Improving Skills in Administration Drafting and Oral Communication, Ministry of External Relations, Cameroon
Following a request from the Cameroon Ministry of External Relations, RIPA International designed a bespoke two-week training workshop to provide senior government and public sector officials with the relevant tools and techniques to effectively carry out administration drafting and improve overall written and oral communication in English.
Held in Yaoundé, Cameroon, and supported and funded by the Commonwealth Secretariat, implemented through the Ministry of External Relations in collaboration with the Cameroon Advanced Institute of Public Administration (AIPM), the two workshops took place during June 2010.
Attendees on the first workshop were Commonwealth liaison officers from ministries and other partner organisations within Cameroon.
Those on the second workshop, from 16 different ministries, will act as ‘champions’ for the correct use of English in administrative writing within the ministries and other government agencies of Cameroon.
The workshop methodology was a mixture of tutor inputs, plenary discussions, and practical writing exercises including a report, a summary and minutes of a meeting. Tutors offered individual oral and written feedback.
The programme enabled participants to:
- Learn the key principles, tools and techniques of clear and concise writing in English
- Improve the quality of written communication in English to meet international norms
- Consider current procedures to identify documents which need English equivalents to be written (during the workshops, the participants identified 70 different administrative documents)
The workshop ‘champions’ will be disseminating what they have learned within Cameroon’s government and other public sector organisations.