How ActionAid is Engaging with its Strategy

ActionAid’s engagement strategy in Jamaica depends on community groups and stakeholders. Therefore, ActionAid strategic plan will require an effective task force of senior managers, financiers, technical staff representatives, and other stakeholders to be implemented. Stakeholders are vital to ActionAid program because they help the organization achieve its objective. Stakeholders can also include other national and community organizations in Jamaica or a group of individuals who share the same goals and are affected or can affect community actions, policies, and objectives. These stakeholders will assume key roles and responsibilities to ensure the organization meets its mission and vision of helping curb poverty in Jamaica through education and employment and be involved in change control. 

ActionAid stakeholders will include paid staff, program directors, board members, congregants, association members, and volunteers. ActionAid staff will ensure cooperation in its plan and help achieve the program's vision and mission. Other NGOs and trust are also possible stakeholders because they help in ActionAid 's funding (Hawrysz et al .,7). The strategic plan's vision and mission involve increasing the number of women in formal employment, increasing youth employment, reducing the number of girls dropping out of school, and increasing the number of girls attending school, all to eradicate poverty in Jamaica next three years. The clients, communities, and families that intend to be served by this program are important stakeholders since they work together with the ActionAid staff. Therefore, the community is also a stakeholder consisting of individuals, organizations, groups, and businesses with concerns in the community. 

The government of Jamaica also serves as an essential stakeholder. Among the strategies of ActionAid is holding rallies to inform women of their rights and how they can be violated. Such rallies necessitate government participation since they require permits. Another strategic plan is to carry out an environmental scan. This calls for the department of the environment since one of the steps involves Jamaica's county teams to conduct a situational analysis. At some point, the program will also require developing joint projects and committees with the government, especially in matters concerning women and girls' health. 

ActionAid management, specifically the change manager, is responsible for change control. However, the program director initiates the change depending on the stakeholder’s interests since they have different preferences and reasons for supporting ActionAid’s developmental initiative. The change manager's role is to define and support the overall process involved in change management (Will,12). Also, change managers are involved in devising the process, supporting mass education, and communicating with the Change Advisory Board's support. The change manager will evaluate the risk of changes with more girls attending school and more women joining formal employment. These changes in Jamaican families' domestic settings will need actionable guidelines to avoid a negative impact. Since this is a sensitive project, it may encounter resistance, the change manager's role is to evaluate the resistance in adopting such changes. 

Conclusively, the complexity and scope of the ActionAid project determine the number of stakeholders. Therefore, stakeholder identification depends on the project landscape and individuals or groups that can influence and affect the project, such as the government, businesses, and schools, or be affected by its performance outcome, such as the youth, women, and girls of Jamaica. 

Reference 

Hawrysz, Liliana, and Jolanta Maj. "Identification of stakeholders of public interest organizations."  Sustainability  9.9 (2017): 1609. 10.3390/su9091609   

Will, Matthias Georg, and Julia Mueller. "Change Management: The Organization as a Micro–Macro System."  Management for Scientists . Emerald Publishing Limited, 2019.    https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-78769-203-920191007