Travelling Topic Team on Poverty

From the 13th to the 20th of June 2005, MS Zambia was visited by MS’s Travelling Topic Team (TTT) on Poverty.

By Katrine Lundsby

29. November 2005

The Travelling Topic Team consisted of Shiva Bhusal, Programme Officer MS-Nepal and Lene Christensen, International Department MS-Denmark.

These two facilitators conducted a two day workshop at the Country Office, subsequently followed by partner visits in Eastern and Luapula province.

Background and purpose of the TTT

The background for the TTT is the feeling that there are difficulties in ensuring that MS overall goals and major concerns characterise all the co-operation with partners.

The purpose of the TTT on Poverty was to promote an understanding of the importance of addressing poverty reduction among Programme Officers and other relevant Country Office staff and obtain knowledge of means to better do so, primarily at partner level. The TTT on poverty was meant to stimulate the Country Office, specially the Programme Officers, into making poverty issues the centre of everything they do.

The theme for the TTT is in line with the new MS in the South Policy Paper: “Partnership against Poverty”, that has Poverty Eradication as an overarching objective. This policy paper, which is still only in a draft version, is the successor to the MSiS Policy Paper: “Solidarity through Partnership” from 2001.

Programme and outcome of the Zambia visit

At the two day workshop in the beginning of the TTT session, the TTT facilitators took the participants, which were mainly Country Office staff, through a number of tools to address poverty.

Following the two day workshop, the TT Team travelled with the Programme Officers to Luapula and Eastern province to visit two MS partners in each province.

The aim of the partner visits was to get as close as possible to the actual operationalisation of poverty reduction efforts, by identifying ways of improving the engagement around poverty at partner level.

During the partner visits the Programme Officers facilitated some of the tools to address poverty that had been introduced at the workshop in Lusaka.

Powerful tools

During the debriefing in Lusaka Shiva Bhusal and Lene Christensen concluded that: “These tools proved powerful to engage partner representatives and beneficiaries in defining crucial poverty concerns in their local context”.

“It was clear with both the partners visited that the definition of poverty was much of a political nature, which in itself probably is a testimony to the poor governance system dogging the governance institutions and the country at large, ” says Programme Officer Humphrey Elekani, who visited Mambwe District Council and Chipata District Farmers Association.

Elekani also said: “The tools used should also be seen as planning tools that the partners can use in their planning and especially during the planning process for their next annual work plans”.

The Travelling Topic Team also visited MS-Zambia in 2004 where the topic addressed was “Monitoring and Evaluation”. The TTT is planning to come back in the near future and this time they will address “gender”.