Download ACT Annual Report 2016 >
Forword
The main theme for ACT in 2016 was Foundation! As part of our Strategic Plan 2016-2020, called ACT 2020, different priorities have been looked at in 2016 to re-discover and re-build some of ACT’s foundations;
At an International Level great progress was made to complete the transition of becoming an independent development organisation. The board met three times to complete the revision of ACT’s constitution and governance documents to reflect the new structure of ACT. One of those meetings took place in Sweden, Orebro, going back to the place where ACT was birthed almost 35 years ago. By meeting Lars Molin, the founder of ACT, and other long-term supporters in Sweden, ACT’s roots and Swedish registration was revitalised which will help ACT to establish its Head Office well in Sweden. Together with the first ACT Support Office being opened in the UK strong foundations and networks have been laid for ACT’s future.
At a Country Office level ACT continued its operations in Tunisia which remains at the core of what we want to be; an organisation that seeks to bring transformation in the lives of people that have lost hope, suffer inequality or have been excluded from society. Throughout 2016 we have gone through a series of conversations as ACT staff to explore how we do that best and identified 6 foundational principles/ approaches and believe that our Transformational Development work should aim to be (1) Faith-based, (2) Value-driven (3) People-focused, (4) Sustainable, (5) Holistic and (6) be a Life-Style. In addition we strengthened our operational foundations by revising our Operation Manual and updating our Security Plans.
All of this to support our staff to be ‘agents of change’ when they meet the female inmates in prison, when they visit the poor farmers in the arid South of Tunisia, when they encourage the parents of children with special needs or while supporting the ward nurse attending to a cancer patient. Some of their stories are captured in this Annual Report which lists the work in our different sectors. I hope they inspire you reading them and please visit our renewed website (www.actdev.org) to learn more about the work of ACT.
Thanks to and together with a group of passionate ACT staff, our local and international partners, donors, supporters, board and many friends we are looking forward to 2017 and beyond in which we want to (re)start building on those foundations laid in 2016.
May God bless you all!
Adriaan Jagersma,
General Director ACT
