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Two staff from ERuDeF (Ita Nawom and Hodu Forbe) have benefitted from a-three day training workshop for NGOs under theme ‘Managing priorities, managing time’. Organised by the International Union for Conservation of Nature IUCN with support from the PPI funding, the training which took place from May 6 to 9 at the IUCN conference room in Yaounde was facilitated and animated by Guillaume Soto, CEO of Shauri Consulting. The training offered participants, who are equally key players in their NGOs, a chance to better organize themselves in order to help organize their organizations.
Drawing from a Chinese story of filling large stones in a bucket, the trainer was able to send across a message of organizing tasks and prioritizing these tasks. Tasks were grouped into important, important and urgent, Not important not urgent and then urgent. Learning how to sort these and place them in order of importance he said, was going to go a long way in saving time. He advised participants to always begin by doing the important tasks. By so doing all other tasks will fall in place and there will be no need to always run around doing urgent tasks while your key responsibilities are lagging behind
The trainer took participants to travel the road of their daily lives. This included work, spiritual, social and time allotted for self. In dwelling on this, he highlighted that there was a need to always strike a balance between these four axes of life and not let any suffer because of the other. He further zoomed down to work life. Here participants were expected to indicate the different functions carried out in the work place. As key administrators these included fundraising, project management, capacity building and administration and they were to equally use these to create equilibrium in the work life without letting any of these axes to suffer.
Small but key points to note at the end of the training were never to begin a day first by reading emails, never beginning a day without knowing your important tasks, always keeping a ‘to do’ list and sorting it accordingly and to remember always to rest one’s mind and body.
Participants were drawn from The Environment and Rural Development Foundation (ERuDeF), African Marin/Mammals Conservation Organisation (AMCO), Cameroon Gender and Environment Watch (CAMGEW), Appui a L’auto-promotion de la femme de Boumbe et Mgoko (AAEBEN) and Tropical Forest River Development.
At the end of the training, another working day was set aside to assess the needs of these NGOs and how IUCN could accompany and support them in better efficiency and management. A good number of areas were highlighted some of which included, offering trainings in various aspects like environmental communication, financial management, provision of innovative software, connecting the different partners and creating a platform where good practices and experiences could be shared amongst others.
Speaking on behalf of participants, Ms Akongongol Miranda of AAFEBEN appreciated the trainers for a wonderful job done. She said ‘sitting down and learning at a certain age is not always easy but you have made the training so lighthearted and the material quite easy to digest’. She equally appreciated her fellow participants for a great sense of camaraderie which reigned throughout the training.
By Ita Nawom & Hodu Forbe