
Marist District of West Africa
Seventeen Marist Brothers and Lay from the five countries that make up the Marist District of West Africa attended the second workshop on Sustainability project of the Marist Mission in Africa and Asia at Kwahu-Pesease in Ghana from February 20-24, 2017.
The objective of this project is to promote economic autonomy and sustainability of the Marist Mission in Africa and Asia through an effective, transparent, and participatory strategic and pastoral planning.
The purpose of this workshop was to give continuity to the project and to experiment the strategic planning tools. The first day started well with a word of welcome from Br Francis Lukong, followed by self-introduction of the participants and a quick history of the sustainability project programme.
After this, the two resource persons, Br. Jorge Gaio and Alexandra Rosa from Brazil, informed the participants that matrices 1-7 were developed as tools for diagnosing problems and 8 -11 for solving them.
Following this explanation, the participants were reminded that matrices 1-7 are called the Mission, SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses Opportunities, Threats), Dream, Position, Blue, Model and Sustainability respectively. In the course of the workshop they learned about matrix 8, 9, 10 and 11 called Focus, Objectives, SWOT and Action respectively. The learning methods adopted included watching motivation video clips with sub-titles, explanations, and working in groups.
Each day the participants worked for six and half hours in four sessions.
The atmosphere was conducive and work sessions were lively and enjoyable.
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