Tanzania Newsletter June 2006

Editor: Information worker Lisbeth Jensen

Editor-in-chief: Director Flemming Winther Olsen 

Letter from the Director

The trying times for MS have not ended as signified by the resignation of the Secretary General, followed by the resignation of the Director of Information and Communication. What looks a bit like an institutional tsunami will hopefully turn into new fertile soil once the sea pulls back! Democracy is not necessarily an easy tool but as it so often has been stated: in the absence of any better system for participatory governance it is still the only acceptable system of governance! 

Some of the upheavals in MS can be directly linked to the application of democracy. The issue of demarcating the borderline between the policy makers and the executives is an ever living issue in any democratic organization, institution or state. There are no absolute blue prints but lines must be drawn in order to secure efficient implementation of policy decisions and in order to avoid politicising management issues.

The new focus of MS is Democracy and to some it will seem somehow ironic that the very organization of MS is right now struggling to make effective use of the very tool we are promoting. To the more informed observer, however, the struggle to put MS on a new footing is a healthy process and should not be seen as a sign of weakness – to the extend the process is successful obviously! The real danger for a failed output of any democratic process lays in the risk of ‘democracy fatigue’. Policy makers in the European Union are battling with fatigue as are any democratic state experiencing low voter turn out and low level of civil society participation in the democratic processes.

For MS there are no signs of democracy fatigue. The members are eagerly taking part in the discussions as are Policy Advisory Boards in all MS Program Countries and staff at both Head Quarter in Denmark and at Country Offices around the world. I am confident that the collective democratic force will produce a new and more vibrant but also more focused and professional organization.

MS Tanzania has taken a big step forward at the below described workshop on the Topic Teams. The focus is getting sharper and the tools to apply to the challenges are being produced. Together with our partners we will move forward in the fight against poverty.  We feel confident that the application of the democracy tools will help both ourselves to become a more dynamic and professional organization and will assist our partners in becoming more efficient warriors in the fight against poverty. That war is still fare from being won but neither the people of Tanzania nor of the world can afford Civil Society organisations to lover their guards and relax their efforts. As part of that Civil Society we in MS have a strong obligation to strengthen our own organization to release more energy and capacity to assist others. That is the targeted outcome of the on-going reform process within MS and that is an outcome we cannot afford to fail to produce!

 

Lars Udsholt resigns

Lars Udsholt, the secretary general of MS, has resigned. He informed the Board on the 24^th of May, and they accepted. He has been Secretary General for 3 ½ years.

During the 3 1/2 year he has steered MS through some of the most difficult times in MS ever, resulting in substantial changes and a significant transformation of the whole organisation. Now he feels it is the proper time for a new secretary general to take over and manage the new MS.

Chairman Søren Hougaard praises and thanks Lars Udsholt for his dedicated work.

Lars has made no secret of the fact that he has increasingly found the Board to have stepped into management issues and one of the tasks of the new Secretary General will be to seek clarification on the roles and responsibilities of Board and Management respectively.

Until a new Secretary General is appointed, Bente Topsøe-Jensen, head of International Department, will be acting.

 

News from PAB

The Policy Advisory Board met on 2^nd of June at the Country Office.

On the agenda was the Democracy focus of MS Denmark and MS Tanzania.

PAB agreed that poverty eradication is still the goal and that democracy understood as popular participation is a strategy our partners use to help poor people to improve their livelihood.

PAB had a discussion on formulating criteria’s for selecting future partners.

On the initiative of chairperson Josephine Kimaro PAB discussed the East African Community and the implication it will have for civil society. As MS is present in all three countries we could take the role of starting a discussion. Maybe a joint Policy Forum?

As WAMATA and MS Tanzania has ended their partnership, Evelyn Ruzindaza can no longer be partner representative in PAB and first substitute Nestry Masswe from TANGO will be invited to the next meeting on the 3^rd of October.

Because of the workshop on the Topic Teams, there will be no Mshikamano meeting in September this year.

 

Notes and decisions from workshop on Topic Teams

MS Tanzania has embarked on a new working setup in the programme section. The plan is to organise all activities around three topic based teams. Each team is chaired by a programme officer, and the participants in the team are Development Workers and partner representatives.

During a three day work shop in Dar es Salaam from the 7/6 to the 9/6 2006 the topics and toolboxes for each team was discussed and the work plans for the coming months decided.

The three topics are: Organisational Capacity building, Public Private Partnership and Networking, Strategic Planning and Fundraising.

The shift to the team approach is a part of MS Tanzania’s focusing process. In the future we will not promise we can advice partners on everything, but we promise to be much better on the three topics and deliver a better service to our partners. Part of the team approach is for partners to also learn from each other. Some partners have good skills in fundraising, others have lot of experience in PPP and others are actively networking.

The sharing of knowledge is already taking place. The partner UVIMTA from Njombe is getting advises and training from Morogoro Paralegals in how to train paralegals.

Another issue on the workshop was to expand the volunteer programme with university student. The aim is to link up a partner with a need for research with students from both Tanzanian and Danish universities. Students always needs field studies as part of their training, and the civil society should help in this way to educate the youth and get them acquainted with the NGO world. And at the same time get the benefit of the research and knowledge the students transfer to the organisation.

Some partners have already had good experiences with students like Mapambano Centre and Envirocare.

