National Director's Speech
Restored relationships
Restored Relationships
Dear Colleagues and Friends,
Let me take this opportunity to express my heartfelt gratitude for warmly welcoming me and my family into the family of World Vision Lesotho. I have met some of you in your various capacities at the national office and am looking forward to meeting the rest of the family in the ADPs.
FY 14 has been a year of leadership transition and I want to take this opportunity to thank ‘Me’ Mafupu for leading the team effectively for the past 7 months. I celebrate each of you for your immense contribution to the well-being of children.
I also want to extend belated New Year greetings as we begin our new Fiscal Year 2015. The partnership verse for FY 15 is "Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you." -Ephesians 4:32.
The Annual Prayer Day which is celebrated globally in World Vision provides us an opportunity to rededicate ourselves to the divine element of our vocation.
An expanded one day SLT meeting was held to deliberate on World Vision Lesotho (WVL) National Office (NO) FY15 Annual Operating Plans (AOP), and we plan to:
- Develop new National Office Strategy reflecting regional priorities and National Office game changers as well as taking into account the global mega-trends and local trends.
- Increase in grant acquisition and management of diversified resources
- Effective implementation of WV systems (Horizon, Single Step, Leap 3, Programme Capability and Performance Review, Process Improvement) to enhance programming effectiveness and efficiency at the National and ADP levels.
- Strengthening the National Office Systems, processes and structures for effective roll out of LEAP 3
- Enhance Global National Office Dashboard and Programme Capability and Performance Review ratings to ensure programming effectiveness and efficiency
- Increase number of functional partnerships e.g with the Church to contribute to spiritual nurture and well-being of children.
- Develop comprehensive staff competencies capacity building plan
- Enhance WV branding /profile both internally and externally.
WVL is the first National Office from Southern Africa Region (SAR) which started to conduct the DME competency assessment at all levels. The DME Capacity building approach will be used as an overall guide for strengthening DME under LEAP 3.0. The DME plan/strategy framework looked at 3 pillars;
- People/teams,
- Processes, and
- Systems/structures.
The DME competency assessment and the reflection meeting was completed successfully through the facilitation of WVUS and SARO. The developed DME capacity building plan will be implemented in the coming two years and will be a key driver for improved NO program capability, aligning with both the Regional & National Offices' strategies for quality programming.
Colleagues, this is the 6th week of FY 15. I urge you to begin implementation in earnest. Do not wait until the second quarter when we are likely to experience some delay due to unforeseen circumstances e.g the upcoming general elections.
By God’s grace we now have the necessary resources and we need to use every opportunity to implement our plans. Remember to use the tools that have been developed to monitor your work every month. Develop your monitoring skills and ensure you check the work of staff to confirm that quality work is being done and any issue or delay is identified early.
I am grateful to God for each one of you. I feel blessed and privileged to work in an environment where Christ is preached and where people daily desire to please the Lord. This is what I cherish and this is what I love about working in World Vision. It is a blessing.
In World Vision, God has provided us a safe environment to grow in our faith. Take advantage of the weekly and daily opportunities provided to pray, study the Word of God and grow stronger together in the journey of faith. We need each other. Our Statement of Faith stresses the importance of unity. No matter what denomination we come from, we are one in God. There is room for varied expressions of faith.
Integration is essential if we are to realize transformational development for it our mode of operation; it is how we deliver our services. Whenever we plan or write proposals we need to emphasize that our programs are managed and executed under one management. If we are not intentional in our efforts to integrate, we can easily drift back towards a ‘silo mentality’ and overlook the contribution of other sectors and programs.
Interventions that we propose to improve child well-being should demonstrate integration at all stages of the project. Integration also applies at the National Office. WVL is an integrated national office. We are one entity and deliver one message not competing messages and programs.
In our plans let us remember that our goal is to empower others. We are facilitators. In World Vision we don’t encourage hand-outs which may create dependency. We are committed to empower people. If people can work, encourage them to invest in their future.
Our development approach stresses the importance of working effectively to engage children, communities and local partners to bring long term sustainable change.
As you are aware, in the past the SLT has observed that we have consistently under-achieved in effective execution of our annual plans and utilization of budgets.
I am grateful that the team has been working on the mission impossible targets to help the office arrive at a workable solution to consistent under-achievement. And, I am encouraged to note that the actions recommended to improve our performance are already yielding results by the end of FY14 since spending was at USD 20, 384, 859.28 out of a total budget of USD 23, 307, 298.00 giving us a total of 87% Burn rate. This shows a 2% improvement from FY13's Burn rate of 85%.
Thank you to all who have supported the process. Let’s remember that at the end of the day it is not only about utilizing the money well but achieving impact on child well-being targets. It is only when we are able to achieve impact on child well-being that we can be proud of what we do.
My prayer in FY 15 is that you may experience God’s presence, love and hope throughout the year.
With God all things are possible. (Philippians 4:13)