ARC

“For the Development of Knowledge to Translate Rights into Reality”

General Information (under updating)

Vision, mission, approach and strategic objectives 

1. Origin and Mission Statement:

The idea of ARC originated in a regional workshop held in Cyprus in July 1987 to re-write the Arabic edition of David Werner's "Where There Is No Doctor". Participants from seven Arab countries agreed that there was a need

a) for health and development workers in the region to be supported in their work by informative, educational and training resources in Arabic, and

b) for networking activities to facilitate the sharing and accumulation of professional experience among them and promote regional communications.

To address such needs, ARC was founded in 1989 by a group of 13 professionals in the fields related to ARC's expected work.

Article 1 of the by-laws states:

The Arab Resource Collective, also known as ARC, is a non-governmental organisation registered legally under the same name

- in Cyprus in 1988 as a private company limited by guarantee under the companies law CAP.113, under the Nº 32784, and working as an offshore company with a non-profit purpose, and

- in Lebanon in 1995 as an association under article 6 of the law of associations of 3 August 1909, under the Nº 118/AD, amended in 2004 to 127/AD.

The founders, who became the first Board of Trustees, agreed a Mission Statement, which was up-dated a few years later to the following:

ARC’s mission is to build on the capacities of every person to develop knowledge and translate rights into reality, so that every person can control the conditions of his/her life, in a just and equitable society.

In order to achieve its mission, ARC works with its partners to develop the resource culture in Arab societies.

ARC adopts:

- a holistic, integrative and inclusive approach,

- collective thinking and collective ownership,

- sustained processes for networking, participation and building partnerships.

ARC’s strategic objective is to work with community-oriented organisations in Arab countries, and enhance their role as agents for the realisation of people’s rights. Together, they seek to identify the needs and challenges they face, and cooperate to

- produce and disseminate relevant knowledge through appropriate materials in Arabic

- develop capacities and skills through training and action-oriented research, particularly on the use of the approaches and resources produced collectively,

- promote and practice collective work and networking among organisations and community workers, and support joint advocacy.

In 1999/2000, we have marked ten years of ARC’s existence by activities which aimed at assessing the collective journey. They included

- a written internal “reading” of our work,

- two regional workshops in which a number of our partners carried out a collective assessment of three regional programmes in the field of childhood,

- and an external review of most of our projects.

In 2001, we continued the collective exercise with our core partners, focusing on planning the work of each programme for the next five years. This assessment and planning exercise was an opportunity to initiate a new phase in ARC’s development.

However, in the years 2003/2004, a serious reduction of funding for programmes has led to reducing the number of staff, slowing down the implementation of programmes, and a review of ARC’s strategic approach. The funding situation was redressed in 2005, reactivating existing programmes and even introducing new ones.

The Board of Trustees established at the founding meeting in 1989, was renewed in 2002, and again in 2007 (see current compostion in appendix 1). In the period from 2007 to 2009, two of the founders retired from senior management duties, and the Board appointed another founder/manager to the post of General Coordinator.

2. ARC's target audience:

ARC belongs to the constituency of Arab NGOs who have long term vision and programmes focusing on sustainable development and professional work. ARC and its partners have built their collective approaches on the concept of rights, as developed in global authoritative texts such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Alma Ata Declaration on Health for All.

Extensive contacts have been established over the years in countries where such NGOs and community workers have a notable presence, i.e. Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, Jordan, Sudan and Yemen. Contacts in other countries such as Syria and Iraq have intensified in the last few years.

ARC is a regional venture, and its immediate aim is to contribute to equipping community workers engaged through the partners with the tools and skills they need to pursue this general purpose at the local and national levels, and to be more effective

- in working with the deprived sectors of the community, and in organising development initiatives, targeting childhood and youth, and aiming at integrating health and education,

- in acting as an essential component of civil society to enhance its capacity to organise for the public interest.

ARC targets in priority the workers and policy-makers within NGOs and other relevant institutions (including in UN or government “professional” structures). We offer them

- resources responding to their needs, and training on their use,

- a platform for debate and networking, mainly through regional workshops and collective work on resources and newsletters.

In the last few years, ARC has increased its involvement in local training. Within the framework of each individual programme

- training tools have been adapted or locally produced in Arabic, for the use of trainers and community workers,

- sustained training programmes, mostly in-service, have been organised in response to the demand by local partners,

- in certain cases, training has reached the ultimate beneficiaries, such as mothers and children.

