PSA/MOH in partnership with UNICEF in 2017 is implementing Community based IYCF intervention in Bossaso – Puntland, the project’s goal is to protect, promote and support breastfeeding In Bossaso city with target population of 448,009 IDPs and host communities at community level, the timeframe for the project is twelve (12) months.
In line with the project, PSA conducted a 1-day mid-year review meeting which was attended by 30 participants, namely MOH technical team, local authority, IDP & Host committees, CBW, nurses, Program Staff, the meeting was used to review achievements based on indicators, deliberated on challenges and way forward.
As one of the key responsibilities of a project management team is to collect information of the status of the project tasks from all stakeholders and review them against the project plan and identify items that need some improvement so as to be realistically achieved with some degree of effort, in addition, some input may require a complete rethinking on how they are done. Possibly some processes may need to be dropped or changed. Continually changing requirements requires the team to change to a more agile development methodology.
The next step was to decide on action plans: get input & agreement on action plans to improve items that need improvement and ways to fix items that are broken. This will make it much easier to implement long-term changes as well as help build a strong sense of commitment and team spirit in the team.
Objectives:
- Conduct review on progress against key planned activities and identify key challenges/constraints
- Discussion /comments from participants
- Agree action points and Way forward
- To review progress/achievements against C-IYCF (outputs)
- Get comments and recommendations from participants
- Develop action points / Way forwards
Methodology:
- Interactive discussions supported by PowerPoint presentations
- Round table analysis and experiences.
- Provision of information, educational and communication material on practice of case management within child protection programmes
Agenda for the training session
- Registration
- Quran
- Welcome, introductions and training expectations
- Chief Guest remarks, MOH, local Authority, UNICEF, PSA and representatives from various organizations.
- Current situation and importance of IYCF
- Presentations (TWO)
- Question and answers sessions
- Overall comments and recommendations:
- Concluding Remarks and Feedback
The training started at 09:00 AM with a welcome note from Mrs.Farhiyo Osman who was the facilitator for the day, she welcome everybody to the meeting and asked one of the Sheikh to lead the participants in a word of prayer and a sermon from Quran.
He was followed by Mr.Abdihakim Ahmed-PSA’s program coordinator who asked all the participants to introduce themselves; he also outlined the expectations, objectivesand the general overview of the meeting, he categorically thanked the MOH technical team, PSA staff, IDP committee, local authorities and other stakeholders for supporting and playing their part in the implementation of the IYCF project in its first-halve phase. He urged all the participants to freely share the views about the project and how to improve and enhance it in the next phase.
The second guest to address the participants wasMr. Said, who is Bari region MOH coordinator; he thanked the organizers of the event for such a worthy course and reiterated that as the ministry they are ever ready to support such an important projects as IYCF, he also said review meetings are important because it gives a chance for improvement of the project on areas that have gaps and shortcomings, he also asked participants to air the views as much as possible.
He also added that MOH has been following on the project since its inception and he said all the MOH technical team from all the relevant departments were represented in the meeting.
The next to take to the podium was Mr. Abdihakim Ahmed, who is PSA’s Program Coordinator; he made two presentations to the participants on the IYCF project.
The second presentations was done by Dr. Abdirahman who is nutritionist with many years of experience on nutritional projects and programmes, he made an in-depth presentation on 3 areas of the right nutrition in the 1000 days between women’s pregnancy and child’s second birthday, current nutrition situation in Puntland and the update on the IYCF project.
General recommendations
- The presentation of next review meeting should be Somali so that community members can understand and contribute their comments.
- PSA should intensify the services in next three months before hot season (summer) start in Bossaso because as a norm some of the community members usually immigrate to other areas outside of Bossaso.
- Improve the coordination between the health facilities (MCHs, TSFP, OTP and SC) and the community based workers.
Question and Answers
The participants freely ask questions on various issues touching on the IYCF project and those responsible for the questions asked gave relevant answers and information to the satisfaction of all.
Overall comments and recommendations:
The training workshop went on well and concluded successfully, which was also evident from the participants’ feedback. The variety of excellent pool of experience from various individuals and other participants made the session participatory and brought diversity to the group work. The training venue and logistical support was up to the mark.
The number of participants to a manageable level is always a vital contributing factor in creating an environment conducive to learning. In this case the number was up to the standards for a training workshop, and also the spacious training venue and round table settings proved very effective in keeping the participants actively involved during the sessions and group work.
Concluding Remarks and Feedback:
The meeting ended at 12:00 PM with closing remarks from various participants followed by the concluding remarks of Mr. Abdihakim, PSA’s Program Coordinator. He thanked UNICEF and all the participants for their successful completion of the meeting and reiterated PSA’s commitment in ensuring the projects is implemented as planned and it achieves the desired goals and objectives.