On Friday 23 January 2015, the South African and Liberian Making All Voices Count partners held their first joint community of practice meeting. This meeting provided a platform for learning and sharing through which all partners could update each other on their projects and share ideas on strengthening them as well as their future community of practice meetings. Within the meeting, partners from both countries had the opportunity to recap last year’s community of practice activities, discuss the lessons learnt by looking at what worked best and what didn’t in the facilitating of the meetings and finally how to further improve these engagements.
The Liberian partners expressed how the Ebola outbreak posed a huge challenge in some of their project activities, but that this did not deter them from their work as they were able to build strong relationships with government as well as the business sector. Both partners emphasized the importance of working towards common objectives and engaging in a process of critical reflection within the meetings. The sharing of resources in the facilitation of CoP engagements in both Liberia and SA came up as one of the strongest incentives for partner participation as this would encourage continuous engagement.
The community of practice meetings have provided an opportunity for building and strengthening partnerships and we are looking forward to more of the meetings throughout the year 2015.