 

Online library service at LHRC

The library at Legal Human Rights Centre has gone hi-tec on a Polish-developed database system.

“This means, that the capacity of the library of sharing information and documentation has gone op from 16 people at a time to infinity, as anyone with internet access can find and order a publication which is in the library”, explains librarian Azizi Hassan.

The link to the online library will be available in the LHRC website www.humanrights.or.tz

 

Andrew Mhina experiences from Denmark

As part of the introduction programme to MS Tanzania the new programme officer Andrew Mhina was invited to a workshop in Denmark.

Every two year the MSiS programme invites new Programme Officers from all the countries of MS cooperation. Andrew was so lucky to participate just six weeks after starting in Dar es Salaam.

“But it was more than just getting to know colleagues from Copenhagen and the other countries. We also had a workshop were we discussed how to make the new democracy focus operational as a strategy to reach the objective of eradication poverty.

We also discussed the partnership approach and came with inputs to revise the toolbox for partnership. The biggest changes are the possibilities to contract different kinds of development workers. On national basis or from South to South. We also discussed to improve the recruitment process to make DW and partner fit.

I got a good picture of MS, both challenges, failures and successes and can better discuss MS critically.

But the most interesting experiences were seeing the democratic process in the Danish society. We visited the Copenhagen City Council and one of the youngest counsellors told us about her work and the transparency of the council. That I would like to transfer to here,” says Andrew Mhina.

 

Florida Henjewele’s experiences from seminar

Programme Officer Florida Henjewele has been overseas for 6 weeks from 2^4th April to 2^nd of June 2006. She was attending an International Training Programme in Belgium. The training was organized by the Institute of Development Policy and Management (IOB) of the University of Antwerp.

The theme of the training was “Making the PRSP Work: Opportunities and Challenges for Development Actors”.

“The training was very relevant to what I am doing at MS and it will help me performing my day to day duties. In the due course of the training programme, we went through analyzing the role of the three key development actors (civil society organizations, government and donors), their behaviour (the way they behave in contrast to how they are supposed to behave), the opportunities available, and the challenges they are facing.

The lessons learned from the training program show that civil society organizations have a big role in the fight against poverty in any given context; however they are faced with a number of challenges which ranges from social, political as well as economical,” says Florida Henjewele.

 

Fundraising in Denmark

Because of new demands from the Danish Government MS Denmark has to raise self financing to the tune of minimum 4 million Danish kroner in 2006 and 8 million Danish kroner in 2007 from private donations in Denmark. These funds are the condition to get the big funding from Danida to finance all the programmes in the South.

In Copenhagen a new department with three persons are working hard to make this possible. And we will all be involved, partners, programme officers and information department.

In the last few weeks a new collection to UVUKI and the cashew nut processing has started on the MS Denmark homepage. It will be interesting to see, if this way of seeking private donation will work .

When the Danish school holiday starts at the end of June, MS will set up an exhibition at AAlborg ZOO. As the visitors to the Zoo are looking at the elephants and giraffes, they can also learn about the people living on and sharing the African Savannah with the wild animals.

During the exhibition, we are allowed to put up a collection box, where the visitors can donate money. The money will go to Ilaramatak's training programme for the leaders in the villages bordering the Tarangiri National Park.

 

MS Tanzania scales up in Policy Forum

Director Flemming Olsen will in the future together with Program Officer Florida Henjewele participate in the monthly meetings of the Policy Forum, and Programme Officer Andrew Mhina will participate in the work group on local government and programme officer Maselle Maziku in the work group on budget monitoring and MKUKUTA. A newly established " Working Group on Agriculture" met for the first time at MS on June 12 with the participation of the Director. He will be joined by Andrew for future meetings and work in this particular group.

To participate in Policy Forum brings information and knowledge to MS and its partners, as well as MS can bring forward the voice of the partners outside Dar, who can not participate themselves. Partners are hereby encouraged to make full use of MS participation in these forums.

 

New partners

Two partnership agreements have been terminated, and the DW’s have been pulled out. In both cases the agreement ended because the partners were not found to comply with basic principles of transparency and institutional willingness to make the partnership work for mutual benefit. The two former partners are WAMATA and TAYEN.

DW Lene Godiksen has changed her posting to Envirocare and DW Maj-Brit Rasmussen has changed her posting to TYC.

Envirocare has signed a short time partnership agreement with posting of one DW.

MVIWATA in Morogoro has signed a partnership agreement with two DW’s posted at head office and one South DW at a branch in Mbeya.

ACT, Agricultural Council of Tanzania, has signed a partnership agreement with posting of two DW’s.

Haki Kazi in Arusha has signed a partnership agreement with posting of one DW.

Policy Forum is a strategic partner, where MS Tanzania will scale up the participation.

 

New DW

6-7 new DW’s will during the coming month join the program.

MVIWATA will have an information advisor and a Public-Private Partnership advisor. The program also will engage the first South DW from Zambia.

ACT will have an information advisor and an organizational advisor.

Haki Kazi will have a communication and research planning advisor.

The Country Office will have two roaming DW’s, one financial adviser and one in IT and communication.

When the DW’s arrive, we will introduce them properly.

 

New staff

First of July a new account assistant will start at country office. Immaculata K. Nkya’s main responsibility will be as cashier. 

 

For contributions to the newsletter or further information please contact lisbeth@mstan.or.tz