A strong strategic plan is an important factor for success for any organisation, and organisations active in the field of Development through Football are no exception. With this in mind, the latest edition of the adidas Exchange Programme brought together 18 organisations from across East Africa for a three day workshop in Nairobi on strategic planning.

The adidas Exchange Programme aims to provide organisations active in development through football with a unique opportunity to exchange and develop key expertise and capacities that are vital for an effective programme delivery and their overall operations. The adidas Exchange Programme is part of the FIFA Partners’ Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Programme and Football for Hope, a major component of FIFA’s CSR activities.

The streetfootballworld network member Mathare Youth Sports Association hosted the workshop at their headquarters, site of the Mathare Football for Hope Centre – the perfect setting to bring together organisations with a passion for football and a desire to inspire change. The participating organisations came from Ethiopia, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Sudan, Uganda and Kenya.

“Strategic planning made easy and digestable”
‘What do we care about? What do we want to change? And how do we go about this?’ These and other questions guided the participants through the three days, as they worked on creating a strategic plan for a mock development through football organisation, dreamed up by facilitator Sarah Forde. After lots of group discussions, external and internal stakeholder reviews and some unavoidable jargon, the group came up with what was perhaps the world’s fastest strategic plan. The idea behind the process is that the participants can now take these skills home with them and implement them in their own organisations without relying on external experts. As Fatuma Adbulkadir Adan, Executive Director of one of streetfootballworld’s newest members Horn of Africa Development Initiative, reflected the workshop: “Strategic planning is core to any organisation but can often be long and boring. This workshop made it seem easy and digestable and it will be very useful as we develop our annual plan for 2012.”

Passing on the knowledge gained
The final day of the workshop also addressed the question: ‘What could we change as a group that we couldn’t change as individual organisation?’ The lively discussions that followed and the topics raised will form the basis for the next meeting of the group in early 2012 to develop a strategic plan for the region and agree on what they want to achieve a group – it’s an exciting task that everyone is looking forward to completing together.

While the members of the strategic planning team were testing their mental agility, coaches from each of the participating organisations were honing their evasive moves out on the Football for Hope Centre pitch. Delivered by Coerver Coaching, a global leader in professional skills coaching, coaches were put through an intensive three day programme to develop their skills and help them improve the coaching standards in their organisations. They are now tasked with passing on the knowledge gained in Nairobi to their fellow coaches back home.

After a very successful edition in Nairobi, the next adidas Exchange Programme is scheduled for the end of November in Cape Town.