The Organisation

Dipshikha, which means ‘spark of light’, is a medium-sized NGO based in the northwest of Bangladesh.  Dipshikha’s work is with poor and marginalised communities and focuses on providing integrated development programmes including education, agriculture, health, skills development, micro credit and building sustainable community organisations.

The Need

Dipshikha is an implementation partner for the CARE Bangladesh Rural Livelihoods Project.  On reviewing its partnership operations in 2003, CARE found that the most effective way in which they could support their partners was to help build management capability.  CARE launched a Capacity Building initiative with Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO), who provided volunteer management advisors to CARE and its partners.  An organisational review with Dipshikha concluded that a strategic plan was required to address the following issues:

• The Dipshikha Vision and Mission needed to be translated into shorter-term goals to facilitate  day-to-day decision making by managers.
• Selecting appropriate projects to contribute to Dipshikha's mission and vision requires clear selection criteria, which would be easier to identify against shorter-term goals.
• Short to medium term goals would help managers and field workers to better understand how they can contribute to the long-term mission and vision.
• Dipshikha’s internal management structure and processes needed to be aligned to achieving the strategic goals and clarity provided to Dipshikha staff and other stakeholders to promote understanding and aid decision-making.

What We Did

As a VSO volunteer Strategic Planning Advisor, Jacqueline helped Dipshikha to develop a three year strategic plan and to learn the necessary skills to develop future plans on their own.  This included:

• Researching the organisation and building relationships
• Developing a small project team to plan and design a process to elicit the information needed
• Providing support to the project team members as they facilitated the workshops
• Documenting the outputs and facilitating feedback sessions with the senior management team
• Communicating the strategic plan through a jointly designed and delivered ‘road show’, helping field workers to link their project objectives and individual contribution to the strategic plan.

Benefits

• Increased staff motivation.  Staff can see how their daily activities contribute to Dipshikha’s mission and are also much more aware of the other projects Dipshikha is carrying out
• Increased focus at senior and project manager level on the goals they need to achieve in the next three years, reducing the risk of getting distracted or growing too fast
• New skills for the project team and senior managers who are now confident to offer their services as strategic planning facilitators and consultants to other local NGOs.

Paul Tigga, Executive Director of Dipshikha commented "Jacqueline built up very good working relationships within the organisation and has been very consistent in including the whole team in the strategic planning process.  Rather than trying to persuade others of her opinion, Jacqueline is typically a consensus seeker: she played an effective facilitating role in discussions where the management team as a whole had to come to an agreement."