Staff Retreat

To kick start the year’s activity, WILPF Nigeria had a one week staff retreat/ training from the 10th of January to 14th of January 2022.This has always been the tradition of the organization to have a staff retreat at the beginning of each year to plan for the remaining months of the year. The retreat was held towards strengthening capacities in delivering of programmatic activities for the year. The meeting further highlights the list of ongoing projects and designed proposed activities for the year with roles and responsibilities assigned to each team members. Additionally, the retreat was to serve as a system of reviewing and appraising staff activities.

Day 1, 10th January, 2022

On the first day of the retreat, the staff members started by cleaning the office, before commencing with the yearly organizational prayer. Further to this there was reflections and evaluations with lessons learnt from the previous year activities and ways/areas to improve on. We also had administrative and organizational plan for the year (program and financials), the organizational goals and communication strategy to be used for the year. The communication strategy include both within the staff (internal memo) and while dealing with stakeholders/funders. It was an interactive session as each staff members was given the opportunity to contribute to the discussion while making plans for a better year.

The second section was the praise and worship session which had members of JO and JOF participating. Further to the praise session, the Country Director of WILPF Nigeria gave a short exhortation on key 7 steps drawing from the bible to help staffmembers be better productive and also achieve the organizations goal. The first was on

Further to the exhortation, prayers were taken by the Country Director which brought the fasting to an end with meals and fruits provided by the Country Director. 

The third section was on WILPF Nigeria general work plan which was some hours after the breaking of fast. During the meeting, the program officer presented the scheduled line up of activities for the year with corrections made by the Country Director who later advices the team to update the annual work plan and draw their individual organization work plan from it. 

Day 2, 11th January, 2022

On the 11th of January, 2022 WILPF Nigeria had an intensive training with staff members of WILPF, JOF and JO at Fildema hotel, Enugu State. The training was facilitated by WILPF Nigeria Country Director with aims of building capacities of staff members in other to be able to implement effective programs.

The Country Director started by stating the key objectives for the training which are;

The training spanned through the importance of strategic planning and goals, organizations’ success policy, effective time management, financials for NGOs, documentation,understanding roles and responsibilities of each staff members, effective communication amongst others. The teams weretrained on the need to have a result based process as this affects the organizations policy in achieving its goal for the year. Building on the above, the Country Director explained the importance of having programs that create transformation and not just to run programs as a form of checklist ticking activities done and what’s remaining to do.

There was a  break out session where members of the team where split to work as a group and later present what was done by each group. The output of the training showed that each staff member had a better understanding on their roles and responsibilities, and better equipped on ways of designing strategic plans in programs.

Day 3, 12th January, 2022

The third day of the staff retreat was an appraisal section for each staff member. Each staff member was given an appraisal form to fill with another copy which will be used to appraise the staff by the Country Director. Upon filing each form the staff member had a one on one section with the Country Director. The staff appraisal was the last activity of the staff retreat thus bringing the retreat to an end.