Developing a Workplan

The development of a workplan is one of the key elements to ensuring a productive and results-oriented twinning partnership. The workplan outlines the overall goal and objectives of the partnership and then ties these to specific events, professional exchanges, and other activities. This section provides resources to help in the workplan development process.

1. Organizational Needs and Capacity Assessment - To help determine the priorities of the partnership, it is often useful for the partner organizations to conduct a needs assessment. Ideally, the assessment can be done when members of one partnership organizations are visiting the other. However, the assessment (and the workplan) can be developed virtually by e-mail, telephone, or other forms of remote communication.

• HIV/AIDS Twinning Center: Organizational Capacity Assessment Tool and Facilitator's Guide - This form was designed to help partners identify capacity-building needs as well as the types of technical support needed by the partner organizations. While some sections are focused specifically on HIV/AIDS, the form can easily be adapted to address other focus areas.
• AIHA: PMTCT Site Assessment Form - This is an example of a form that was developed to help assess the clinical capabilities of a site that provides PMTCT services.

2. Developing the Workplan - After the assessment is complete and the partners have agreed on what the key capacity-building needs are, the partners should begin working on developing a workplan.

• HIV/AIDS Twinning Center: Workplan Template and Guidelines - This form used for HIV/AIDS Twinning Center partnerships can easily be adapted and used by other partners. The workplan is built on the concept of identifying objectives and then planning activities that will help the partners to meet those objectives.
• HIV/AIDS Twinning Center: Sample Workplan
• HIV/AIDS Twinning Center: Workplan Review Form - Once you have completed a draft of the workplan, this checklist provides opportunities for partners and other stakeholders to review the workplan and provide comments.

• AIHA M&E Toolkit for New Partners - Chapters III and IV of this toolkit include useful guidelines on how to develop good performance objectives and indicators for a partnership workplan.

3. Developing a Budget - Once partners agree on the workplan, they need to look at the costs associated with each activity.

• HIV/AIDS Twinning Center: Simple Budget Template - This simplified version of AIHA's budget spreadsheet may not be completely relevant to partnerships that aren't funded by the Twinning Center, but it can give partners a sense of the types of costs that are involved in supporting professional exchanges and other types of partner activity.