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For our
advocacy activities to be effective, we establish links with
groups and organisations with similar interests. These links
are a form of partnerships, which we believe form effective
networking. Networks are the loosest forms of collaboration.
They function primarily on the basis of information exchanged
between organisations and institutionalise relations between
members, which is their primary benefit. We are assured that
our selected networks will strengthen a learning organisation,
which we strive to be, and perhaps the most important aspect
is the matter of mutual learning. We subscribe to Haverhort's
definition of networks which is, "Any group of
individuals and/or organisations who, on a voluntary basis,
exchange information and goods or implement joint activities
and organise themselves for that purpose in such a way that
individuals/ or organisations autonomy remains intact" (Haverhort
1993:9).
We
therefore accept networks that:
- Strengthen
links
- Provide
opportunity to share experiences
- Widen
the information base
- Achieve
various goals that individual Organisation cannot achieve
alone.
NGOs
tend to value their independence very highly and ZERO believes
as such. A network can be defined as, "Any group of
individuals and/or organisations who, on a voluntary basis,
exchange information and goods or implement joint activities
and organise themselves for that purpose in such a way that
individuals/ or organisations autonomy remains intact" (Haverhort
1993:9).
Recognising
the need to manage internal demands in response to external
networks, we have tried to put in place internal mechanism
that react wherever the external request/demand touches the
sphere of the organisation, a knowledgeable and empowered
organisation member processes the initiators needs and this
member becomes responsible for seeing the request through to
completion. Although at any given point in time some
portion of a spherical organisation’s resources are at work
on existing projects "inside" the sphere, many of
the organisations resources will be on the sphere's
"surface". Organisation members will be
interacting with clients, partners, potential partners and so
on. Opportunities and organisations can be no more effective
externally than they are internally - as this is reliant to
their ability to arrange and manage their internal resources
and determine the quality of their external relationships and
service.
We strive to be strong in partnership and networks management.
At network levels, capability and trust investments are made
on a wider scale. Some of these investments are in actual
dollars, technical expert exchange, other capacity development
and training and after partnership projects. We have
discovered through its experiences that investment in
capability and trust pay greater dividends than investments in
control.
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