For ARROW, 2008 was a year of growth. We grew in financial strength, in programmatic clarity, in the establishment and expansion of our partnerships in the region, and in the quality of monitoring and evaluation processes within the organisation. We also celebrated our 15th anniversary and moved into a larger office with ample room for staff to work, as well as common meeting and workshop spaces to share with local NGOs and women’s groups.
Meanwhile, within the external environment, we waited with the world to see the results of the US presidential elections, and celebrated Barack Obama’s victory. We are elated that by the time of writing this report, in the first few weeks of his presidency, Obama rescinded the Mexico City Policy, releasing many of our partners from the limitations imposed on their work in the area of access to safe abortion.
As we completed the first half of the five-year strategic plan of the organisation which spans the period July 2006 to June 2011, our major programmatic concern was to put in place a strong start to ARROW’s ICPD+15 monitoring work. After spending a year evaluating the lessons learned from our ICPD+5 and ICPD+10 monitoring projects, we embarked on our ICPD+15 work in 2008 with an awareness and commitment to improving on what we had done before.
