By Marion Adamson, and the IPK Team
Background to the SAMM Project
The Southern African Migration Management SAMM project is funded by the EU. There are four implementing partners: the International Labour Organization ILO, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees UNHCR, the International Organization for Migration IOM and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime UNODC. The main points of focus are on labour migration and on mixed migration. Labour migration being the movement of individuals for employment purposes, and mixed migration being the movement of people for reasons other than work, for example people fleeing natural disasters, conflict and war.
SAMM is looking to improve migration management in 16 countries, within the Southern African Development Community SADC, Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa COMESA, and Indian Ocean Commission IOC regional areas. The aspect that IPK was involved with was designing and facilitating the SAMM Inception Workshop.
The Purpose of the Inception Workshop
The purpose of the Inception Workshop was fourfold: i) to formally launch the SAMM Project, ii) to provide an opportunity to engage on the topics of the reports presented, iii) for country groups to prioritize activities within the mandate of the SAMM Project, and iv) to explore the role of data and trend analysis within the SAMM project.
The Virtual Structure of the Inception Workshop
IPK used the platform QiqoChat to set up the Inception Workshop. This platform is known as a wrapper system, wrapping around Zoom, Mentimeter, Miro, Wonder, Etherpad, amongst a host of others. This enabled us to closely replicate the sense of walking between breakout rooms and customizing each room with materials required for the discussions taking place. Working with QiqoChat further allowed us to enable participants to self-select their preferred language on the platform, ensuring that documents would be provided in the preferred language whenever available.
The Inception Workshop virtual structure consisted of a lobby, plenary, wellness room and relevant breakaway rooms. We created a number of library style rooms containing topic specific documentation and resources, as well as a room where participants could read about the work of the implementing partners and regional bodies relating to migration management in the regions represented.
Being a multi-lingual event, moving between rooms and ‘virtually picking up a set of headphones’ to connect to audio, became a strong metaphor to work with – and the more than 200 participants quickly moved with ease between rooms and audio/video connections. Each of the virtual rooms had a number of resources housed therein. These included a variety of reports and documents, videos, surveys and white boards which were used at different points during the event. What made this event unique is that we sought to recreate the face-to-face feel virtually, and this required some clever designing. The QiqoChat team were great in their willingness to build additional elements which came about due to the process design.
To facilitate the uptake of new technology, the IPK team provided drop-in sessions the week prior to the workshop, and gave a tour of the virtual space. In addition, we created a YouTube video https://youtu.be/g2goms3xNk4 in English with captions in French and Portuguese. QiqoChat orientation guides were also made available. Additionally, we had a technical support team that worked to guide and orientate participants. Their presence made a difference in ensuring that we did not lose valuable time addressing technical issues at the expense of the content. With over 200 people having joined the event, the technical support team and the orientation guides made it possible for all participants to have a great experience in this virtual multilingual event.
We worked with a number of embedded tools, for example mentimeter for questions and answers to presentations of reports. Our choice of tool for collaborative real-time work for this workshop was Google docs, participants could complete activities together by following the task information provided and capturing their thinking. To assist with prioritization of activities, we made use of allourideas. The outcomes were surprising and generated an opportunity to engage and understand in greater depth what mattered most to countries. As a whiteboard or sticky post-it board, we worked real-time with Miro. This allowed participants to build connections between the selected priorities on post-it notes and to keep capturing important points from continued exchange and discussion.
Please reach out to us at info@i-p-k.com if you would like to explore how to best take your next event into the virtual realm.