ATCA held a strategic planning workshop in Lomé (Togo) for 3 days (April 2-4). They had the support of an anonymous consultant (but for his first name, Stéphane) from the Canadian consulting firm Universalia, apparently without previous experience in tobacco control.
If you can understand what the results were, please tell me (see below the document provided on their site). No financial information is provided, like where is the funding going to come from? From the Gates Foundation again? From ACS?
ATCA Board members, staffs and representatives from the American Cancer Society (ACS) held a planning workshop from 2nd to 4th April 2014 on priority actions to be undertaken in the framework of ATCA strategic plan 2014-2019. The meeting was held at ATCA office in Lomé with the technical assistance of a consultant from Universalia, a firm of consultants based in Canada.
From the key issues that emanated from workshop discussions, it appears that the main goal of this new strategic plan to be developed stems from the fact that ATCA must accept that it cannot do everything. It must identify and tap into the strengths of its membership. “Strategic documents must be explicit that ATCA is an organization that supports its member organizations in-country to implement their tobacco control work in a coordinated fashion. The Secretariat may need “alliance officers” rather than “country leads”, said a workshop participant at the beginning of this meeting. According to Fabrice Ebeh, ATCA Executive Secretary, “It was already confirmed that ATCA is a coordinating organization. We cannot directly implement activities in countries without our members”.
This meeting was thus the occasion to discuss of ATCA’s vision, mission and strategies of intervention on the continent, governance, communication, performance measurement as well as monitoring and evaluation. According to participants, the website is a tool for strengthening the institutional memory of the organization. “It is a key tool to better inform the public at large, ATCA members and ATCA staffs. The Resource Centre should welcome information from members and transmit information to the public.”, said Stéphane from Universalia.
In the perspective of drafting a strategic plan, participants identified three strategic objectives to be achieved by 2019 in Africa. These objectives are: strengthen the Alliance, support the adoption/implementation/enforcement of FCTC compliant laws and policies and promote Non-Communicable diseases (NCDs) control in the WAEMU sub-region. For each of these objectives, participants identified possible activities to be undertaken. “We have had 3 days of good engagement and good staff participation. The challenge is to concretize the follow-up and make sure that what we put in place is translated into decisions and action, and of course, into an operational plan” said Muyunda from Malawi. According to Rosemary from the American Cancer Society (ACS), “ensuring timely follow-up on identified actions to be accomplished in the coming months will be crucial to ATCA’s successful implementation of the strategic planning process”.
In parallel of this meeting, ATCA Board members also held an extraordinary meeting. “This was a very important meeting for the organization. It enabled us to move from one level to another. Members of the Board held side meetings and this was fantastic. We thank all the partners who supported the organization of this meeting, particularly ACS” said ATCA Chair, Dr Flore Ndembiyembe at the end of this meeting.
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