After the workshop initiated by Mrs Ponde having secured funding from DFID the staffers had an opportunity to reflect on their programs and gave the following feedback: • The workshop was an eye opener and it enabled the secretariat to appreciate the role of the Development Worker within the organization • The workshop revealed that there were many critical areas such as policies which the organization needed to put in place as a matter of urgency • The Development Worker herself benefited from the workshop deliberations and it enabled her to get in-depth insight of the programs run by ZACRO • In this workshop was long overdue and it will go a long way towards improving ZACRO’s image as an organization while set to improve on its corporate culture. • The workshop had more that achieved its desired objectives; thus it remained the responsibility of the various staff members to implement what had been recommended and by end of year most of these were carried out by the staffers. • As the result the secretariat staffers appreciated the role of the Development Worker in ZACRO after having designed and facilitated the workshop. It enabled ZACRO to conduct a thorough self introspection and identify areas which needed to be worked on and improve its organizational performance. Thus the National Coordinator summarized the workshop well by saying, “This is the beginning of a process by the organization. • Programming; While ZACRO had a number of programming activities conducted – program planning and reporting of activities needed to be streamlined. Each program had to be contextualized, and planning focused on the beneficiaries or target groups who had to be clearly identified. Capacity gaps were also noted in the planning, monitoring and reporting of program activities. These were worked on and improved. Thereafter the secretariat staffers came up with effective operational plans which they applied throughout the year. ZACRO as observed by Development Worker during 2008 programming period. . ZACRO as a membership based organization with members countrywide faced difficulties over the year in retrospect, seeing membership not generally involved in organizational activities. The main branches which were active included Midlands and Mashonaland while Bulawayo; where ZACRO’s President – Mr Gullab resides, there were no activities taking place in this region. Unfortunately inadequate resources and funding hindered programming during the period under review. However most of these problems were encountered owing to arrival of the Development Worker Mrs T Ponde under a partnership agreement with Progressio who provided excellence in consultancy, capacity building, resource mobilization - mainly through effective documentation, HIV/Aids mitigation programming in prisons, networking and creating linkages. . . 52