We work through country desks in 10 countries and a regional desk.

Regional work: a focus shift from ‘doing’ to ‘strengthening’

PELUM Association was created in 1995 with a regional desk – then in Harare, Zimbabwe – responsible for planning and implementing all the organisation’s activities, which mainly focused on capacity building through training and information exchange.

Over the years, the organisation strengthened its country desks and decentralised operations so that now country desks – alone, in partnership with other country desks, or with the support of the regional desk -- focus on planning and implementing activities, which have extended to also include CAL (campaigning, advocacy and lobbying). This shift has allowed the regional desk to focus on strengthening and adding value to the association, creating opportunities that otherwise would not be possible.

Adding value
The eight programme staff at the regional desk focus their efforts on strengthening the association and adding value to the work of the country desks by:

• Building the capacity of country desks. We provide free communication, agricultural research, CAL, financial, gender mainstreaming and HIVAIDS mainstreaming support to country desks
• Enabling cross-country learning. We conduct training, undertake advocacy, share information and coordinate activities across the countries and therefore facilitate the up-scaling of best practices on ecological land use management and cross-cutting issues
• Creating the critical mass needed for policy change, including at continental and international levels, by bringing together forces from our 10 countries – recently on GMOs, EPAs and climate change
• Accessing multi-country funding opportunities, such as the current EU-funded ‘Innovation Africa’ project
• Providing organisational tools for use across the association, such as a code of practice and personnel policies
• Looking at new countries joining the association
• In general, by targeting appropriate support to our weakest country desks

You can read more about our work at a country level in the country profile pages.