Thirty-five senior staff members from across the UN system, including from the African Development Bank, the European Commission, UNDG agencies,  the UN Secretariat and the World Bank, participated in the first inter-institutional training in Post-Conflict Needs Assessment (PCNA) from June 6-11, 2010 in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

The PCNA Expert Practitioners Workshop brought together staff, with substantial experience in working in post-conflict and transitional settings, to begin assembling a cadre of trained practitioners to be deployed on short-notice to lead and facilitate future in-country PCNA exercises. Their participation in the workshop was conditional to their availability to perform PCNA-related work for a maximum of 8 weeks in a calendar year. The workshop was a part of the European Commission and UNDG-ECHA, with support from the UN Development Operations Coordination Office (DOCO), co-funded “PCNA Project.”

“The participation of senior-level staff from so many institutions demonstrates the commitment of all of us to get better in assisting countries in devising an efficient and impact-oriented recovery plan,” DOCO Director Debbie Landey said at the workshop.  “All of us need to keep getting better at working together, as it is only together we can make a difference, and it is our ‘togetherness’ that brings strength and credibility to the PCNA process.”

The one-week workshop was highly participatory by design and included briefings, presentations, panel discussions and simulations, with participants learning more on PCNA methodology, cross-cutting issues such as environment, HIV/AIDS and gender. Two new tools developed under the auspices of the “PCNA Project” were also presented at the workshop—the Conflict Analysis for Prioritization Toolkit and the outline of the Capacity Assessment Toolkit.

The overall response to the training was positive with participants requesting that PCNA Expert Practitioner trainings be repeated in the future to further deepen the capacity of their institutions to respond to PCNAs requests.  They also recommended that training material be tailored for those mid-level professional staff who are being groomed as future PCNA Expert Practitioners. Participants felt that, at an institutional level, PCNA training should be added to the roster of mandatory induction courses for staff working in post-crisis and transitional countries. 

Strong partnerships were forged at the workshop, as well as a better understanding of the strengths of the different institutions.