Overview of points Discussed:
On Tuesday 25th June 2013, we held our Civil Society Panel Discussion based on the topic “The role of NGOs and the concept of mission drift”. The panel which consisted of three including the moderator had me from Maldives and Yasir from Afghanistan as the two panelists and Zaveem from Srilanka as the moderator. We formed our group of three and held discussions to decide on our topic for the panel, and after exchanging of ideas we decided to base our topic on NGO’s and so the brainstorming ended up with a topic almost on had focused upon which was to look at the impact and mission drift of NGO’s.
The Process:
With just three members in our group we came up with role for each of us. Talking about the impact of NGO’s in a Society and how NGO’s are being funded and what that has as an impact on the scoity were the Questions to me. For the Answers I did some research on NGO’s and how they work in a society and how it affects a society or what kind of impact it has on a society. Even though my part appeared to be easy my college chose to take the complex part in which he had to explain the mission drift and what makes NGO’s suffer.
Implementation:
Having just three in the group and having known each other it was easy to carry out our disussions and also some practice sessions. In these practice sessions we helped each other on how to improve some of the weaknesses like how we could touch the topic in general without missing most of what the topic holds as it was a pretty vast topic. However with helping each other and also conducting these pre panel practices we were able to overcome hesitation and audience fear. With all these we were able to conduct our panel discussion.
Learning/Reflection of the Panel Disucssion and couclusion
Even though it was a panel discussion, it was more of a performance with early preparation. However performance anxiety was one of the things that I had to struggle with before and during the panel. Above all having seen others get stuck in answering audience questions had made me more nervous than I was when I went to class. However knowing the topic was just a simple one and having read many articles and done research I was confident with the help of my two colleges and their support in finding what best fits as the answer for the questions. This research and preparation had taught me a lot about NGO’s and how they work in a society and how helpful they are for the betterment of the society or even a country as a whole. Moreover this panel discussion being the second panel discussion ever in an audience it was great experience which taught me how to overcome fear in a panel with larger audience. Overall the panel discussion was in my opinion better than we all expected and was carried out seamlessly even though I was a little nervous when we began.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-governmental_organization