Good morning and a warm welcome to you all – especially to those of you who have travelled from outside Dublin and indeed the country to be here today. It is great to see everyone and I hope we can all share some time together after the speeches over a cup of coffee.
I can see you all have copies of our Strategy – Walking Together to Transform Lives – and would urge you to take more copies as you leave for distribution in your congregations, churches, and faith centres and anywhere else you think people might pick it up and read it. And if you are on social media, make sure you tweet or post the link to the document on our website www.miseancara.ie when you next log in.
The Strategy process
The process for developing this new strategy was something that a lot of thought went into.
At the time we started the process, we had developed our Vision, conducted a mid-term review of what is now our last strategy and we had two reviews underway in IT and Funding – so it was in that context that we had to figure out the best way to engage everyone in a truly participatory way.
We wanted to ensure that we heard from as many people as possible, and that as a process, it would progress collectively so that the strategy, when finalised would truly be owned by everyone. For that reason, we held consultations and workshops with members, Board and the Misean Cara team here in Ireland and also in 9 other countries. We felt strongly that it was essential to have input from members and local communities in-country to ensure that the reality on the ground was clearly articulated.
We analysed the external and internal environments, looking through the lens of our strengths and aims for the future and what opportunities and risks these presented. Following on from our mid-term review of the previous strategy, we also acted on its recommendations to review the importance of communication and culture and what we should be doing in these areas to support the new strategy. Many of you here today were at the organisational culture session led by Professor Sharon Turnbull last year which produced the ‘Culture Web’ that helped us to articulate the organisational culture we want to nurture and deepen.
The key themes which emerged strongly throughout the consultation process informed the five strategic goals you see here today:
- Our key focus areas of education, health, livelihoods, environmental stability, human rights remain highly relevant
- A greater emphasis should be given to the missionary approach to development –this includes embedding the accompaniment model, further developing members’ organisational capacity to design, manage and report on development initiatives, demonstrating the power of our collective impact and learning from the best of what missionaries bring to development to improve practice in the wider development sector.
Each of us went on a personal journey in relation to co-creating this strategy
Our global consultation took place in Peru, Ghana, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, India, Tanzania, South Africa and we had several sessions here at home in Ireland. Members who had never met one another in-country had the opportunity to do so and it started the first green shoots of networking that can only be a positive step forward. Though hundreds of people took part throughout the consultation process, each one of us went on a personal journey in relation to co-creating this strategy. As I mentioned earlier, the approach to undertaking the consultations was ‘strengths-based’ which helped us to name and own the things we are good at, our strengths, our qualities, our uniqueness as a faith based development organisation. Throughout the consultations, it was clear that there is much common ground despite our geographical and cultural diversity. Why? I believe it is because our faith unifies us and underpins our essential commitment – our vision for a future where people who live on the margins of society will be empowered to achieve a better quality of life.
Walking together with joy
I read all of the notes from the consultations and one phrase that a member used really resonated with me and the phrase was that in Misean Cara ‘we are walking together with joy’. That phrase encompasses so many positive things – moving forward, joyfulness, hopefulness, intent and accompaniment. This sense that we are accompanying one another emerged very strongly for me as we went through the planning process – it is something that I know as missionaries you don’t even think about – it’s what you do naturally.
Seamus O’Gorman facilitated the members’ consultation in Kinshasa and one of the main points arising from that consultation was that ‘the accompaniment approach applied by Misean Cara is commendable and must be continued (…) Misean Cara offers support to development agents right from project conception through to post project implementation; and the support is not only financial in nature, but also features capacity development, project monitoring and evaluation, mentorship support. It emerged that the essence of Misean Cara’s work hinges on the attainment of real change in the lives of the poor, vulnerable and marginalised and not the technicalities that go with grant proposals.’
Ian from Caplor often spoke about the ‘secret sauce’ – what is the one thing that makes an organisation unique – and I think that sense of being ‘in it together’ and ‘accompanying one another’ – no matter what part of the world we are in, is Misean Cara’s ‘secret sauce.’
Miyamoto Musashi
In the 1600s in Japan there was a very famous swordsman called Miyamoto Musashi. Towards the end of a very distinguished career, he authored a text on philosophy, spirituality and strategy called ‘The Five Rings’. There is a famous quote from this text about strategy and it is this:
‘In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things’
What I particularly like about this quote is that it sums up for me what the Misean Cara strategy consultation process that we all engaged in was like.
We were challenged to re-examine the inner foundations of our ‘DNA’ as an organisation – our vision, our purpose, our mission and our values – a distanced view of very close things.
We were also challenged to grapple with the distant things. At one level in a very tangible and practical way – by taking our consultation sessions overseas into places where people were never before asked for their views and suggestions. At another level in a more philosophical – just as one example, to understand as a missionary movement where we ‘sit’ in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals agenda – the set of 17 global goals, 169 targets covering a broad range of sustainable development issues as part of the 2030 sustainable development agenda. Sometimes it can feel like there is huge distance between the reality of life on the ground and these very formal high-level UN agendas. But of course when we talked about them we found out that the ‘distant’ things are really not so distant after all – the Goals are rooted in the issues that missionaries have been working to address as part of their local communities for decades –the eradication of poverty, hunger and disease; the provision of education; peace, justice and respect for human dignity and rights; striving for equality and gender rights; cherishing the earth and sustaining its wealth of natural resources; and stable economies, infrastructure and housing.
Thank You
I promised I wouldn’t speak for very long as I know you want to use the time to meet and mingle, so it remains for me to thank you all for your commitment to the consultation process, your participation, your honesty, openness and trust, and your persistence – I know we asked a lot of you and we are really grateful that you engaged so wholeheartedly. I also want to thank Heydi and the Misean Cara team – every single person worked so hard through this process – through engaging, facilitating and leading consultations – you did a wonderful job and your enthusiasm for the process really shone through. Ian and Jean from Caplor – you kept us on the straight and narrow and you made the entire process fun – that is no mean feat and it made it memorable – so thank you for your ongoing support of Misean Cara.
With renewed hope and determination we look forward to deepening our contribution to the global sustainable development movement for change, walking together in faith to transform lives.
Thank you!
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