By Bampia James Bund
Executive Director, Network Movement for Justice and Development, NMJD, has described strategic planning as the key to civil society activities. Abu Brima made the statement at the opening of a five-day strategic development meeting for civil society coalitions, funded by the United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF), at Santano House in Freetown.
He explained that over the yearsthey had held several meetings with civil society coalitions across the country to assess the operations of CSOs and map out a way forward for CSO development in the country.
He added that such meetings were meant to build the capacities of civil society coalitions so that they could effectively develop strategic plans for their various coalitions.
He said strategic planning was a term used to describe “a myriad of methods used by organizations to determine their focus, direction and measures of success”, while observing that strategic thinking and planning processes should help them create a clear sense of purpose, direction and focus for all stakeholders.
He appealed to coalition members to take the training seriously and urged them to come up with ideas and contributions to formulate holistic strategic plans for various coalitions.
“We don’t have money to fight, but we constitute a large number of the populace which enables us to create impact in national development”, the NMJD boss said, and urged CSOs and coalitions to go back and prepare a strategic plan by the end of the training.
The communication director at NMJD, Salieu Kamara, revealed that they were able to target about 16 civil society coalitions across the country to participate in the capacity building workshop.
He described the days that would be spent at the training as “learning by doing” because coalition members would be preparing their organizational strategic plans at the end of the five days.
(C) Politico 18/03/14
