---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2001 15:56:42 -0800
From: Charlotte Utting <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [wa-afr] FW: UPDATE: ADNA -- 01.24.01 meeting minutes
----------
From: [log in to unmask]
Organization: Africa Policy Information Center
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 12:36:30 -0500
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: UPDATE: ADNA -- 01.24.01 meeting minutes
Dear ADNA members,
Following find the notes from the special meeting of ADNA DC area
groups regarding increasing effectiveness of ADNA in shaping US
policy re: Africa. Many thanks to Kathy McNeely of Maryknoll for
preparing these notes.
Regards,
Vicki Ferguson
ADNA Communications Facilitator
ADNA Special Meeting
1/24/01
If one of the greatest forms of solidarity that we can accomplish is to
change the harmful existing policies and substitute those more
consistent with the priorities and needs of ordinary African citizens
working for economic, social and political justice, then policy
analysis and advocacy activities require a larger percentage of
ADNA resource allocation and a scaled-up approach. This is
especially crucial facing four years of what will be at best an
apathetic, and at worst a hostile new Administration and split
Congress when it comes to essential concerns of Africa.
Enhancing our network/collective effectiveness in advocacy can be
done on multiple levels. Following find the notes from our preliminary
discussion. Additional discussion time will be determined to
complete items carried forward, and to focus our attention on
specific goals and actions that can help us achieve greater political
success around our common agenda.
PRESENT: Vicki Ferguson, Clarissa Kayosa, Phil Reed, Paul
Olweny, Amanda Buehler, Salih Booker, Kathy McNeely, Leon
Spencer, Mark Brown, Marty Shupack, Thierry Ekon, Sue Schram,
Ray Almeida, Heather Nolen
Prior to this meeting, the three ADNA co-facilitators met and talked
about the facilitation of ADNA meetings in the DC area. They
divided up tasks and agreed to facilitate both the regular monthly
meetings and some activities and events between ADNA meetings.
They agreed that ADNA members should contribute to the
construction of the agenda.
Agenda
1) Enhancing DC meeting effectiveness and follow-through: already
begun, agenda extension and restructuring, emphasis on actionable
items, co-chair meetings prior and focus via chair role, immediate
communique after each meeting re: commitments and follow-up,
ADNA MEETING AGENDA: Clarissa will be the point person for
drafting the monhly Agenda
A. Working groups: (Trade, HIV-AIDS & Health care, West Africa,
Peace and Security and Sudan) will have a space on the agenda
each month to update ADNA members using the following template:
1-major developments in Africa
2-major developments in US policy
3-proposed action.
There will be some months when a working group will have little to
report and some months when they will have much more to report.
Co chairs will manage time.
B. Themes, issues, campaigns & countries:
From month to month ADNA members will want to be informed on
issues, campaigns, themes and countries of interest for which there
is no working group structure. We suggest that individual ADNA
members be identified to take responsibility to actively contact
Clarissa before the ADNA meetings asking for time on the Agenda
to update the group on the following campaigns:
debt
hunger
Stand with Africa
child soldiers
conflict diamonds
land mines
small arms
foreign aid
UN
It was suggested that we would have a somewhat standard agenda
for the ADNA meetings with the items to be treated in each monthly
meeting highlighted depending on which ones we are dealing with at
what particular time.
C. Guests
Has always been haphazard. We would always like to hear from
African visitors, and there are times of the year where we might be
proactive at inviting them (around IMF & WB meetings, around the
Interaction event, etc.) But otherwise, ADNA members should inform
Clarissa of visitors they might have in town. Hill staffers may be
another category of visitor when we are working with them on
particular legislation. Policy makers may be another category of
visitor to consider when the issue, campaign, etc. mandates close
collaboration, or discussion. To the extent possible all guests should
be quotable -- co chairs will inform the speaker that we would like to
share information they provide with our networks.
OTHER ISSUES RELATED TO MONTHLY MEETINGS:
From time to time ADNA might want to do an action or event as a
group, and co-facilitators will have to decide how to fit it into the
agenda. We propose that if there is something that we as ADNA are
asked to respond to (the National Summit as an example from last
year) that initially such a request would be made as a guest coming
to the group on the guest portion of our agenda.
We suggest that WORKING GROUPS submit a written summary 1
week prior to the ADNA meeting on the template they plan to present
especially if it requires action. Some ADNA member organizations
have a long consultation process to go through before they sign on
to anything, and having information ahead of time will help them be
able to sign on or respond in a well informed way at the ADNA
meeting. This summary would also help Chairs to collate all the
action items before the meetings a week in advance.
2) Enhancing member organizations' use of the communications
system (full list, wg short lists): we could consider dividing the full
list and making calls to enhance submissions for action items, wg
could develop some procedures for getting actionable items ready
for the full membership to engage with --
To improve communications a suggestion was made to include the
word "ADNA" in the subject line or to arrange for ADNA to be the
sender in all the communications to help make e-mail
communications clear which actions, events, updates sent around
by VICKI are ADNA's. Vicki will identify an option and report back.
3. RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT (multi-country updates, ADNA
contacts by state, ADNA contacts by country, revised version of
minutes tailored for public/web archive and overseas consumption -
summary or highlights newsletter approach):
MULTI-COUNTRY UPDATE
This was done on Ezekiel's initiative. He felt that we were spending
too much time in meetings with country updates so he started doing
that in writing for the list and sending them out ahead of time. Phil
Reed has volunteered to do these for the group. We suggested that
Phil do multi-country updates, and regional or sub-regional updates,
or issues and themes in an article form for public use. These
updates should also include "good news" pieces.
Member organizations should feel encouraged to submit background
information and useful items to Phil as editor of the update.
CONTACTS BY STATE:
Elmira Woods of InterAction has volunteered to coordinate this, but
wasn't present.
CONTACTS BY COUNTRY:
Clarissa Kayosa of CIP will coordinate this. Beverly will be traveling
the next 6 months so Clarissa needs a volunteer to help her with this.
She plans to come up with a survey for ADNA members on who
their contacts are on the African continent, as well as what they do,
and what issues they have expertise on. As this resource is
developed, we will need to design guidelines for its use as well as
ensure that all organizational entries in the resource get a copy.
MINUTES ON THE WEB: We decided not to put a revised version of
the minutes up on the web, but to include the ADNA letters and
statements as well as the country/issue updates on the web. Those
working on campaigns or issues are encouraged to send reports on
those themes to Phil for inclusion in the updates.
POLICY UPDATE: we also recognized that it might be important for
ADNA to track legislative and policy initiatives dealing with the issues
with which we are most interested. We encourage wg's and
campaigns to send these legislative and policy updates to Leon
Spencer at WOA so that they can be compiled in a broader report
to all ADNA members periodically.
a) investigate potential relationships with African colleague
organizations and networks via ADNA: identify through mapping
exercise, and then discuss with them what type of
relationship/exchange they would propose or find useful etc. This
will be possible later in the year.
We do receive some inquiries about how African organizations can
link to ADNA from the web site. Presently we are not yet capable of
responding as a network, but requests for information are farmed
out to different ADNA Organizations when they come in. Two
suggestion were given:
1- create a description of each ADNA member organization (AAI
has this info in their directory) for African Organizations that are
interested and allow them to contact organizations that most closely
relate to their issues of interest.
2- create a visitor's log for the web page so that later we can enter
the information of these inquiring groups onto a data base to follow-
up with them.
4) Strengthening structure, model, role, establishment, operations of
working groups (see above, #1)
This is as far as we got with the agenda at this meeting.
We decided to prioritize item #5 and #10 (below) for the February
meeting - since item 5 will be discussed at the Feb 6 ADNA meeting
when Ray and Bill give the congressional update, and then we might
want to spend some time on more crises issues.
We will postpone #6 for the March meeting;
#7 will wait until the April meeting and with the exception of deciding
on doing an event,
#9 will be postponed until we are clearer about where we are as
ADNA.
5) Planning DC-based direct advocacy with Congress, and
Administration offices, : discuss proposals for priority efforts in
short term beyond the CBC meeting and common message we
have already agreed to develop.
6) Enhancing nationwide grassroots advocacy through local
activities and with Congress and in the district offices, and
cabinet/Administration offices: include circulating info on those local
activities through the membership communications system, share
sample local actions which other local groups might wish to replicate
7) Enhancing participation of ADNA member organizations outside
of DC in ADNA decision-making, policy analysis and priority setting,
and action planning and implementation: propose an annual
meeting with an objective to gain greater participation and
engagement - important voices from Africa, analysis of current
situations, skills workshops
8) Improving relationships with other existing coalitions, networks,
or issue campaigns: liaison, outreach, assignments
9.) Engaging with missing constituencies- diversifying ADNA:
example, prioritize labor re: Africa, assign to do follow-up and see
where common ground for collaborative work lies
10) Discuss how to prioritize issues as ADNA? can we get all/ vast
majority of member orgs to agree on a short list of priorities for
policy advocacy and set some goals to accomplish in a 1-2 year
Congressional cycle?
Notes provided by-- Kathleen McNeely Maryknoll Office for Global
Concerns P.O. Box 29132 Washington DC 20017
phone202-832-1780
fax 202-832-5195
***
This message from Maryknoll is distributed through the Advocacy
Network for Africa (ADNA).
Vicki Lynn Ferguson
Advocacy Network for Africa
Communications Facilitator
c/o Africa Policy Information Center
110 Maryland Ave, NE #509
Washington, DC 20002
Ph: 202-546-7961
Fax: 202-546-1545
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Web: http://www.africapolicy.org/adna
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-~>
eGroups is now Yahoo! Groups
Click here for more details
http://click.egroups.com/1/11231/1/_/23029/_/981417369/
---------------------------------------------------------------------_->
Our next meeting is Wednesday, Feb 28, Safeco Center, E Main and 23rd, Seattle
7:00 PM WSAN business meeting
8:00 PM Program: TBA
We usually meet the last Wednesday of the month. To post a message: [log in to unmask] To subscribe sending a blank message to [log in to unmask] To unsubscribe send a blank message to [log in to unmask] For complete information on the Washington State Africa Network visit: www.ibike.org/africamatters
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L
Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html
You may also send subscription requests to [log in to unmask]
if you have problems accessing the web interface and remember to write your full name and e-mail address.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
