Remote Development of Human Resources Connecting Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Japan

JEN's Afghanistan Program puts a great deal of effort not only into support activity at sites but also into human resources development of its staffs.

Although international staffs had been in charge of documentation of program plans and reports before, JEN started to prepare program plans in English and as a part of human resources development. It started to give more opportunities for local staffs to learn documentation by in-house and on-the-job trainings since January 2014.

Joint report writing training for Afghan and Pakistani staff on February 12th.



Icebreaking of report writing training.



A scene from group presentation of report writing training.



Preparation of plans by English takes more time compared to conventional plans. However, English plans can include more voices from fields and many more staff can make a contribution to reports using English.

Local staff who experienced preparation of plans for the first time gave the following impressions.

"I knew nothing about writing plans until I get involved in preparation of documents but learned a lot from the experience. I now know the importance of getting support by sharing our needs and preparing documents to organize the points.
I realized that I need to gain more knowledge, practice, and experiences. I will continue to study in the future."

This year, local staff are not only practicing their field activities but also getting involved in preparing documentation through planning budgets and support activities. This makes their ownership to field activities much stronger and raises their morales.

In Pakistan programs, local staffs have prepared the draft of plans for few years already. This time for skill development of Afghan staff, we received assistance from Pakistani local staff. As a result, draft of plan for emergency support for flood damage in north Afghan in cooperation with supporters and the Japan Platform was written by local staffs.

Also, they prepared plan for "Improvement of School Environment and Hygiene Education project in Province of Parwan", which will be implemented in October.

Support activities for Afghanistan face various challenges daily as it has been carried out remotely by international staff in Islamabad. Here, the key to human resources development is solid communication between offices. Staff in Tokyo, Afghanistan, and Islamabad are united as one team that cooperate and support each other. This removes obstacles caused by remote management and enables human resources development.

We will support documentation of plans by local staff continuously in the future. Our goal is to help establish projects that will encourage independence in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as to provide better support by promoting for the betterment of the human resources development and improving the abilities of each staff member.

With Pakistani staff at Pakistan office



Pakistan Islamabad office
Afghanistan project program officer
Megumi Fujita



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