The aim
British Council Scotland aim to deliver a programme linking Scotland, Jordan and Egypt.  There are a number of links – for example each country has faced issues with refugees/Asylum seekers and one group that has affected all three is the Iraqi refugee community.  Can Interaction have an impact in these three countries?  What are these countries doing that we could learn from and share?  Are the issues and solutions the same? 

The work we need you to do

British Council Scotland were keen to stress that the impact of Interaction can be felt in three distinct areas, Community, Organisational and Personal.  The purpose of our attendance at the meeting was to prove that Interaction can influence these areas and we succeeded in showing personal improvement but we lacked hard evidence to demonstrate our impact at Community and Organisational levels.  In order for us drive this and any future projects forward we need to provide solid evidence that we are change agents and that the Interaction community has made a positive impact on our communities and organisations.

We are working on this ourselves, but we also need your help as Interaction alumni – can you provide stories or summaries that show the impact that Interaction has had on your organisation or community and whether that impact would have happened if you hadn’t had the Interaction journey?  Things we want to you to tell us about might include, but are certainly not limited to:

1) Have you changed job or been given different responsibilities?

2) Have you saved, made or sourced new money or other resources?

3) Have you changed the way in which services are delivered?

4) Have the ways in which your organisation or communities plan for the future changed?

5) Have you been instrumental in changing policies?

6) Have your organisation or community taken on any new projects?

7) Have you formed new connections in your organisation or community?

8) Does your organisation or community have new capacities, capabilities or confidence?

9) Have you been able to support new initiatives?

10) Have you been able to support other emerging leaders?

No doubt you have also impacted on your organisations and communities in a host of other exciting and unpredictable ways, so go on, surprise us!
This will help us deliver a business case to potential partner organisations that wish to be involved in each of the three countries, and will help to make this a successful project.

In order that we make as strong a case as we can, it is important that as many of us as possible contribute to this exercise. It would be great (and even stronger evidence of the value of the programme) if we could get as close to a 100% response as possible.  In return, we will of course share what we find out with you all.

f you have those stories please send them to me by 30 November and together we’ll help build a case for Interaction to be delivered in Scotland, Egypt and Jordan.

And if you don’t have those stories then our challenge to you all is that we need to start making an impact in our own way.

Thanks again for your help.

David

Hello David,
It is great to hear from you about the progress you are making to assist the three countries. The status in those countries may be more than what has been set on TV.
I believe InterAction would help a lot there.
InterAction is registering impact at high speed. For example, in my area of work we are meeting with communities we visit during the exercise a year ago.
The unique character of my community here is that it happened to be a Pan African interaction. My friends come from Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and Gambia and all work in Southern Sudan with International NGOs.
I personally gained a lot of thanks and appreciation from my boss and secured an increment in my package and more professional responsibility in the new project supported by Japanese government in support to community based program through government.
Interaction is a tool and if combined with our own integrity and passion to do great things positively, it helps!!!
At this time of the year I am going to meet my in-country colleague tomorrow and on Friday will meet some guys involved in civil society promotion activities to discuss possibility of including InterAction tools in their future approaches for trainings.
As a personal initiative I have co-founded a CBO called;” Foundation for Education and Development’ which will start sponsoring more than 50 primary and senior secondary school students next year commencing from January 2008. The foundation is to Witness my Community Passion and leadership which is practical among the people involved.
I am now busy receiving volunteer contributors from US and Canada.
Thanks you all InterAction and the 3rd Group and facilitators who attended PAE in Mauritius.
Cheers and a happy New Year and X-Mas to You all!!
Puro

Thanks Puro 0 this is very helpful

I’m getting a very positive response.  If we can encourage others to post that would be great - we will share what we produce with you.  Alternatively, we have created an onlines survey at:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=zInzx0NqiLXZm8Ey80nN_2fw_3d_3d

(copy and paste in browser) - it only takes a few minutes.

Best wishes

David

Hi there

This thread has now finished and thanks to all who contributed online, via the forum, and offline - we got a fair few responses.

The result is a summary which has been produced to help sell future interaction programmes.

Because adding attachments doesn’t seem to work, in the post below is the summary, which I hope you find helpful.

Cheers

David

What Difference has InterAction made to Organisations and Communities?

This short paper summarises how the InterAction programme has enabled former participants to impact on their organisations and communities.

Key impacts are:

Organisations have recognised Interaction participants are doing better jobs – they have been promoted, have moved to more senior jobs in other organisations and to posts which they find personally more fulfilling. They have been involved in project work with senior managers and learned from secondments.

“I’ve been promoted within the organisation and am now a senior manager with divisional and corporate responsibilities. Without InterAction I would not have achieved promotion”.

Organisations plan more positively for the future – Interaction participants stress the successes they have achieved by asking positive questions in order to make positive change, and planning through dialogue.

“Our team now plans using Appreciative Inquiry – we look at what has worked, what we can learn from it, and how we can use this new knowledge to respond to the challenges of the future”.

Organisations make policy in more effective and collaborative ways – Participants have used methodologies derived from InterAction principles to inform the way policy is developed, including major public consultations to inform legislation. They have generated and used new evidence in ways which challenge received wisdom. Organisations have looked at and learned from cross-cultural dialogue about what works in different contexts.

“The consultation process was particularly informed by the Interaction process, leading to significant interactive events for over 1200 professionals and volunteers, and consistent, effective and challenging discussions which meant that a much wider range of comment was canvassed”.

Interaction has inspired and enabled a wealth of new projects and initiatives – in organisations and communities in the UK – but also making connections between communities which wouldn’t otherwise have been possible.

“I have introduced the main learning points from the InterAction programme in establishing a Youth Leadership Academy”.

Organisations and communities have benefited from support for leadership development in others – training courses run by participants now include aspects of transformative leadership drawn from InterAction. Participants are acting as mentors within their organisations. Both UK and African participants have enabled people in communities in the UK and other countries, including and well beyond Africa, to see themselves as leaders with the power to transform their communities. 

“Interaction has enabled me to have the tools to work with people from Iraq to Nigeria and England to South Africa to enable them to see themselves as leaders and agents of change and transformation”.

Participants benefit from transformed networks – through which learning and good practice is shared nationally and internationally. The networks developed among interaction participants,

“I have met and interacted with some remarkable human beings around the globe that I would not have been able to have done. We have helped each other in our work and this has enriched the communities we are a part of”.

Participants feel that the impact of Interaction has been deep, and long term - and that time will tell what impact it allows them to make on their communities.

“The lessons of Interaction and Africa will always be with me.  Even if it takes 20 years for the effect to be felt by others, it will still have been an effective and life-changing project”.

How we know this.

The information in this paper is based on a survey of former InterAction participants and a trawl of the testimonials from the Interaction website. As such it is a snapshot of their perceptions of the impact of the programme.

Most survey forms were circulated to UK participants, though some did “leak out” to African participants and their responses have been included. Testimonials were from both UK and African participants.

Survey responses and testimonial text were recorded verbatim, and analysed using a matrix on Microsoft Excel.