On May 24-25, 2016, the 22-person team of UNFPA Mongolia trooped to Corporate Nukth Resort, just 45 minutes from the center of Ulaanbaatar, for the annual staff retreat. The central theme of the retreat was communications, and how as members of the UNFPA family, each person on the team had the responsibility, and the ability, to share UNFPA’s key messages and as well as its purpose to others, using One Voice.

One Voice is the global communications strategy that emphasizes the central role of communications in the realization of the UNFPA vision and plans of action as detailed in the UNFPA Strategic Plan 2014-2017. At its most effective, it helps staff understand UNFPA’s strategic priorities, how this is carried out in the context of the country office and how to articulate this to various stakeholders, including donors, national partners and the public.

The retreat received Beate Trankmann, UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative, who gave an overview of the UN mandate in Mongolia, which is now an Upper middle income country. Her message was a call to work together more efficiently  among the UN agencies, particularly for upstream interventions, in the face of the country’s rapidly changing needs and declining ODA resources. The opening remarks were made by Naomi Kitahara, UNFPA Mongolia Representative, who also co-facilitated the retreat with Roy Wadia, UNFPA Asia-Pacific Regional Office Communications Advisor, providing UNFPA’s corporate angles of the Strategic Plan, the new Country Programme Document, and lessons learned from communications examples – while also pointing out that the retreat was a team-building exercise for the country office staff.

For two days, the team worked together, and on other occasions with their respective clusters focused on Gender, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Youth Development, through the process of determining key messages, and integrating these results to find UNFPA Mongolia’s One Voice. At the end of the sessions, UNFPA Mongolia found a working summation of outputs that ties in with main narrative of “Delivering a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person's potential is fulfilled.” And that is, “UNFPA Mongolia aspires to be a trusted partner and helps create a country where women and young people are FREE, WELL and SAFE. We provide the best knowledge and international expertise to national partners, so that women and young people are healthy, empowered and protected from violence.” It is, as mentioned, a work in progress, but it served as a good starting point to encourage a unified way to tell the UNFPA Mongolia’s story, remind the team of its purpose and serve as a guide towards the fulfillment of its goals as a country.

Naomi also facilitated a session on Donor Relations, anchoring the success of nurturing the relationships with partners and benefactors in communicating success stories. Roy reinforced this with a presentation on Media Relations, and how best to maximize the power of media to help tell and re-tell the stories that UNFPA Mongolia has to share. The retreat was then rounded out with an open office dialogue on issues that the team felt would improve work and life at UNFPA. In the end, overall feedback was extremely positive and encouraging, re-energizing the team to focus on the tasks at hand and to be confident in communicating for UNFPA Mongolia. The retreat was also visited by two amazing -- and mating – peacocks (residents of Corporate Nukht Resort) agreeing to our discussions from time to time with their screams! (see photo below).

By: A.Esguerra

Photo credits: Roy Wadia and Bayartstogt Sh.