Advisory mission to ATE Tanzania

On April 14th,DECP's special advisor Andrew Moore undertook a four day visit to the Association of Tanzania Employers (ATE) in Dar es Salaam.  
Most of the visit was concentrated on the issue of membership and how the ATE can drive this forward. The key to ATE success or failure will be how it serves its members and gives them sufficient reasons to come into membership and/or to stay in membership. Over the past few years the ATE's membership has increased, mostly by word of mouth or by the work undertaken by the Legal Unit within ATE. The problem ATE has at the moment is that it is working on a large amount of projects with a limited amount of resource. During the several discussions, it was suggested that the ATE must concentrate its resources on certain things which will have a sustainable impact. One particular thing could be a membership campaign.  
Ideally, an integral part of a campaign for new members would be to hire a full-time employee responsible for membership development and communication with members and to have a socalled “ATE Membership Pack” readily available to use as a recruitment tool amongst potential members. This pack should include an overview of all the services the ATE can offer. The ATE has already been working on the set-up of such a pack and as soon as the documentation is complete, this part of the plan will be put into action.  
As part of the 5-year plan of DANIDA/COWI to support the ATE in strengthening their Association, Andrew Moore agreed with them that the ATE would forward a proposal for a long term consultant to them and they would look into this.  
On the last day of his visit Andrew Moore also attended the ATE Board meeting. It was a useful meeting during which the training 'Effective and efficient Employers' organisation', undertaken by ITC/ILO and DECP in March, was mentioned on a number of occasions, as having been very useful. The Board agreed that they should be building on the outcomes from the training especially as they are preparing the ATE strategic plan for 2010 onwards.