"What makes an effective mission statement?" This question may sound benign, but much thought must go into its creation, as Delina Fico, member of KWN Advisory Board and Director of Civil Society Programs of East West Management Institute (EWMI),explained to KWN members in Prizren. On September 4th, 30 members from 22 different KWN member organizations assembled to take part in the workshop on "Writing Effective Mission Statements”.
By providing definitions of key concepts regarding an organization’s vision and mission statements, Ms. Fico illustrated the differences between the two. Furthermore, during the lecture, Ms. Fico referred to mission statements as "the passports of an organization," and proceeded to explain that a clear formulation of a succinct mission statement should contain the following components:
1. Name of the organization; 2. Its goals; 3. The way an organization operates; 4. Expected results of activities of the organization; 5. Groups with which the organization works; and 6. Values ”‹”‹that it prefers.
Together with the participants, she then analyzed KWN’s mission statement, by showing where these elements are located within this mission:
“The Kosova Women’s Network (KWN) mission is to support, protect and promote the rights and the interests of women and girls throughout Kosova, regardless of their political beliefs, religion, age, level of education, sexual orientation and ability .KWN fulfills its mission through the exchange of experience and information, partnership and networking, research, advocacy, and service.”
“This workshop was more than nessecary to strengthen the capacities of my organization and I believe that it applies to the other organizations present as well,” said Bahrije Deva, Executive Director of Association for Education and Family Care. “Such workshops should be repeated often and last longer, so that we can take time to focus on the topics that are more important for us."
Subsequently, participants sat down in groups and worked on re-wording or re-writing their mission statements. In order to assist member organizations to really change and enhance their mission statements, at the end of this workshop, Delina Fico and Nicole Farnsworth offered them the opportunity to submit potential alterations to their missions to info@womensnetwork.org by Sep 10th. Ms. Fico and Ms. Farnsworth will then provide feedback.
The workshop was supported by Kvinna till Kvinna (KtK) and EWMI. And is part of KWN support to members in implanting the KWN code of conduct.
