Introduction
Urban Rural Development Organization-Uganda (URUDO-Uganda) has been an operational Community Based Organization (CBO) in Uganda since 2009. Over years, URUDO-Uganda has made a significant contribution to civil society and the communities it works with respect to promoting education of the vulnerable girls, vocational skills among the youth, environmental protection and conservation practices, water, sanitation and hygiene.
URUDO-Uganda was founded for the specific purpose of strengthening community resilience through biodiversity conservation, education and vocational skills development. URUDO-Uganda believes that empowering girls through education, youth vocational skills and conservation of nature are key to creating sustainable communities.
This strategy will therefore build upon URUDO-Uganda’s success in strengthening the practices so far disseminated and charting a way forward considering the trends in the overall set up in which they operate. This strategy recognizes the need for URUDO-Uganda to replicate this work and demonstrate its impact, knowledge and learning to support communities and create socio-economic change. URUDO-Uganda has recognized that in order to support communities to be responsible for their own development, she must deliver impact and ensure long term viability of interventions.
This strategy will lead to the growth of URUDO-Uganda’s staff, activities and impact. The Board, staff and supporters have embraced the need to transform URUDO-Uganda to achieve a higher level of performance in supporting communities if they in turn are to fulfill their role in the transformation of communities and society.
This strategy document has three aims:
To focus on what are the most important things to achieve our goals
To communicate our strategic decisions in a visual style to help engagement
To understand how the priorities will be achieved and how we will know we have been successful to support community management and development.
The key strategic steps are presented below:
Vision, Mission and Values
Drivers and Goals
Balanced Scorecard
Strategy Map
Scorecard
Implications
Vision, Mission and Core Values
URUDO-Uganda has established the three fundamental elements for a strategy: a vision, a mission and values. These three elements define the strategic space URUDO-Uganda works within.
Our vision is the positive long-term strategic outcome the organization seeks.
To achieve this vision URUDO-Uganda has a mission or core purpose- that is the way it achieves this vision.
Our vision and mission must be achieved according to our values or core principles or beliefs.
Our Vision is:
An ecologically sustainable environment offering good living conditions for the communities.
Our Mission is:
To strengthen community capacity to eradicate poverty through education, vocational skills development and dissemination of environmentally sound practices.
Our Values are: Transparency and Accountability. URUDO-Uganda ensures that its assets and resources are used exclusively for the achievement of its mission and consistent with its values. We are open in all our transactions and accountable for our expenditures and impact.
Concern for a healthy and clean environment. URUDO-Uganda promotes technologies that build upon indigenous knowledge and resources, while regenerating and protecting the environment, ensuring people’s health and safety.
Respect for the innate potential, dignity and ability of all people to remake their own lives. URUDO-Uganda works with respect for the beliefs and wisdom of all our partners and applies participatory approaches that build upon existing knowledge and skills, and ensure ownership and control of outputs remains with them.
Community participation and Learning: URUDO-Uganda ensures that community participates at all levels of the project cycle. She functions as a learning organization and lessons learnt are progressively documented and replicated into programme management.
Gender: URUDO-Uganda promotes gender equity and ensures that it is mainstreamed in all aspects of her work.
Drivers and Goals
URUDO-Uganda’s macro and micro environments have been reviewed and the issues prioritized in terms of the impact and risk to URUDO-Uganda. Through this process, we identified the key drivers our strategy must address. Drivers are the key factors and forces affecting our work.
These Drivers produce specific Goals to counter the implications and consequences for URUDO-Uganda . Our Goals articulate what we want to achieve over the next three years. They are broad and general to allow us flexibility in determining how we will achieve them.
Strategic Drivers
Strategic Goals
Community access to knowledge and appropriate technologies. Too frequently, communities do not have the knowledge, capacity or experience to undertake what is important.These are all fundamental to effective development.
Empowered communities responsible for their development agenda – URUDO-Uganda will play a key role in building capacity at all levels of society.
URUDO- Uganda's performance, reputation and space. URUDO-Uganda’s credibility is undermined if it cannot demonstrate that it is effective in its work and accountable to stakeholders. This is particularly important at this time of change.
Credible URUDO-Uganda’s support to communities to deliver a development agenda – URUDO-Uganda will play a key role through its community based programmes, networks and organizational development work to strengthen the capacity of communities to achieve socio-economic change.
Current legislation, regulatory frameworks, standards and codes for environmental protection do not adequately support the development of effective strategies and means to ensure an effective agent of social change.
An enabling environment for URUDO-Uganda. URUDO-Uganda will play a key role in legal reform and advocacy by strengthening collaboration and engagement with civil society and government.
