Aide et Action International
On Thursday 2 December 2021, the Yampukri centre in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, hosted a workshop to share and validate the 2021-2025 strategic plan and the Impact Community programme for the Sahel region (Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger). The opening ceremony was chaired by the Secretary General of Burkina Faso's Ministry of Education, Literacy and the Promotion of National Languages (MENAPLN). Following discussions with participants from the government and NGOs, the strategic plan for the Sahel region was amended and validated.
There's an old adage: "If you want to go far, go far enough". Aide et Action has understood this. To increase the impact of its work in favour of vulnerable and marginalised groups, in 2020, Aide et Action drew up a strategy document for its work up to 2029, based on three complementary pillars:
- action aimed at vulnerable and marginalised groups and educational players through grassroots projects;
- education for citizenship, peace and sustainable development; raising awareness; and mobilising citizens and civil society;
- lobbying institutions and public authorities.
In order to make these guidelines operational, priority areas for action have been identified for the period 2020 to 2024. These are: early childhood care and education (ECCE), access to and quality of education at primary and secondary levels, and lifelong education and vocational training.
Once the guidelines and priorities had been defined, it was up to each territory to contextualise them, taking into account the achievements and lessons learned from the interventions of the last three years. The Sahel Territory, made up of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, began this process in July 2021 in Bamako, Mali, by consulting institutional partners, associations and local authorities and, above all, by taking into account the priorities of governments, local authorities and communities in terms of educational supply and demand.
While the Bamako workshop produced the draft of the Strategic Plan, the Ouagadougou workshop was intended to amend and validate it. For this stage, which is just as important as the previous one, Aide et Action wanted to have a cross-section of the different actors involved in the field of education. Thus, the Ministry of National Education, Literacy and the Promotion of National Languages, local authorities, international and national NGOs were invited to the sharing and validation workshop.
For the Secretary General of MENAPLN, "It is not very often that we have this kind of strategic planning framework in the NGO world, bringing together all the stakeholders to agree on common directions and actions in the education sector. I would like to thank the NGO Aide Et Action International for this participatory approach, which is helping to strengthen the partnership between NGOs and States, and between NGOs themselves, as part of the search for synergy so much advocated by all development and humanitarian organisations". The Secretary General also noted the relevance of Aide et Action International's choices in the context of the Sahel by deciding to make the promotion of peace, social cohesion and sustainable development the transversal spearhead of its educational action.
The Coordinator of the Sahel Territory, Birama Coulibaly, in his welcome address to participants, recalled the highlights of the process of drawing up the Strategic Plan. And the International Director of Research and Innovation, Mahfou Diouf, set out the global context that led to the choice of a zone of concentration for interventions and a five-year timeframe for greater impact.
At the end of the opening ceremony, the Sahel Territory Coordinator shared the document. This presentation session was followed by enriching exchanges with the participants. The approach and content of the document were very well received. Aide et Action's strategic orientations and priorities are consistent with public education policies. The MENAPLN representatives wished that the current curricular reforms and the National Strategy for the Accelerated Development of Preschool Education (SNDAEP) 2021-2025 validated in March 2021 be taken into account. Partner NGOs welcomed Aide et Action's initiative and expressed their willingness to share tools validated by MENAPLN and, above all, to build partnerships. At the end of the discussions, the Sahel Territory Strategic Plan was validated by the participants.
