Brainstorm on better partnerships

Once again, the ‘Open Space’ method brought discussions and new ideas. This year, the theme was the partnerships

In a brainstorming session on how to make MS partnerships even better, participants identified training in management skills, strengthening information sharing and clarity on common goals, among the top seven priority areas for immediate action.

The others include creating a phasing out policy for partners through a gradual process as well as monitoring and evaluation to be done by both MS and partners. The list runs to 40 areas of action in order of priority. Earlier, in the open space session, participants raised very critical issues that included among others:

• Why MS Uganda takes long to develop partnership agreements with partners
• How to formulate critique on MS Uganda and bring it forward, and how to stop MS from imposing policies on the partners
• The insufficient feed back from MS; and
• Power abuse by board and chairpersons towards staff and the members: Who is the custodian of democracy in the organisation?

In reaction to these issues, recommendations were made to improve the co-operation. During group discussions, the need to encourage and schedule regular meetings between MS and partners to avoid delayed partnership agreements was an issue of concern.

Members wished to have well defined guidelines on adhoc partnerships. In a situation where partnership agreements have not yet been formulated, memorandums of understanding were proposed as an alternative.

As group deliberations progressed, the issue of longer period for developing and signing memorandums of understanding was preferred not to exceed two years.

Quarterly meetings with MS programme officers was suggested as a remedy for the partners to openly put across constructive criticism in the partnership.