Young Liberals Re-evaluate, Remake Strategic Plan

To remain resilient and dynamic in the rapidly changing world, the Young Liberals and Democrats of Asia (YLDA) held a capacity building workshop in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from 29 April - 03-May 2009. Hosted by Parti Gerakan Rakyat and with the support of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Liberty (FNF), YLDA evaluated its past achievements, identified its current realities and discussed redefining its mission.

Representatives from member organizations and the Executive Committee reaffirmed that YLDA’s key stakeholders are its member organizations and the Asian youth. Thus the organization must renew its efforts of capacity building, education and mobilization.

After assessing YLDA’s current state, participants drew up a new strategic plan to bring to focus its organizational needs and challenges. These are: to strengthen and expand membership participation, to make liberal democracy more attractive to Asian youth, to increase focus on regional issues and to attain financial sustainability by 2012.

To tackle these, participants identified concrete courses of action such as: using Web 2.0 to portray YLDA as a modern organization, researching on country situations and producing campaign plans to address these and creating a task force to prepare a more detailed expansion plan.

“As with any other effective organization, we believe that it is important to re-evaluate the kind of work we do every few years,” said Rosanna Ocampo, YLDA program officer.
“We wanted to change things that didn’t work in order to keep our strategic plan relevant.”

“Strategic planning is useful in charting YLDA’s future direction,” said Dr. Pimrapaat Dusadeeisariyakukl, FNF Malaysia program manager. “But more than that, what was encouraging was the commitment of the participants to share their knowledge with their organizations upon return.”