In Acord Newsletter Issue 1: February 2001

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Article 1:

Editorial

I didn't know that. Where did you hear that? Is that confirmed? Oh, didn't I tell you? If only I'd known before I started.

This is what I have heard echoing throughout the corridors of the London office and across the programmes in Africa since my recent appointment as Editor/Publications Co-ordinator at ACORD.

The desire for improved communications has been repeatedly expressed, not only by many of you in Africa and London, but also by our donors and the many others who have an interest in our work. This need was further confirmed by a survey undertaken in 1999 and more recently at all the annual regional meetings.

So in response to these requests, welcome to this first edition of in Acord, the new ACORD newsletter which will replace our more intermittent Gender, HIV, Micro-finance and Pastoralism newsletters and complement the newsletters produced by the individual programmes. Its aims are to improve the exchange of information throughout the organisation, to create a forum for sharing our rich experiences and to disseminate our information more widely.

This newsletter is only one of the many new communication initiatives that are being developed in ACORD. We are producing communication strategies at both organisational and programme levels, we are formulating a language and translation policy to maximise information sharing and exchange of experiences between speakers of different languages in ACORD and we have set up a new working group to develop concrete external communication initiatives. In the past few months we have seen the launch of our web site (www.acord.org.uk), which I hope you have visited, we have had research results published in a number of high-profile publications and the programmes have produced a series of pamphlets and magazines including the informative Voices of Iddirs.

But as we know, setting up systems is often the easy part. It's using these systems and ensuring that they achieve their objectives that poses the greater challenge. With your help, I believe that we can make this work. I look forward to receiving your contributions and feedback so that we can learn from each other, work more closely together and help ACORD to be recognised for all the excellent work it does.

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