The Executive Director is assisted by a team of unit facilitators, who constitute
the Programme Policy Team. At the finance level we have a finance advisory team
and a finance administrator for financial management of the organisation.
The unit approach has helped us to decentralize systems for more effective functioning.
Each unit has been encouraged to function autonomously in administrative matters
but also to collaborate through organic linkages with other units on the programme
front. We are assisted by and collaborate in the field with adivasi representatives
and community-based organisations in all the districts of the project area.
In terms of the general management strategy of the organisation, we believe in maintaining
relatively small core personnel with a wide outreach through our network with CBOs
and collaborative relationships with other NGOs.
Our organisational systems encourage autonomy of functioning at the unit levels.
It is envisaged that some units will emerge as autonomous organisations in time
and Laya Resource Centre will provide a coordinating link for a network of organisations.
We encourage transparency as far as possible. We have broad policies which facilitate
efficiency in management.
In terms of financial systems we have developed specific standards and principles
which we follow in our day-to-day functioning as well as financial control systems
at the main office and at the field offices. We have been making efforts to make
our reporting systems transparent, meeting quality standards and easily accessible.
This facilitates monitoring of programmes regularly.
As regards financial sustainability, since several years Laya has sought to address
this challenge. Several decisions were taken at the Board of Management level towards
enabling the financing of the running costs of the organisation. This has mainly
been carried out through the charging of service costs where applicable and for
the use of training centre facilities. To a less extent this has been possible through
voluntary contributions for the periodicals and other publications.
As a team we meet regularly: for coordination, reporting and strategy planning functions.
Team building and linkages are maintained among staff through:
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Monthly/Fortnightly staff meetings organized at the unit and Resource Centre level;
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Quarterly coordination unit meetings organized at the unit levels;
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Six monthly strategic meetings: representatives of each of the units;
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Policy meetings: annual and when required;
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Sharing of learning from workshops, seminars, training programmes attended. The
thrust areas, the goals and specific objectives, the planned activities for each
programme, and the expected outcome are the basis for the monitoring and reporting
systems. |