ActionAid Nigeria, (AAN) an international non-governmental organisation for social justice has inaugurated an “Innovation Week” to promote and enhance creativity and innovations for efficiency as well as effectiveness amongst the staff toward organisational deliverables.
“First of its kind in development sector in Nigeria, Innovation Week is a week long activities aimed at building synergy and working bond amongst the staff towards effectiveness and efficiency, said Andrew Mamedu, Director of Resource Mobilisation and innovation, ActionAid Nigeria.
“Innovation Week is beyond improving productivity in ActionAid alone. It is towards contributing to the whole development space”.
“Over the years, ActionAid Nigeria has been taking initiatives in development works and at one point, if one is not strategic enough, you may get to the point of saturation.”
“So, Innovation Week is one of the avenues that we are initiating to think and re-strategise so as to bring improved solutions to development challenges that we may have”.
“Next year, we hope to extend invites to other development organizations in Nigeria once we see the positive impacts this would create in the long run.” he said.
According to Ene Obi, Country Director, the Innovation Week is about creativity and innovations to drive our development projects across the country.
“One of the things we do at ActionAid is, we listen to our staff, and we believe each of our staff is creative enough to add value to the organisation and the Directorate they work with.
“This innovation week is to also enable us to look inwards on how to raise funds for our Community Sponsorship so that when we need these funds to support projects for the needy, we won’t be writing emergency proposals to the Donors”
Suwaiba Muhammad, Director of Programme, said through Innovation Week initiative ActionAid hopes to increase the visibility for organization’s development works leveraging media and communication platforms.
She added that it would also help the staff to reduce the work tension, unwind and create better bonds amongst themselves within the work space.
“This working bond is critical part of our work at ActionAid Nigeria, It promotes sustainability as well” she said.
Nkechi, a staff working with Programme Directorate, spoke extensively to our correspondent on the activities involved in innovative Week said is a new strategy, brought in by Actionaid Nigeria to able to harness the creativity and productivity amongst the staff for efficiency.
“It is towards helping us – the Staff to have a reflection on the way that we have been working together, and because we have a Work-Life Balance Policy that emphasizes on the need to balance our life and our work so that none of the two affect each other.
“Also because we often have Work deadline pressure and other issues, we have not been able to effectively follow this policy. So this week creates an opportunity for us to have a rethink around that.
“The innovation Week is to help us integrate the new innovations from both old and new staff – the younger generations that are just joining our organization.”
“Throughout this week, we shall be having four Directorates that make up Actionaid Nigeria which include: Finance Directorate, Resource Mobilisation and innovation Directorate, Programme Directorate as well as Organizational Effectiveness Directorate compete with one another by showcasing their level of creativity and innovations just for a day. which makes it a week long event.
“Most of the activities are designed to help the staff to bring to bear the creativity and innovations from each Directorate.
“In achieving this, we allow each of the staff from each Directorate to work in another Directorate at least for a day so as to have better understanding of how things work in that Directorate. And probably introduces an innovative way of working in that Directorate.
“For instance, a Staff from Programme Directorate can be selected to work in Finance Directorate for just a day in order to see how they we work in Finance’.
“Ultimately, there is reward mechanism for the Directorate that emerges a winner in all these activities”, she said.