The Balance Scorecard
The vision, mission, values and strategic goals are the foundations of the URUDO-Uganda strategy. These present the impact on society URUDO-Uganda aspires to achieve. We have identified how it will deliver the strategy by developing a balance scorecard.
“The Balanced Scorecard is a methodology that translates strategy into a framework to change behavior and improve performance”
The four main components of the Balanced Scorecard are:
Objectives:
What do you need to achieve?
Indicators:
How will we measure success?
Targets:
How much do we need to improve?
Initiatives:
What do we need to do to get there?
The objectives were identified using four perspectives. They are both internal and external to ensure the balance is maintained throughout the strategy and its implementation.
To identify the objectives, each perspective asks a specific question:
Beneficiaries: What must we achieve for our beneficiaries?
Internal Processes: What must we excel at in order to achieve for our beneficiaries?
Learning and Growth: Where do we need to invest in order to excel?
Resources: How will we ensure we are adequately resourced?
Strategy Map
The objectives are presented in the form of a strategy map below.
An ecologically sustainable environment offering good living conditions for the communities.
Credible URUDO-Uganda’s support to communities to deliver a development agenda
Effective Collaboration
Ensure efficient use of resources
Increase long term funding
Expertise in organizational development
Improve external communication
Improved capacity of communities
Improve learning
Effective advocates for change
Increase unrestricted income
Develop organizational capacities
Building networks
An Enabling environment for URUDO-Uganda
Empowered communities responsible for their development agenda
VisionGoals ObjectivesStrategy Map Narrative
Strategy objective
Description
Improved capacity of communities
URUDO-Uganda’s capacity building work is its core business and incorporates communities including farmers. However, the priority is to use demonstrable models of best practice and the impact of innovative and effective interventions on communities.
Effective collaborations
URUDO-Uganda’s strength lies in its extensive use of volunteers and an informal network of partners and peers. URUDO-Uganda will systematically develop initiatives and opportunities to unite communities for collective action. A key element will include encouraging community engagement in designing environmentally friendly practices.
Expertise in organizational development
URUDO-Uganda’s capacity building reputation is built upon its excellence in organizational development. It must continue to develop this offer and promote its expertise to ensure its place in the market is expanded whether for grant funded work or community owned resources. This is its basis for delivering quality services to communities.
Building networks
URUDO-Uganda will develop its own network as a forum for learning, discussion, information sharing as well as a platform for collaboration and engagement with civil society with URUDO-Uganda as a leading agent for strengthening service delivery.
Effective advocates for change
URUDO-Uganda is positioning herself as an advocate for positive change within communities and their relationships with other stakeholders. Recognizing this capacity and developing it is critical to the success in collaboration, governance and capacity building.
Improve learning
URUDO-Uganda’s wealth of expertise, knowledge and experience must be harnessed and shared. This is critical to ensuring URUDO-Uganda continues to provide added value and prove its impact to secure future funding.
Develop organizational capacities
URUDO-Uganda’s strategy requires the organization to maintain its current capacity and competencies but also to develop new ones. It will require developing the team's skills and ensuring the organization accesses the expertise and capacity it needs.
Improve external communications
URUDO-Uganda’s sustainability depends upon its reputation as leading agent for change in promoting biodiversity conservation. It is critical to promote its impact and the benefits it can provide. Its work must be recognized and respected nationally, regionally and internationally.
Increase long term funding
URUDO-Uganda’s sustainability depends on its ability to secure long term partnership funding that includes a reasonable overhead rate.
Increase unrestricted income
URUDO-Uganda must increase its own income from services or donations to alleviate overhead costs not covered by grant income.
Ensure efficient use of resources
URUDO-Uganda will continue to ensure all resources are maximized through their efficient allocation and control.
Scorecard
The Scorecard defines how each objective will be measured. Each objective has at least one indicator of success. URUDO’s scorecard is below.
Strategy objective
Indicators
Improved capacity of communities
% of communities improving performance by 25% according to their strategy
% of communities scoring 25% higher in URUDO OD assessments
Effective collaborations
Number of collaborative ventures UUDO actively engages with that achieve their goals
Number of networks/initiatives URUDO-Uganda engaged with
Expertise in organizational development
% increase for funding for URUDO-Uganda organizational development growth
Number of communities benefiting from URUDO-Uganda interventions
Building networks
Number of assistance, support and information through the Networks
Effective advocates for change
Number of changes (to policies) as a result of URUDO-Uganda work
Number of advocacy initiatives URUDO-Uganda is involved in
Improve learning
Number of changes made to our work and programme as a result of the M & E
Number of programme reviews undertaken
Develop organizational capacities
% of new organizational competencies achieved
% of staff enabled to deliver organizational competencies
Improve external communications
% increase in URUDO-Uganda brand awareness amongst civil society stakeholders
Number of external enquiries say on recipients of publications, media mentions
Increase long term funding
Number of grants over 2 years in duration with full cost recovery
Number of donors recognizing URUDO-Uganda as a strategic partner
Increase unrestricted income
% of overall budget from unrestricted funding
Number of new initiatives to raise income
Ensure efficient use of resources
% of expenditure on overhead costs
% of resources aligned to the strategy
Implications of the strategy
The implications of the strategy have been identified in key areas:
Staff and Culture
URUDO-Uganda will expand its current staff team for programme management and core functions.
