On Friday 22 July 2011, the secretariat of the resource centre network (RCN) from Burkina Faso organised a very special workshop for its members. 25 participants engaged in a very interactive programme looking back at seven years of history and perhaps several years of promises ahead?
Published on: 27/07/2011
On Friday 22 July 2011, the secretariat of the resource centre network (RCN) from Burkina Faso organised a very special workshop for its members. 25 participants engaged in a very interactive programme looking back at seven years of history and perhaps several years of promises ahead?
At the onset of the workshop, Jules Sow the RCN coordinator introduced the timeline of the network since its embryonic activities in 2005. The participants then indicated their critical moments during that timeline, with emphasis on the peer-training sessions, the capitalisation workshop and the report about ‘maitrise d’ouvrage communale’ that came out of it, the blog training and the production of the information bulletin Fas’Eau Nouvelles. Some pictures showing this timeline (in fragments – the original timeline was over 5 metres long) are available here.
The assistant coordinator, Valérie Sorgho-Koutou, introduced the activities carried out by the secrétariat permanent (currently hosted by CREPA Siège) since the last RCN meeting in 2010. These activities cover among others the organisation of a peer-training session on setting up a documentation centre, the training on the blog WASH Nouvelles Burkina Faso and regular updates on that blog (50 posts from 17 distinct contributors since March 2011), the process documentation of sector events, the follow-up sessions around the capitalisation study, the workshop that Valérie attended together with other RCN coordinators and the sector learning study carried out together with IRC.
This sector learning study was the next main block of the programme, with a quick peek at some results of the study – following a presentation (see below).
The discussion that unfolded emphasised the importance of mapping and coordinating the various platforms that exist around the WASH sector.
Finally, the end of the workshop was dedicated to developing a theory of change for the resource centre network. This is a particularly crucial exercise as funding by the Dutch capacity development organisation PSO will cease in 2012 and alternative strategies are being sought in the meantime. The exercise was not completed but initial reflections were gathered around three particular pillars for the RCN activities in the near future:
Some interviews crowned this very successful workshop which will be followed up in November to see where the RCN stands and what its options are for the future.
