Uganda Youth and Adolescents Health Forum (UYAHF) held its four-day annual team and capacity building retreat for staff on key programmatic skills, financial management, and 2022 work planning in Kalangala District.
The Four-day workshop was attended by 23 UYAHF staff including youth champions and was aimed at strengthening team coordination and building their capacity in effective communication and documentation, Project planning and management, resource mobilization, and financial management for them to meaningfully advocate for adolescents and youth sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR).
Understanding the mandate of UYAHF was one of the sessions during the workshop whose facilitator was UYAHF’s Team Leader, Patrick Mwesigye. His presentation was centered on; UYAHF’s Goal, vision, and Mission, UYAHF’s core values, the role of staff in contributing to the organization’s vision and mission, UYAHF policies like the HR and code of conduct, PSEA among others.
Mr. Aweno Norman, the UYAHF M&E person facilitated the session on developing the 2022 work plan, while Grace Leah Okecho, the Human resource parson led the review of the Human Resource Manual, and Mrs. Courtney price, the UYAHF project lead person facilitated the review of the PSEA policy among others.
The retreat also provided a platform for UYAHF staff to review their performance by sharing their annual reports and progress for the year 2021. The staff also actively participated in sharing their work experiences and lessons learned, challenges encountered; as well as best practices to guide improvement in certain areas.
Teamwork is one of the core values at UYAHF with an overall aim of upholding the spirit of UYAHFISM and so the team also had some team building activities which all aimed at embracing teamwork, strengthening coordination, building trust among team members, effective communication, and being competent individual (team) through persistence and perseverance.
Through the capacity building sessions on basics of project management, effective communication and documentation, resource mobilizations, and financial management; the facilitators stressed the importance of; Accuracy and quality in communication and documentation, Developing a communications plan and effective use of the media, understanding the basics of being a good project manager, making better use and maximizing existing resources, adapting to the culture of mobilizing resources to ensure the sustainability of the organizational work was covered.
In action planning, the staff pledged to improve on their communication and documentation strategies by practicing the lessons learned.
The participants were impressed by the retreat considering the choice of the venue and the socialization spirit and they rated the outreach highest in attaining its intended objectives.