A School of iDEas
From Raisa Chowdhury, here’s a report from iDE Bangladesh’s annual staff retreat.
iDE Bangladesh recently hosted its Annual Retreat for 2011 for all 76 staff from different field offices around the country. The 3 day workshop, from 14th to 16th March, was hugely successful in bringing about organizational integration and, it is hoped, will lead to significant performance improvements in the future.
The theme of the workshop was “A school of iDEas”. This sought to promote iDE Bangladesh as an organization which nurtures and creates innovation and new ideas. To make the learning and the team development process more effective, all staff including directors, officers, specialists, coordinators, administrators, interns, guards, drivers and friends, were divided into four different teams of Green, Blue, Red and Black to undertake group presentations, workshops, tasks and competitive sporting events.
The retreat harnessed the talent, experience, wisdom and logic of all members of the iDE Bangladesh family. This enabled staff to successfully complete team building activities including making presentations to generate intra-IDE knowledge exchange, designing posters representing staff expectations for the retreat, and also cultural events including singing, poetry recitals and mime! The cultural events were for many the highlight of the retreat.
iDE Bangladesh always seeks to continually improve its performance, and staffs were asked to provide feedback and recommendations regarding any aspects of their work. These comments will be addressed in four project management team meetings over the course of the year. The retreat proved to be an excellent opportunity for everyone to meet and tackle existing issues, address queries, perceive future challenges and to think about ways of improving how the organization performance. iDE is a collective of distinctive minds, and by joining together under the umbrella curriculum of poverty alleviation, we found we could establish a solid foundation for future successes.
