, led the first in a series facilitated planning events for the Ontario Clean Water Authority.

Duncan Holmes facilitated a workshop for the Metcafe foundation related to re-designing Ontario's Social Assistance programming.

Wayne Nelson continues work on the Virtual ToP Facilitation project. We have an article describing our work that breaks ToP facilitation processes into very specific Design Patterns. they are small, discreet units of activity that can be combined in larger, more complex facilitation processes.

Wayne also completed the first of several Flash movie clips. This one introduces the Group Facilitation Course. It can be viewed at:
http://ica-associates.ca/Template/NewCourses/GFMVideoIndex.cfm

Wayne Nelson          wnelson@ica-associates.ca

PERU:

Location: Lima

This was one of those very rare weeks for ICA-Peru when our whole staff was in Lima, and we took advantage of it to spend three days working on our plans for 2010 and beyond. 

With our program calendar 95 sold out for the year, we decided to move ahead with the addition of three new staff, beginning with Rocio del Aguila joining our marketing team.  Rocio has been a colleague for over 20 years and is looking forward to more focused work with us now that she has taken early retirement from her teaching career.  We will also begin the search for two young colleagues who can quickly assume leadership in our new service of Implementation in the field following our 3-week leadership formation training programs.  

We also decided to launch several new program initiatives to extend our service to Peru.  In response to many requests, we are launching immediately a new 3-week residential training program for the thousands of professionals who work in the rural communities all across Peru.  They are the employees of universities, the Regional Governments, the government Ministries, mining companies, large agricultural producers and other NGO's who are the ones who work directly with communities to provide essential social services. 

The name of the program is Double Your Results since it is focused on enabling the care givers to effectively involve the local people in the delivery of funded services.  The present high-turnover and ineffectiveness of these field workers is widely acknowledged, and we will be assisting them to become dramatically more productive in their work by learning the methods of respect, collaborating and inclusiveness.  The content of the 3-week residential training program will be an adaptation of our existing and proven AVANZA PERU program, the core of which is the learning and practice of applying TOP methods.

Another new focus of our service to Peru will be what we call Break-Through Projects which are focused on breaking down barriers which place limits on the lives of local people.  These will be funded with three year grants from international agencies, one of which is in place already, and one more in process.  The project areas are focused on Women's Small Industries to empower women as an essential leadership presence in the communities, Single Mothers to empower the massive number of these women to assume a role in the community as capable parents and self-sufficient leaders, empowering families to build their own Safe Permanent Housing from native materials without the support of the government or professional contractors, and finally creating a packaged Business Incubator to take a number of viable small industries to the rural communities.  Related to this program area, we also made plans to take our learnings about effective Emergency Relief Programs to a number of other agencies in Peru which will be first-responders in future natural disasters.

But now we need to pack up and rush out the door for another 3-week AVANZA PERU program in Azpitia, and 30 more lives to awaken to limitless creativity.

Staff           kenh@ica-peru.org

UNITED STATES:

Location: Chicago IL

In April, ICA-USA welcomed colleagues to its national headquarters in Chicago for two knowledge-based events. On April 14 and 15, over a dozen participants took part in our ToP Secrets of Implementation Training.  Course registrants were led through a series of small-group activities that helped them identify ways to keep their planned projects manageable and sustainable.  ToP Secrets of Implementation is offered as an advanced course as part of ICA-USA's ToP Training Series.

Over forty participants participated in our Profound Journey Dialog (PJD) program April 24-25. More than 30 years ago, ICA-USA's predecessor, the Ecumenical Institute, with its Religious Studies 1 course, facilitated in-depth discussions with thousands of faith leaders, church goers, and college students around the world. PJD puts a contemporary spin on RS1 and uses digital presentations and group dialog to lead participants in a set of thoughtful and transformational conversations that focus on responsible decision-making, life changing events and more.

Venita Griffin           vgriffin@ica-usa.org

ICAI:

Location: Montréal

We are very happy to announce that our long-pending application for charitable status in Canada has finally been approved! We are now officially recognised for the charitable work that we do, and we are able to issue tax receipts for all donations made within Canada. This is a major achievement and will open up new possibilities for funding from different foundations and  private sector sources. Our sincerest appreciation goes to Karen Cooper, Terrance Carter, and all the team at Carter’s that worked so hard on this file during the past 20 months.

Lambert continued his engagement with the UN Forum on Forests process in New York, and made some considerable progress in lobbying for more effective participation of diverse stakeholders. He has helped press for a new initiative of the Major Groups (groups that are recognized by the UN  Forum on Forests process, including NGOs, Labour, Indigenous Peoples, Women, Scientists, etc.) that would involve opportunities for greater and more effective participation of these groups in the process; ICAI is taking a leading role in moving this initiative forward.  Michael joined Lambert in New York for a number of UN meetings, as well as meetings with AJWS, the Collaborative Fund on HIV and AIDS and Global Goods (an organization that promotes the US marketing and distribution of traditional handicrafts produced by small groups of artisans). Despite the very real economic hardship felt by organizations based in the US, they remain determined to continue to find ways to support innovative and effective programs in the global South.

Julia was hard at work learning the office systems, and dealing with a range of administrative and accounting tasks. She will be working with the board finance committee in the coming weeks to do some fine tuning of our procedures in order to improve workflow and clarity.  We continue to work with member ICAs in supporting the submission of a variety of proposals dealing with HIV and AIDS, street children, and reforestation, among others.

Staff          info@ica-international.org