Forum with InteRed

If there was one important activity of the project that highlighted the first week of September 2007, it would be the Forum with InteRed.

Held on September 4 in San Francisco, Agusan del Sur, the forum, for the first time in the brief history of the project, brought the Executive Directors of 3 of the 4 Implementing NGO Partners of the project, the Pointpersons, the Community Organizers, the PMO staff, the PhilDHRRA-Mindanao Chairperson & the Regional Coordinator, as well as the Personal-In-Sede of the project Ms. Aitziber Barrueta of InteRed together in one activity.

The forum, which tackled the status and evolving outcome of the project design review, brought to the fore the result and important findings of the Focus Group Discussion and the Baseline Survey and how they inform the draft modified project design. Suffice it to say, that the outcome of the 2 research studies reaffirmed the results of the community consultations and research conducted by PhilDHRRA in 2006, which informed the original design of the project. Subsequent to the presentation of the research studies, some minor additions and substractions, here and there, in the original logframe were made and the budget recalibrated.

As a culminating activity of the forum, the EDs met up with Aitzi as well as the chairperson of PhilDHRRA-Mindanao, the Regional Coordinator and the Project Manager to discuss and resolve partnership and management concerns.

What is up next? It would be the finalization of the agreements arrived at the forum, the polishing of the proposed modification, and then the submission of the proposed modification to AECI courtesy of InteRed. Barring any extraneous problems and on the assumption that AECI would subsequently approve our proposal, we could expect the recalibrated logframe and budget to take effect in the last quarter of 2007. In the meantime, let us keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best.