Organisational Development
Saraco aligns with clients' expectations and needs and interests to ensure that services and products are acceptable, affordable, available for all staff members and of quality.
Guiding an organisation to integrate human rights and gender equality into its everyday life, always begins with assessing the current approach, whether at the bilateral or multilateral level.
A tailored program of meetings with staff, focus groups, interviews and surveys yields a needs assessment for building capacities.
Enacting the changes to mainstream gender and apply a human rights-based approach takes time – and is worth every effort.
Integrating a human rights-based approach in procedures and processes has many advantages by allowing the organisation to enhancing institutional capacities of duty-bearers and strengthen their accountability to respect, protect and realise human rights.
We focus on:
Reaching for the higest attainable ambitions during organisational development journeys.
Supporting organisations to change their management and support processes, as well as their core business, towards a gender and human rights sensitive organisation, requires collective engagement, top-down and vice versa; this cannot go without a sound organisational culture switch.
This often involves reminding them of their commitments at national and international level, particularly when it comes to the respect of the international human rights conventions their country ratified.
Excelling individual capacities by empowering staff of organisations as right-holders and strengthen their knowledge, skills and capacities to enjoy their rights and enabling them to empower the target groups they collaborate with.Saraco assists organisations in making a difference for rights-holders, through anticipating the impact that the organisation can make by protecting and defending the rights of all individuals, in all their diversity.
While applying a gender-responsible human rights-based approach to organisational development, Saraco focuses on priorities for rights-holders by recognising who is (at risk of) being left behind and who the organisation wants to support. Our organisational development plans target which capabilities to enhance in order to support duty-bearers to take on board the rights of the rights-holders. We assess who are the most strategic potential allies to team up with to increase effectiveness of any intended change process.
Good practices
Supporting the General Directorate for Prison Administration and Reintegration (2018):
In a project financed by the UNDP, Saraco conducted an assessment of the needs for capacity building of the staff to integrate gender and human rights perspectives into their daily work. Based on a sound gender analysis, focus groups and individual meeting with prisoners and their guards, Saraco developed an Action Plan.
Recently, Khadija Assari was asked to implement a specific set of recommendations improving the management of human resources, creating better work/life balances for prison staff. Additionally, Saraco was involved in implementing the training programmes to enhance capacities to deal with conflict and crisis situations. Saraco implements its own recommendations, showcasing the importance of tailor-made support, one of Saraco’s basic principles.
Training UNDP staff and Gender Focal Points of all ministries in the DRC (2018):
In line with the recommendations of a gender audit at national level, Saraco was contracted to train UNDP staff members (management, programme managers and technical assistants, of the UNDP office in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This training addressed their accountability and gender responsive leadership to integrate gender into the cooperation cycle.
The training also addressed the national gender machinery, by providing a workshop for all Gender Focal Points (56) in DRC. The training included five modules, of which one practical, allowing participants to develop their own action plan to improve the integration of gender equality and human rights into their own work. At the final ceremony, the Ministry in charge of gender equality congratulated each participant, while distributing the certificates. It showed engagement and accountability.
