I – SCHOOL ACTIVITIES
I am really happy that we had been fully occupied during the past month. With the current pace I am confident that we’ll cover the essential of our course outline for the ongoing semester.
Human Resource Management
This has been the busiest subject so far. We have covered more topics in this subject than any other topic we are taking this month: In performance management the organisation aims at improving its effectiveness and ensuring consistency in achieving goals by assessing employees’ performance against expectations. While the topic on compensation and benefits: focuses on rewards provided to employees in return for their labor. Employee performance management has become very important in FORGE that we are now assessing our managers and vice versa. We held a presentation on recruitment and selection two weeks ago. We are also writing a test on February 1.
Gender Issues in NGOs
In this subject as well as the above one, there have been important topics covered: In Gender mainstreaming we discussed all the important approaches and resolutions from which have taken so far to ensure equal rights and opportunities for men and women. We came to agree that these approaches have borne good fruits but still more there a lot to be done to improve the lives of women. In women Empowerment, we mostly focused different areas where women should be given attention. These areas include among others health, education and training, land, info and media, etc. In this topic the most important thing I learned is the broad range of areas where women need to be empowered on and their relevance to improving equal access to opportunities for men and women. I am to present on gender mainstreaming in two weeks.
Research Methodology
The focus in this subject for the past month has been mainly on writing our proposals. The progress I am making is good. I am done with one proposal and I will be finishing with the other in two or three days. The submission date for the proposals is February 10.
Development Support Communication
The peak is showing up in this subject too. We have covered topics regarding social communication, and social marketing. While in other business marketing the aim is to promote the sale of a tangible product, social marketing focuses on the sale of an idea that will bring change to the community.
Performance Management and Evaluation
After the introduction and definitions of key terms we passed on to discussing the Logical Framework technique. It consists of an exercise of structuring the component elements of a project and analyzing the internal and coherence of the project.
I had a very good time when it came to the if/and/then matrix box. My concern was in understanding why should assumptions work positively and how to ensure they do so. At the end the professor told me that negative factors that can adversely affect the progress of the activities are foreseen before the project start and resolved. However, I still there would still be unexpected factors that ca occur at any time during the project undertaking. We are working on two assignments in this subject.
Case Study
According to the administration, we must have only four sessions with our professor and the rest should field work. So far we have covered all the four sessions and we are working on coming up with our own organisation, identifying some internal and external problems within it and solve them using the SWOT and PESTEL approaches respectively.
II- PERSONAL ACTIVITIES
The main personal activity had been watching the African Cup of Nations tournament.
III- MISCELLENEOUS
I am really pained to see Nick and Audrey leaving us soon. I heartedly hail the good job they have done for us. I wish them all the best wherever they will be; success and happiness be on their side.
