“Change before you have to” Jack Welch
After more than 25 years of developing and operating projects in Eastern Africa, it is time for ARK to work differently. This move comes from “Lessons Learned” during the global COVID-19 pandemic lockdown that curtailed international travel.
Going forward, based on “lessons Learned”, ARK is shifting towards working through and strengthening our Africa-based program implementing partners. This will help promote effective response and timely delivery of services.
Over the past 2-years, our US staff has been busy engaging, training and information-sharing with our local African partners. This burst of proactive partner engagement is not short-lived; instead, we view the importance of strengthening our implementing partners as a unique opportunity to engage in continued active listening and dialogue and supporting their efforts. ARK Africa-based staff will continue to be an integral part of this process.
As a child-focused organization, ARK will continue to focus on 5 core program areas:
- Care for elderly caretakers of orphans and vulnerable children through our “Adopt-A-Grandma” initiative
- HIV/AIDS prevention outreach especially among the youth and elderly
- Access to Education and youth career development (school fees payments, mentorship, etc.)
- Early Child Development
- Women and youth empowerment
ARK presence in the communities we work is appreciated and our discourse with different stakeholder groups is vital to fortifying the trust on all parties involved.
Our local partners have done outstanding work through these unusually challenging times. Together, we hope to identify more innovative strategies and solutions where both sides win, based on mutual commitment and trust to achieve more and bolder results as a team. Many community-based groups are still recovering from the economic injury brought about as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our collaboration between the implementing teams, work closely together by leveraging our unique expertise and theirs to deliver the best services possible. Furthermore, a great deal of transparency, communication, and accountability is already woven into our relationships.
This collaboration prioritizes on groups that ARK has been working with for years focusing on 4 key areas:
- ARK will share knowledge we’ve gained by working in diverse community settings.
- ARK will offer financial support to our strategic implementing community-based groups aimed at providing much-needed support for building their internal capacities and infrastructure.
- Continue to recruit and train international volunteers who will travel to Africa to support our implementing partners.
- Regular assessments and progress evaluations.