Volunteers Initiative Nepal (VIN) facilitated 10 years strategic planning workshop for two wards of Siddhicharan municipality and one ward of Chisankhugadi rural municipality of Okhaldhunga district of the Everest region. The five days (22nd to 26th November, 2020) strategic planning workshop was organized bringing an expert consultant. There were 35 participants representing local governments, political parties, social workers, school principals, social leaders, youth, women, farmers, Dalit etc.
Our focus is on developing capacity of local stakeholders to formulate short and long term plan. We started sessions with motivational games related to self-awareness and realizing their role for their community development. The contents of strategic planning workshop were: planning process, national plan and sustainable development goals, development trends in the local context, identification of problems and strategic issues, SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunities and threats) analysis, strategic planning framework -vision, mission, core values, goal, objectives, action plan – activities, timeframe, indicators and responsible people, resource identification, stakeholder’s analysis, log frame, monitoring & evaluation and budgeting.
We used participatory methodologies like presentations, group works, group presentations, games etc. to facilitate the sessions. Finally, we were able to produce a first draft template of the strategic plan of those three counties. To prepare a final strategic plan, we need further deeper researches to be conducted. We have therefore formed eight working committees and one monitoring and evaluation body. The eight working committees are: 1. Education, 2. Health, 3. Agriculture, forest & environment 4. Basic infrastructure 5. Social cultural & tourism 6. Human resource & employment 7. Economy 8. Disaster risk reduction & Management. Our team will give more training for these workings committees and facilitate whole process. By the end of Feb, 2021, we are hoping to have a complete product.
In Nepal after national revolution, development process is more decentralized and local governments are authorized to develop plan and implement for their communities. It seems there is lack of long term vision in the local leaders for the sustainable development. Political leaders are not skilled enough to formulate the long term plan in a participatory way. The development plan and its execution are far behind to meet the national goals.
Therefore, we organized five days strategic planning workshop to address the gap in developing visionary plan. The workshop supported local stakeholders to think out of box. This is also proved by the speech of one of the participants- ‘I found this workshop useful in making visionary plan. This has supported us in thinking a step ahead and organized our long term and short term plan. I would like to thank the organizer and facilitators for this wonderful workshop– Kedar Babu Basnet, ward president, Siddhicharan municipality, ward 1.
We were happy to learn that the initiative is very helpful for the local development. The mayor of Siddhicharan municipality and the Chief of Chishankhugadi rural municipality expressed their joys for being part of the process and committed for the successful implementation of the strategic planning workshop. We are grateful to both of the mayors for their presence in the closing ceremony. We would like to thank to all the participants for their active participation in the workshop. We are looking forward to see the final product and implement it for the positive transformation of the community.