21st March 2021
On Sunday 21st March 2021, the UK Chapter of ROHR Zimbabwe held a meeting to discuss the effectiveness and relevance of ROHR. Nicolate Gwati, the UK Chapter Chairperson chaired the meeting
Minutes taken by Nicolate and compiled by Alvina Chibhamu
Register of attendance
Thenjiwe Ndlovu, Vengai Mutsawu, Alvina Chibhamu, Vongayi Mufara, Delina Mutyambizi, Sheilla Mironga, Harriet Ndlovu, Nontokozo Malaba Ncube, Phyllis Chibanguza, Melody Magejo, Emma Josaya, Courage Chiromo, Laina Murape, Billie Nedie
No apologies were received
Agenda
- Discuss the effectiveness and relevance of ROHR
- Map ways forward from this meeting onwards
- AOB
Nicolate welcomed everyone and thanked them for their time coming to the meeting. She explained more about why the meeting was called and she invited comments from members present if we are effective and relevant as ROHR and what we can do better? This follows the ROHR Survey which was completed by members in October 2020 where we sought individual opinion on what we can do to improve ourselves as an organisation as well as equip members to be the best and most effective activists.
Vongayi thought we are effective to a certain extent but there is room for more. She cited the letters we have written that have yielded results but still lacked responses from other relevant parties. She hoped we can have more impact if we are getting responses from people outside of our organisation.
Thenjiwe added that we are relevant but we need to support each other.
Phyllis concurred we are effective to some extent but need to work together so that our voices will become louder.
Sheila mentioned we are doing well but we need to do more to reach a wider audience, for example run some campaigns in vernacular languages such as Shona, Ndebele etc to reach a wider audience
Alvina contributed that we are making strides but there is not a lot of engagement from outside parties, we need to engage and collaborate with organisations with similar causes to ours and to support each other from within the organisation.
Delina added that we need to come up with a strategy so that our voices can be louder with members liking and sharing social media posts will also make an impact.
Courage commended the current efforts and felt that as long as the efforts are sustained, we will start having an impact overall.
Nicolate concluded that we need to have a wider appeal, to branch out a bit more and assist others in the same course.
The meeting agreed the following actions, amongst others;-
- Partnering with other organisations.
- Resolve Facebook: it is just an account instead of a page and does not allow other people to engage with us.
- Twitter spaces- we need to be relevant on Twitter and engage with stuff that is happening on the ground.
- We have people in information & publicity portfolios-they should be able to man social media accounts.
- Having links with other organisations so that we can increase traffic to our organization.
- We need to secure funding so that we can employ someone to monitor the Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms.
- For more visibility, we need to engage with other sites or larger platforms such as ZimEye, Vuka etc.
- Talking about issues in Zimbabwe on the ground.
- Training and workshops on how to use social media platforms.
- BBC has a local channel so we can use that to build up relevance.
- To approach names such as Rev Al Sharpton in America.
- Engage with other human rights organisations such as ZHRO.
- Citizens’ movement/ citizens’ charter.
- Operations manual handbook for members
All of the comments and feedback were very helpful. Nicolate thanked everyone for their participation and called the meeting to a close at 1630hrs
Any Other Business
There was no other business.
All agenda items and any other business having been exhausted, Nicolate Gwati thanked everyone for attending and declared the meeting closed at 1630hrs.
To view pictures taken at the event, follow this link.
By: Information & Publicity Department
