NN41, December 2008
The New Politics of Partnership: Peril or Promise?
NORRAG?s Annual Strategy Meeting, 2008: A Summary and a Look at Membership
By Robert Palmer, NORRAG, Amman
Email: rob.palmer@norrag.orgNORRAG Strategy Meeting>/b>
A meeting of the NORRAG Strategy Group took place on 6th October 2008, during which the activities and outcomes of the last funding phase (2004-2008) as well as future plans, were discussed. Over this period NORRAG has been supported by DFID, SDC and also through in-kind support from NUFFIC (since 2006). All three of these agencies have recently agreed in principle to support NORRAG for the 2009-2012 phase.
The 2004-2008 phase
Over the last almost five years, NORRAG has deliberately sought to innovate in respect of the global access to NORRAG NEWS (NN) & NORRAG membership, its survey knowledge of its own constituency, its choice of NORRAG NEWS (NN) topics & spread of authorship of contributions, its targeted dissemination through policy briefs, a user friendly website and national cluster meetings (during 2008). Particularly since 2006, NORRAG?s new Strategy Group has strongly encouraged the exploration of these new modalities, constituencies and initiatives. However, these innovations take place against the background of strong confirmation that the basic formula of NORRAG NEWS, which is rapid, critical appraisal of policies in international education and training, and especially in the sphere of development cooperation, has been confirmed over these five years, and should be sustained. The regular production of NORRAG NEWS has continued to be the centre piece of NORRAG.
The key features of the 2004-2008 period have been: mastering many of the challenges of ?going virtual? (see NN30); changing from a small NGO network to a project with global impact; dramatically changing NN?s web design and presence from being password-protected to being accessible by Google; translating the NN policy summaries into six languages, including Chinese; developing the leadership structure so that dynamic younger Francophone and Anglophone individuals participate in all the NN and NORRAG initiatives.
The impact of these strategies is evident; there has been a 100% expansion of countries with NORRAG members, and an increase of individual membership by almost 6 times. Interestingly, this has been achieved in ways that have privileged developing countries.
It should be noted that since back issues of NN can be consulted online without registering, the numbers of registered members are likely to be a large underestimate of the total numbers accessing NORRAG NEWS. For example, on average the norrag.org site receives some 500 visitors per day.
A note by Stephanie Langstaff on who is reading NORRAG NEWS in French
Out of 2,400 NORRAG members (as of 1st December 2008), approximately eighteen percent are based in countries where French is an official language. Most of them are from Switzerland and France, where there are 146 and 100 members, respectively. The membership in Francophone countries of Sub-Saharan Africa remains sparse, though NORRAG intends to intensify its relationship with educational networks in this region next year.
Until 2007, a special issue of NN in French was made out of several NN issues. Unfortunately, the implication was that Francophone readers had to wait some time before having the French version of NN released. To develop access to the contents of NN more rapidly, each issue of NORRAG NEWS has been translated into French since NN36, in a slightly shorter version.
French issues of NN are very popular according to the large number of issues which have been downloaded this year. For instance, the issue of NN of Best Practice (n°39) has been downloaded 645 times up to now, while NN38 on TVET, NN37 on Poverty and NN36 on the Development Year 2005 have been downloaded 900 times on average.
Full contents of NORRAG NEWS 41.
Download the full issue of NORRAG NEWS 41 in pdf.