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