URUDO-Uganda's structure will be aligned to the interventions during the strategic period that is environmental protection and climate change adaptation, sustainable agricultural production, micro-enterprise development, youth vocational training, and WASH.
The adoption of the strategy is expected to challenge existing norms and behaviors in the organization.
All staff will be required to adapt and identify changes they can make to improve performance.
Governance
Board development is an integral part of the organization’s evolution and continued success.
The Board will provide oversight to the strategic management of the organization and develop their role in achieving organizational and financial sustainability.
Funding
Currently, URUDO-Uganda’s focus is community contributions. During this strategic plan period, all funding streams will be developed and greater balance established between them. URUDO-Uganda is committed to developing partnerships and long term relationships with selected donors and development partners, to diversifying its donor base and to placing emphasis upon increasing its unrestricted income. A resource mobilization strategy/ plan will be developed and implemented to establish new income streams.
Core Programme Areas and strategic actions
Environmental protection and climate change adaptation
Tree planting
Environmental protection bye laws
Radio talk shows
Nursery bed establishments
Promotion of energy saving stoves
Sustainable agricultural production
Land use and management
Soil and water conservation
Trainings in select enterprises
Kitchen gardening
Promotion of agro forestry practices
Compost making
Micro-enterprise development
Develop model farmers for select enterprises
Youth vocational training
Attach out of school youth to practicing local artisans
Establish a vocational training center
WASH
Water harvesting
Sanitation and hygiene campaigns
Waste disposal management
Strategic action plans will be developed as per funding availability per year for each programme area.
Implementation work plan
To ensure effective implementation of this Strategic Plan, a set of actions have been identified.
Implementation work plan
Program level objectives
Objective
Activities
FY 2016
FY 2017
FY 2018
Institutional capacity development
To strengthen the institutional capacity of URUDO-Uganda to effectively and effectively manage projects.
Train leaders in good governance
Review and upgrade policy documents
Train Board and management in project cycle management
Train Board and management in project proposal writing and resource mobilization
Develop and implement a resource mobilization strategy and plan
Establish and maintain networks and partnerships
Hold AGMs
Conduct periodical monitoring and review
Micro-enterprise Development
To enhance the competitiveness and viability of micro-enterprises among target beneficiaries.
Identify pilot and model farmers
Promote undertaking of select enterprises
Train select farmers in entrepreneurship and business management skills
Establish market linkages
Youth vocational skills
To equip out of school youth with employable skills
Identify and screen out of school youth
Conduct talents and interests identification
Conduct market survey to identify profitable vocations
Conduct meetings to orient youths on TVET cope
Train youths in business skills and life skills
Conduct onsite orientation of local artisans on project scope and modules
Develop a curriculum for courses
Enroll youths to artisans
Set up a job and business mediation center
Water, sanitation and hygiene
To increase and improve access to safe and clean drinking water accompanied by hygiene promotion in communities
Promote appropriate technology for water catchment and protection
Protect natural water sources
Provide Information Education and Communication materials on hygiene promotion and sanitation
Training in community to improve understanding of disease transmission and value of hard ware’s like VIP-pit latrines, dying racks, kitchens and animal houses
Train community on appropriate waste disposal and management
Get sanitation and hygiene promotion models and competitions into households
Train households on water handling, water source maintenance
Empower local government leaders to disseminate safe water messages
Sensitizing on Public Health Act especially for local leaders and affinity groups
Environmental protection and climate change adaptation
To establish sustainable land use management practices that mitigate land degradation and green house gas emissions
Collect and provide early warning information to communities
Undertake tree planting exercises and campaigns
Capacity needs assessment towards low carbon and climate change resilient development
Establish community nurseries
Promote energy saving technologies
Development of a capacity development action plan
Development and implementation of a limited number of training and awareness raising activities for decision makers and general public on climate change risks and opportunities
Advocacy for development of environmental protection byelaws at community level
Sustainable agricultural production
To promote diversified and sustainable agricultural production
Network and partner with research organizations to uptake appropriate agro-technologies.
Establish demonstrations centers and multiplication sites
Promote undertaking of Agroforestry practices
Conduct learning visits
Train farmers in improved agricultural methods
Train farmers in kitchen gardening
Train farmers in organic agriculture
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