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Meeting report
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Introduction and Objectives:
The meeting opened with a prayer. The chair welcomed and thanked all present for their attendance at this meeting. Participants gave brief introductions and their expectations for the meeting.
Ms Sue Mbaya, the Executive Director of SARPN, gave an overview of SARPN as a non-profit organisation that promotes debate and knowledge sharing on poverty reduction processes and experiences in Southern Africa. SARPN aims to contribute towards effective reduction of poverty in the countries of SADC through creating platforms for effective pro-poor policy, strategy and practice. SARPN achieves this goal through widening participation, bringing people together across the region to exchange ideas, and disseminating information to deepen understandings of poverty issues and improve policy and practice. It was noted that this particular discussion falls under the Social Dimensions Programme headed by Alfred Hamadziripi.
Ms Mbaya highlighted that there is a false dichotomy between policy and practice and emphasised that rather we should be engaged in both activities. This is the reason why SARPN has come with this initiative; to encourage FBO's to do both.
Expected Outcomes of this meeting:
Ms Mbaya emphasised that it is the hope of the organisers that participants leave this roundtable with a more passionate desire for engagement in policy process. The choice of MDGs as a starting point was deliberate because they are an internationally agreed framework with buy-in and commitment at international level, there are resources available and this makes them an easy target. MDGs also represent the closest thing we have as a framework for human security, which is encompassing and multi-sectoral. As such we want to discuss to what extent MDGs have been localised by our national and local governments, and to what extent your institutions are speaking to the targets.
The meeting clarified that SARPN works with a broad range of actors (international, regional and national) in different capacities. Of these only 20% of partnerships end in joint activities, others remain at the phase of information sharing.
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- 57Kb < 1min (8 pages)