3. ARC's programme components:

Primary health care was the original matrix of ARC's work, which later developed into various components. Programmes in fields related to childhood and youth have gradually taken precedence in the allocation of ARC’s resources. Over the years, ARC had developed full programmes in the following fields:

·         early childhood care and development,

·         children's rights,

·         “child-to-child” approach to active learning,

·         youth and healthy living,

·         mental health for a new generation,

·         digital solidarity project with deprived communities,

·         health for all through primary health care, women’s health, rational use of drugs and working with people with special needs and on inclusion,

·         training, learning and communication for development.

4. Publications and other resource materials:

The production of Arabic resources is an essential component of ARC's work, in every programme and whenever it is deemed relevant. On the whole, ARC's publications have been based on extensively adapting foreign texts (mostly English), addressing the needs of local partners. In the last few years, the focus has shifted towards locally-generated training resources. ARC’s resource list (available on request) contains about 200 titles, ranging from major publications (including manuals in three volumes…), to workshop reports, to newsletters. All these are available in hard copies. They are gradually produced in digital format in order to make them available on ARC’s web site (www.mawared.org; the site is being up-dated).

5. Networking:

In parallel with publications, ARC facilitates collective work among its partners. Rather than building formal networks for each programme, ARC has deliberately opted to “practice networking” and to use several tools for this purpose:

a) Regional workshops and consultative meetings are a priority method. They serve both to give ownership of the programmes to the partners and to develop collectively the professional approaches and priority topics within the framework of each programme (for illustration, see the list of workshops convened from 1991 to 2002 in appendix 2).

b) The collective work on resources allows community-based workers to share knowledge and experiences while working on specific texts. This practice proved successful in producing approaches and training tools relevant to the partners’ work.

c) At various times, four newsletters were nurtured by the work of partners: Haqqi (My Right) for Children’s Rights, Ma’an (Together) for the Child-to-Child and Youth & Healthy Living programmes, Qatr AnNada (Dew Drops) for Early Childhood and the Mental Health Newsletter. Only the last two are currently in production.

6. ARC's current work

There are two full programmes currently active within ARC: the Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD) and the Mental health Programme (MHP). Attached are two narrative reports describing the activities in 2010.

In addition, ARC is currently working on the translation/adaptation into Arabic of one major resource: the Community Tool Box of the University of Kansas, in cooperation with the School of Health Sciences at the American University in Beirut and Kansas University.

7. ARC funding sources

To implement its projects, ARC has received funding from a number of partner NGOs, mostly based in European countries. Through some of these funding partners, grants were also raised from the European Community and individual European government sources.

Here is a list of ARC's major past and present supporters (* indicates a current grant):

- Comité Catholique contre la Faim et pour le Développement (France);

- Child-to-Child Trust, (with a grant from Comic Relief), Christian Aid, Oxfam, Save the Children Fund, Quaker Peace & Service, Education Action International and through it, the Department For International Development and Comic Relief, Open Society Foundation (UK),

- Bread for the World, Evangelisches Missionswerk, Medico International and Misereor (Germany);

- Danchurchaid;

- Ford Foundation (Cairo office);

- Norwegian Council for Mental Health*  and Norwegian People's Aid (based in Lebanon);

- Bernard van Leer Foundation and Novib (Holland);

- Save the Children Sweden (regional office in Lebanon);

- AGFUND*;

- Mentor Arabia*;

- The Welfare Association (with a grant from the British Lottery Fund)*;

- The Middle East Council of Churches;

- World Association for Christian Communications (WACC, HQ in the UK);

- The World Bank, channeled via Christian Children Fund (in the US);

- The WHO, UNICEF and UNESCO;

- The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation;

- The People’s Health Movement;

- The Child of Lebanon Association.

