Togetthere from a Honduran point of view
Edgardo Chevez is the general director of the Honduran organization Organismo Cristiano de Desarrollo Integral de Honduras (OCDIH). The Dutch Dirkje Jansen worked for this organization as a Young Professional. Mr. Chevez describes his experiences with Togetthere.
How did having a Young Professional benefit your organization?
Dirkje Jansen did a great deal of work. For example:
- Establishing the communication department
- Setting up and strengthening an institutional communication team (photos, videos, document design, e-mail etc.)
- Developing institutional communication plans, both internal and external ones
- Strengthening the institutional image (creating formats for presentations, documents, logos etc.)
- Developing a proposal and strategy for setting up a network of communication officers
- Designing a website and intranet
- Improving internal communication through setting up an e-mail server for OCDIH, opening accounts for every employee and every department, further developing the staff's knowledge of dealing with e-mails
- Designing and developing internal and external bulletins (news, events, articles about content, emergency messages etc.)
- Designing and implementing a campaign about the food crisis and the importance of local production
Did your organizational continue to benefit from the work of the Young Professional after she left?
Yes. The team she left had become stronger in terms of their internal and external capacities and knowledge. The team can independently maintain the website, take care of the institutional image, compile bulletins, use e-mail services and the intranet, design documents etc.
Furthermore, we have various tools and instruments to communicate with one another more efficiently and to share our knowledge with the target group, other people and organizations.
Are the Young Professionals sufficiently competent for working in a different country?
We believe that the Young Professionals have all the capacities they need (knowledge, creativity and methodology) for working in a different country. Note that in the beginning there may be a language barrier.
How did you experience the collaboration with Togetthere?
This experience with ICCO was a very valuable one. The project reinforced our institutional capacities with respect to crucial themes, and thus improved the functioning of the organization. We were offered tools, methods and new working methods, focusing on sustainability and empowerment of this knowledge for our organization.
Please click here to read Dirkje Jansen's own experiences.
