II. THE PLANNING PROCESS

The planning process was designed to foster authorship of the resulting strategy by INCLEN faculty from the "South" and has been remarkably successful in doing so. The resulting ownership of the plan by these faculty members will be important to its success.

Representatives from the Program Committee and Board of Directors met for two days at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to consider INCLEN’s future direction. With help from Mark Nichter as facilitator and drawing on the results of the CLEN deliberations over the previous three months, the Strategic Planning Group considered the vision for INCLEN of the future; INCLEN’s strengths, weaknesses, and comparative advantages; the need for the kind of research and capacity building that INCLEN faculty can and wish to do; themes for research or capacity building that might represent opportunities for INCLEN and its faculty both to do important work and to attract funding ("best prospects"); ways to foster leadership, both within and outside the network, for such initiatives; the importance and type of regional activities that should be pursued; the appropriate governance and management structure -- including the appropriate timing of changes -- for INCLEN’s future activities; and the allocation of funds over the next two years that would maximize the chances of achieving the goals defined.

The proceedings of the London meeting were circulated in December to all CEUs as well as to the full Program Committee and Board of Directors for consideration in advance of the global meeting 1-4 March 1999. Comments were solicited from all faculty members and shared with all members of the Program Committee and Board, prior to a joint meeting February 27-28 of those two bodies in Bangkok. At that meeting the groups reviewed the London deliberations and then focused on three areas that they felt needed particular additional attention: continuing needs and opportunities for capacity building; the advantages and challenges of regionalization, including the appropriate allocation of responsibilities between the regions and the INCLEN Executive Office (IEO); and the identification of "best prospects" for research and capacity building.

On the evening of February 28 and the day of March 1, the circle of discussion was enlarged to include all CEU Directors. After reviewing the process and tentative recommendations to date, the CEU Directors concentrated their work on additional considerations about "best prospects" and about strategies for identifying and supporting leadership for those initiatives. All agreed that the opportunity should be taken over the course of the global meeting for the CLENs to consider further how the developing plans might affect or could be advanced by the individual CLENs, as well as how effective regional functioning could be enhanced. At a breakfast meeting of the Program Committee and Board on March 4, CLEN representatives reported the results of those deliberations. The breakfast group concluded that the following additional steps were to be taken to bring the current planning process to an appropriate conclusion:

1.	CLENs would complete and distribute a written summary of their planning deliberations by April 1.
2.	The IEO would prepare a draft of the strategic plan, including operational steps, goals and budget, by mid-April for consideration by a Task Force consisting of a representative of each of the CLENs and the three representatives of the IEO.
3.	The Task Force would meet in late April to review and revise the draft plan, which then would be circulated to all CEUs for comment.
4.	The Board would consider the revised plan at a meeting in late May or early June, and approve the plan and budget for submission to the Rockefeller Foundation.
5.	The IEO would prepare the submission to the Rockefeller Foundation in early June, with the hope of receiving the remainder of the block grant by July 1.

 

On June 1-2 INCLEN’s Board of Directors considered the revised plan. It warmly endorsed the plan as drafted, emphasized the central role of INCLEN faculty members in shaping it and made more explicit the strategic objectives at the core of the plan. In adopting the plan, the Board called for annual reviews of progress toward those strategic objectives, with adjustments as necessary in light of accomplishments and changing circumstances.