Non-profits in West Africa are bolstering their organizational effectiveness through their participation in the week-long Learning Exchange Program) hosted under the Ford Foundation-backed Civic Space Resource Hub (CSR-Hub) managed by Spaces for Change | S4C. With emphasis on experiential learning and peer-mentoring towards strengthening organizational capacities and systems for mission achievement, the LEP paired some promising social justice groups with well-established non-profit organizations to enable the former understudy the latter’s management structures, internal governance systems, policies, and administrative procedures.
Along these lines, Spaces for Change, LEAP Africa and Africa Center for Energy Policy (ACEP) Ghana hosted Youth Without Borders (YWB) Ghana, Brave Heart Initiative (BHI) Nigeria and Building Blocks for Peace (BBforPeace) Nigeria respectively. During the exchange, the directors and senior management teams of YWB, BHI and BBforPeace’s spent the entire week in their hosts’ offices observing the day-to-day organizational work routines and the managerial systems in action.
YWB understudied S4C’s history, governance structure, work culture and administrative protocols, gaining insights into how the latter has evolved over the years, and adapting to changing internal and external conditions. Through private interactive sessions on internal governance, YWB Ghana learned more about S4C’s governance structure, hierarchical arrangement, staff relations, and internal information flow. This session illuminated the significance of defining the roles and responsibilities of team members, units, and departments. YWB Ghana also learned about the importance of policies and regulatory compliance. S4C provided insights into its work culture and the checks and balances in place, enforced through the implementation of various policies such as staff handbook, conflict of interest policy, travel policy, children in the workplace policy, safeguarding policy, whistleblowing policy etc.
As BHI returned from their week-long learning visit to LEAP Africa, they took steps immediately to institutionalize what they learnt. First, they conducted a debrief meeting with the management team and outlined priority tasks to be executed based on the lessons. Furthermore, BHI’s 4-person Operations & Human Resource Department are currently undergoing capacity strengthening from partner institutions. BHI has also started updating their workplace policies, manuals and service protocols. They are also developing new ones that address new trends in the workplace such as cyber security, sexual harassment and abuse. They have plans to organize a staff retreat to provide refresher courses for team members about their roles, responsibilities, and work deliverables.
According to BHI, “a key learning was the use of technology to drive the entire operations (Slack, Oracle Netsuite, Microsoft team, Asana, Hootsuite, Google Analytics, Quickbooks, Sage, Google Workspace, Dropbox, Seamless HR, etc). While we are familiar with a few of these tools, we were hearing of some these digital tools for the first time and have resolved to understudy their use and adopt some of them at BHI. We also learned about their data management and communication protocols as well as their social media engagement drives... We are also introducing a new filing system and data management protocol in BHI to improve our administrative efficiency. We are developing a more structured performance appraisal module, promotion plan, digitization of our record books and we are codifying our bonuses and leave days for staff into their contract.”
After spending one week in ACEP, BbforPEACE also deepened their understanding of how to conceptualize, budget for and implement diverse projects especially on a regional scale. Recently, BBforPEACE had set up a regional joint mechanism called West Africa Youth Protection Network for youth civil society groups and activists working on security sector reforms. By gaining firsthand knowledge of the complex planning processes involved in regional programming, BBforPEACE will enhance their ability to design interventions that expand spaces for the youth in the subregion to counter the negative impacts of securitization on the civic space as well as enhance their democratic participation.
The elated director of BBforPEACE, Mr. Rafiu Lawal, Nigeria thanked S4C for facilitating their week-long learning exchange to ACEP Ghana. According to Rafiu, “we were exposed to the various opportunities and strategies for engaging on issues of natural resource governance and climate change in Africa. Secondly, we were exposed to partner’s engagement and fundraising strategies, including stakeholder engagement, proposal development, budgeting, reporting, communication and documentation, networking among others. We also learnt about the leadership and management style at ACEP including how they improve staff performance, welfare and handle staff exit.
These robust internal and external changes happening across organizations in Nigeria and Ghana are the very reason the CSR-hub was set up in the first place. What the exchange has done is to afford younger organizations an opportunity to actually see and understand the systems and processes that stronger organizations have put in place. Armed with that knowledge about effective governance strategies, policies and administrative models, they can review their own organizational structures in ways that enhance their operational efficiency to achieve their mission and vision with less hindrance.