In addition, income has been generated from the sales of ARC’s resources and from providing specialised services to partners and like-minded organisations. For illustration, the income from sales over the years has averaged around US$ 15,000, reaching a peak of over 31,000 in the year 2000…

List of workshops convened by ARC from 1991 to 2002

Workshop	Date	Arab agencies (excl ARC)	Arab countries	Men	Women
1. Resources in PHC & Development	Nov 1991	12	5	11	12
2. Challenges in ECE	May 1992	24	6	9	28
3. Communication, Media and Health	Nov 1992	24	5	22	14
4 & 5. Working with Parents - Two training workshops in Lebanon	January  & July 1993	20 7	1 1	2 -	36 11
6. Essential Drugs/Rational Use of Drugs	July 1993	17	5	19	11
7. Role of Children in Health Educ. - CtC Curriculum	Dec 1993	17	5	10	31
8. CtC follow up workshop in  Lebanon	May 1994	10	1	8	15
9. Rights of the Child in the Arab world	May 1994	20	6	9	22
10. NGOs in Arab societies	July 1994	20	7	25	11
11. Partnership for better Childhood	Nov 1994	24	6	7	36
12. Regional consultative meeting on CR	May 1995	9	5	5	8
13. Dialogue '95: ECED Concepts and Principles	July 1995	13	3	6	15
14. Adapting Training for Transformation	July 1995	6	5	7	4
15. Future Builders (youth work)	Oct 1995	11	5	9	12
16. Children's Rights in the Arab World	Nov 1995	19	7	18	15
17. Code of Practice & Networking among Arab NGOs	Nov 1995	15	6	12	11
18. Local training in Nablus	Feb 1996	19	1	5	19
19. ECED/RCRG	Apr 1996	7	4	4	11
20. CR Consultative meeting	May 1996	11	7	14	9
21. Training of Trainers in Child Rts in Yemen	May 1996	17	3	16	12
22. Creating a Learning Climate within Institutions	June 1996	20	5	15	13
23. Dialogue 96	July 1996	8	4	5	12
24. Non-discrimination & Child Rts in Arab countries	Nov 1996	15	6	12	14
25. Gender & Project Planning	Nov 1996	13	6	7	12
26. CtC Consultative Meeting	Nov 1996	16	6	13	15
27. Adapting Training for Transformation	Nov 1996	8	4	8	6
28. The Holistic & Integrative Approach in ECED	Feb 1997	19	6	10	23
29. Child Rts training in Lebanon	Apr 1997	21	2	9	22
30. Child Rts Consultative Meeting	May 1997	11	5	8	12
31. CTC training in Lebanon	May 1997	23	3	9	34
32. ECED: descriptive reports	July 1997	22	6	13	17
33. Future Builders II	July 1997	11	5	12	6
34. CTC Consultative Meeting	Nov 1997	15	5	11	13
35. Child Rts training in Gaza	Dec 1997	?	?
36. ECED Consultative Meeting	Feb 1998	5	3	3	7
37. CR Consultative Meeting: Training	May 1998	10	5	9	8
38. CTC Consultative: Implementation & Practice	May 1998	12	5	7	10
39. Reproductive Health and the Media	June 1998	18	9	11	19
40. ECED: Inclusion of Children with Disabilities	July 1998	19	6	11	22
41. Consultative Meeting on Inclusion	July 1998	5	4	4	8
42. CTC & CR workshop: Children’s Participation	Nov 1998	27	6	18	21
43. Future Builders III	Feb 99	16	5	14	19
44. Training for Transformation	April 99	13	5	13	7
45. ECED, CTC and CR assessment workshop	May 99	18	6	13	17
46. Health Resources and Women	Sep 99	20	7	12	16
47. CTC: Training	Oct 99	21	6	12	14
48. CR and Macroeconomics	Jan 00	16	6	19	14
49 Childhood Consultative Workshop	June 00	21	7	20	18
50 Health Consultative workshop	July 00	11	5	10	8
51 Working with Parents on Children’s Rights	Dec 00	15	4	8	10
52 Childhood Planning Workshop	Dec 00	8	4	9	10
53. Adolescents, Early Marriage and Child Rights	Mar-01	19	6	11	22
54. CTC Training of Trainers	May 01	21	5	11	27
55. Youth & Healthy Living: Consultative workshop	May 01	19	5	17	12
56. CR Consultative: A World Fit for Children	May/Jun 01	16	5	11	17
57. Youth & Healthy Living: Consultative Group	Jul/Aug 01	6	3	8	2
58. ECCD: Mapping, networking and assessment	Nov 01	15	6	9	13
59. Youth & Healthy Living: Consultative Group	Nov 01	9	3	4	11
60. ECCD manual team meeting	Apr 02	2	2	5	2
61. CR Consultative: NGO coalitions and training	June 02	10	5	9	11
62. Launching the ECCD manual	July 02	10	5	8	13
63. Mapping advocacy for CR in the Arab world	Dec 02	14	5	14	15
Total participants 1,565				650	915