Meet our member
Who we are
ACDI/VOCA is an economic development organization that fosters broad-based economic growth, raises living standards, and creates vibrant communities. ACDI/VOCA was established in 1963, has Headquarters in Washington DC and has been a LINGOs member since 2009.
What learning means to us
We are highly invested in developing our employees because ultimately it means we can do more for our beneficiaries. Over the last 50 years, we have worked in over 100 projects in 50 countries, so we know how important it is to provide consistent, high quality learning resources to our global staff.
Our commitment to learning means that LINGOs membership is an obvious choice. The resources, contacts, and support provided by LINGOs helps us foster, grow and expand our learning ecosystem. We love and appreciate that LINGOs is always updating their offerings, which gives our staff the latest in learning innovation. In fact, we’ve been so pleased with LINGOs that we recently became Level 3 members to access technologies such as CURATR and the new Articulate 360.
How we learn at ACDI/VOCA
We’ve developed a learning ecosystem, combining in-class, online live, and online asynchronous training, with social (informal) learning, ‘communities of practice’ that encompass both technical topics such as gender and job roles, and just-in-time resources.
The learning platform that hosts our learning ecosystem is called ASPIREglobal. The most important component of our ecosystem is the people. For each of our projects, we have Learning Champions who are onsite advocates for informal and formal learning initiatives. They share their experiences and ideas with our Staff Learning and Development (SLD) team at Headquarters, as well as with each other. This cross-organizational group (or community) of Learning Champions truly represents the commitment our organization, projects, and staff have to learning.
The difference learning has made
Our entire organization has greatly benefitted from learning through LINGOs. At Headquarters, the SLD team appreciate access to the eLearning development and training tools as well as the LINGOs office hours, virtual member meetings, and eLearning Guild resources. In the field, staff
particularly appreciate the eCornell courses and many have expressed excitement and gratitude for the generosity of this resource. Several field staff have completed certificates and told us that the learning we provide is the only learning they can access.
One staff member from a project in Iraq said, “The certificates impacted my work significantly in such a way that it paved the way for a series of training and workshop designs for our employees and partners under the different ACDI/VOCA projects.” A Learning Champion in Colombia wrote to us to say, “Of particular interest over the past few years have been the eCornell classes and the Speex language classes. Since many of our team members are interested in learning or brushing up on their English or French, these classes have been a big help.”
In addition, one of the most valuable, non-tangible benefits of LINGOs membership is that it allows us to share challenges and solutions for learning with other NGOs.
Our future learning plans
As an organization that values formal and social learning and innovations, ACDI/VOCA will continue to engage our staff to feel more connected as an organization. Our goal is to extend the use of our online role or technical topic-based ‘communities of practice, and to foster more cross-organizational learning and sharing. We want our staff to be more responsive to just-in-time staff development needs through all aspects of our learning ecosystem.
Our advice to you
At ACDI/VOCA, we believe that if staff receive consistent training and learning, our beneficiaries receive high quality results. In addition, we have found that providing learning to employees helps improve career satisfaction, employee retention, and overall organizational reputation.
In the current context NGOs are working in, we all need to be able to respond to the rapidly changing field of international development, incorporate lessons learned into our work and share these lessons globally. We need to have effective staff members who have access to the latest resources available for skills development. Learning through LINGOs’ resources allows us to meet all these needs.
Maura Bookter
Employee Development Director | Program Services, ACDI VOCA