By Mr. Comlan Julien AGBESSI, Regional Coordinator of REPAOC 

A regional training workshop was organised for national REPAOC member collectives on digital communication and the basics of design, in virtual sessions in 2021. The period of the activity is, as one may recall, the early months of the pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus.  

The context was that of the cancellation of physical meetings (workshops, seminars, forums, conferences, etc.) and the restrictions imposed by the easily contaminating nature of the virus as well as the need to observe preventive measures such as containment, distancing, barrier gestures, etc.   

Training in the use of digital communication and design tools has emerged as an important challenge for the Regional Coalition of REPAOC, one of whose fundamental missions is to strengthen the capacities of its members. A second challenge is how to organise the activity while considering the uneven level of members in terms of equipment, ICT prerequisites and language: the twenty-six (26) participants, including 10 women, were French, English and Portuguese speakers. 

Despite the stress of COVID-19, the training had a participation rate of 86% with the 26 out of the 30 announced listeners. They contributed to discussions on technical aspects of the training, practical exercises, mid-term and final evaluations.   

The main key to this success is the cooperation between REPAOC and its partner It4life, a digital social service company based in Dakar, Senegal. Indeed, It4life was able to prepare the training modules and ensure the animation during the three mornings in French with a simultaneous interpretation device on the Zoom platform, which is proving to be a new technological tool to master for many of the participants.  

As we can see, ICTs have become more important than ever with the emergence of the pandemic as a resilience tool that allows confined actors or those with limited movement to continue to function as in a normal situation. If they did not exist, they would have had to be invented, otherwise all human activity outside the biological and physiological functions of individuals would have come to a halt.  

This would therefore mean a halt to all activities in the timetables and action plans of CSOs and other development actors. It is obvious that habits have changed with the development of distance work and the reduction of office visits.   

However, there is no substitute for teamwork, which offers a psychological framework of conviviality, greater commitment and the sharing of experience and knowledge in group work, practical exercises and plenary sessions. Another benefit of the meetings is the strengthening of networking and partnerships.

The idea for this article was inspired by the implementation of an activity included in the action plan of our partnership agreement with Forus with the support of AFD.