Suburban
The Borrowdale Ratepayers and Residents Association (BRRA) successfully held their 2023 strategic planning workshop last Friday at the Borrowdale Brooke Country Club.
Peter Tanyanyiwa Suburban Reporter
The BRRA executive said the workshop set the pace for achieving unprecedented outcomes not only for 2023 but for many years to come.
According to the residents’ body’s leaders, the first stone has been laid and the rest will follow.
The BRRA leadership was happy that they were able to pull this through with the enthusiasm that exceeded their expectations.
Most committee members attended the workshop together with representatives from the Brooke Estate, Zimbabwe Republic Police Borrowdale Crime Liaison Committee and the City of Harare’s Borrowdale District Office.
Suburbs such as Hogherty Hill, Greystone Park, Borrowdale Central, Helensvale were all represented as the BRRA sought to establish the common good for Ward 18. Harare North Member of Parliament Mr Allan Markham also took part in the strategic planning session.
To get the meeting rolling, the BRRA chairperson Mr Robert Mutyasira welcomed the participants and briefly explained the objectives of the workshop.
“We need to define the strategy towards becoming more effective and impacting. Our footprint in the communities we represent is still obscure despite being among the best residents’ associations.
“This obscurity has affected our membership drive and being a subscriptions-based association our revenue is also affected leading to operational limitations.
“Our thrust therefore should be around visibility, brand building as well as community and stakeholder participation. BRRA must, after all these efforts, become a household name and the go to entity for residents in the entire ward.
“Realising the problems that voluntarism may harbour such as suppressed commitment and poor governance structures, we also walked into this workshop with the intention of further solidifying our governance structures. We aspire to become a robust institution that is transparent and accountable to subscribing members and other partners at whatever level,” said Mr Mutyasira.
He thanked the workshop facilitator, Dorcas Savanhu, who did her best to capture the essential and fundamental key areas of the purpose of the workshop despite the time constraints.
The BRRA leader said there are many things which will be looked into and put in a report which will lay their road map for development.
“We then discovered that our key result areas could not all be exhaustively addressed in the three hours.
“However, participants put in their best and we are looking forward to a report that is going to transform and build capacity of first our committee and then our ward.
“The workshop prompted us to introspect and establish where we are in terms of achievement against where we would want to be. Our ward has nearly 16 000 households.
“Judging from our membership data base, we are far from reaching even just 50 percent of that figure. We have therefore come out with a refreshed burden to put both our hands on the plough and enhance the effectiveness of all our faculties if we are to impact Ward 18 and increase our membership.
“We resolved to do a complete overhaul of our public relations sub-committee and, to this effect, we shall be holding a special purpose meeting soon to look at ways we can turn this portfolio into a magnet for enhanced community participation.
“This workshop was held on the backdrop of changes that the current national delimitation exercise has brought and whose outcomes may affect our current structure.
“The fundamental outcomes of the workshop will assist us in navigating the changes instituted by this process in spite of the direction they gravitate towards,” said Mr Mutyasira.
