SOS CHILDREN’S VILLAGES SIERRA LEONE HELD ANNUAL STRATEGIC PLANNING MEETING

Participants at the workshop

SOS Children’s Villages Sierra Leone, held their third Strategic Annual planning from 8^th -11^th October, to update and validate their annual plan for 2013. This Planning Workshop was held in Freetown at the SOS National Office main lobby to complement the SOS International Strategy of reaching 600,000 growing up in a caring family by 2016.

The workshop was facilitated by facilitator-in training Madam Oumou Tall, who is also the National Director SOS Children’s Villages The Gambia. To observe and guide Madam Tall was the National Director of SOS Cape Verde, Mr. Dionísio Pereira, a ‘Licensed Lead Facilitator’.

It all started off with a very successful dialogue between the General Secretariat representative, Mr. Mike Arthur, who is the head of Operations at the Regional Office in The Gambia and the National Director SOS Children’s Villages Sierra Leone, Mr. Olatungie E.E. Woode. Supporting Mr. Woode during the dialogue were Mrs. Leila Labor, Village Director SOS Children’s Village Freetown, and ‘One Child Objective Leader, Mr. Benoni Williams, National FSP Coordinator and Mr. David Asfaw, Financial Controller.

The next two days of the workshop were very interactive as the National Management Team discussed and put actions together for 2013. Mr. Olatungie Woode, The National Director, SOS Children’s Villages Sierra Leone in his opening statement said “I want this National Association to come up with practical, realistic, achievable but simple plans.” To set these goals and “Achievable plans” the National Management team was divided into three sub-groups, “One Child” which is the core, “One Friend”, and “One Movement”. At the end, each group presented their refined actions and corrective measures and steps to carry out their actions all focusing on 4750 Children and youths enabled to grow in a caring family with Child rights, Child participation, Child protection and Advocacy for sustainable quality child care by the year 2016.

On the final day of the workshop, the action plans of each group (One Child, One friend and One Movement) were endorsed by the National Director, who signed on each plan sheet. To enable the team to work towards the achievement of their plans, the Facilitator asked each participant to make “one promise”.