Gaborone, Botswana - 06 July 2018: As part of ensuring the effectiveness of delivering services in Botswana, the World Health Organisation country office has undertaken a workshop to heed the clarion call by the Regional Director, Dr Matshediso Moeti, to actively mobilize resources. This came in the wake of the need for resources being availed via the regional office not being sufficient to meeting the operations and effectively supporting the country office in critical areas of need. The Botswana country office is one of those in the region which has been selected for piloting the innovative and newly established Programme Management Office (PMO) mechanism. The identified PMO officer, Dr Satya Lenka, will also be extending support to South Africa, Lesotho and eSwatini (formerly Swaziland). During the period 2nd to 6th July, 2018, the PMO officer visited the Botswana country office to train staff on resource mobilization and quality results reporting.

The areas covered in the training included principles of resource mobilization and partnerships, donor profiling tools, preparing case for support, template and guidance for proposal writing, donor reporting, and identifying different platforms for partner engagement. The participants learnt some practical skills for preparing case for support, with examples from other organisations.  A resource mobilisation action plan was developed during the workshop and the resource mobilisation focal person was also identified. The sessions on quality results reporting covered the tips for results reporting with careful balance between contribution and attribution. The step by step process of reporting in the WHO’s Global Management System (GSM) was also demonstrated.

The workshop also took advantage of the PMO officer’s visit to the country to learn on the tools that can be employed in undertaking the Country Cooperation Strategy (CCS) review. The current CCS for Botswana (2014 – 2020) is due for review and for alignment with the Thirteenth General Programme of Work (GPW13), recently adopted during the 71st World Health Assembly, held in May 2018.