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this page Enrolling to a Vision - Interview
Nikki Schaay – The POLICY Project South Africa country manager
I helped design the workshop programme for Track One – Anglican Communion representatives. I was also one of the team of facilitators that led the small group discussions and subsequently participated in the development of the Anglican toolkit, Planning our Response to HIV/AIDS – A Step By Step Guide to HIV/AIDS for the Anglican Communion (PDF Document 4.3MB), that guided the diocesan HIV/AIDS planning after the conference.
The All Africa Anglican Conference on HIV/AIDS was really well planned and orchestrated. A number of dignitaries were involved in the proceedings including the Deputy President of South Africa, the Honorable Jacob Zuma, who officially opened the conference; Ms Graça Machel; and significant church leaders.
For a process such as this to work, you can’t have a small group that says, “We’re going to write this plan in our back room and then give it to everyone to implement.” It was such a significant gathering of people from across Africa that the conference felt as though it had the weight of the continent behind it and everyone was witness to the commitments being made. I think that this was very symbolic and there was a clear sense that this was a gathering of the clan and a mustering of troops before going into battle. I think this is significant given the undertaking and shifts that we were hoping to facilitate.
There was also a lot of ritual at the conference and a strong spiritual dimension, which you don’t often associate with the process of strategic planning. The whole planning process was steeped in religious symbolism and practice. A member of the local clergy opened and closed all the proceedings with a prayer, and the commitments made at the end were blessed by the diocesan committee and, where possible, by the bishop. Having the full support of Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane was also very important. HIV/AIDS is his passion and he’s been very proactive in putting HIV/AIDS on the Anglican map – both in South African and across the whole of the continent.
Because the conference was so significant, the facilitation was planned down to the last detail and we spent a lot of time in pre-planning, working out how the two tracks could be optimally used. Reverend Canon Ted Karpf’s team dealt with the religious content, while the POLICY Project focused on the manual development and diocese planning with Track One – Anglican Communion representatives. We paid careful attention to all facets of the event – including ensuring that the facilitation teams were carefully chosen so that each group was balanced according to gender, race and HIV status.
The person driving a process such as this has to have passion and wisdom, and plenty of energy. In my experience, a planning process – and particularly one calling for some kind of transformation – has to be driven by someone with an absolute belief in and passion for what they are doing. In this particular case, the Archbishop asked the Reverend Canon Ted Karpf to facilitate the process. Ted has that kind of energy. He was the one who got in a car and went from one community to the next until all 22 had completed the local planning processes. You don’t find that in many public or private sector organisations! Instead, people tend to get a few representatives together and plan from the top. This process was done with absolute sensitivity and a great humbleness. We understood that the dioceses knew more than we did and could help us plan what we have today. This hands-on involvement demonstrates that you are walking through a process with people and that you’re not just sending them a manual to work through. Rather, you’re holding their hand as you go through the process with them.
The planning was a collaborative process with the communities as well. The bishops in each area were given an amount of money to bring relevant people to the meeting. So it was as though Ted was saying, “I’ll meet you halfway with the planning manual if you send me the people to work with.”
The content was also based on what communities had seen, heard and felt, so participants could dictate the kind of plan they needed based on their experiences in the six focus areas.
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