By Saidina Alieu Jarjou
Cross section of staff of ActionAid International-The Gambia (AAITG), Monday, 26th October 2020 converged at Sindola in Kanilai to kick-start its annual Participatory Review and Reflection Processes (PRRP).
The PRRP is one of the requirements of AAITG is carried out at least twice in a year to ensure critical engagement with key partners, communities and other stakeholders through reflecting on how the organization work has improved and impacted the lives of the communities.
This years’ PRRP covered AAITG institutional donor funded projects, EU Agro-ecology and Eco-restoration and Women Economic Initiatives, Global Fund Project and Every Child Counts – Project.
It is done through an orientation meeting which defined strategies for engagement with the communities and beneficiaries this followed by field visits and plenary discussions on field findings across the Gambia.
The objective of the PRRP is to critically assess programme performance, quality and draw lessons that will inform AAITG’s future planning and programming and enhance organizational effectiveness in its fight against poverty, social exclusion, and injustice for a better society.
Speaking at the opening ceremony Omar Badji, the Executive Director of AAITG said the PRRP facilitates dialogue between AAITG, key partners, communities and other stakeholders to ensure accountabilities for the results, and thereby build trust in relationships and synergy in actions.
“PRRPs enable AAITG to learn from its experiences, to respond and adapt to a changing context and empower each of us, particularly poor and excluded people, to pursue the change we seek to realize” he added.
Fanta Jatta-Sowe the Acting Head of Programs and Policy for AAITG said by jointly analysing how, what and why changes happened, we learn from poor and marginalized people and each other. And also build a shared understanding of how we should engage with the change process. Based on this shared understanding, we can complement each other’s roles and create synergy in our future actions.
She added that the PRRP will inform AAITG’s 2021 programme plans and budget for implementation with the strategic partners. It also allows the organization to interact with the challenges, achievements and identify key lessons learnt from the 2020 programme implementation. It is a room for collecting success stories from the project beneficiaries as well as engaging in dialogue with them.