Forums

National Leadership Development Forums

PLP is supporting the establishment of National Leadership Development Forums (NLDFs) in several Pacific Island countries. An NLDF is a group of high level sector leaders who come together with a shared interest to support the future of their country through enabling more effective leadership.

Members of an NLDF are usually nominated as representatives from different sectors, such as business, education, civil society and Parliament. PLP is also supporting NLDFs to establish Secretariats to support their initatives.

The general guideline is NLDFs construct a simple framework of leadership priorities and make decisions about activities in which to engage and invest to meet these priorities. Learning and rigour will be enabled by close monitoring of activities (by PLP) with impacts fed back to the NLDF.

The principles underpinning the NLDFs include:

• Ownership of the group's vision and activities by prominent and influential country leaders.

• Learning from and contributing to international evidence and experience.

• Practical focus and action oriented – NLDFs are not a think tank, but a 'do tank' - a driver for supporting leadership in practice.

Tonga NLDF

The Tonga National Leadership Development Forum (TNLDF) is fully established and its members include respected individuals from various sectors in Tonga including a newly elected member of Parliament Lord Tuiafitu. The TNLDF currently has 10 members and is chaired by well known civil society leader, Mr Drew Havea. The TNLDF continues to actively identify key leadership issues for Tonga and provide advice and guidance to PLP on our programming to address these issues. 

TNLDF launched their program on 1st December, 2010 with the commissioning of a Leadership Baseline Survey in Tonga. The outcomes of Baseline Survey suggested the need for a National Leadership Code - something that the TNLDF has been actively progressing since its establishment. The TNLDF have undertake extensive community consultation in the development of the Code and with PLP's support, the scope of the project has expanded significantly to become an ongoing, National conversation on leadership practice. 

Samoa NLDF

Under the guidance of the Hon. Fiame Naomi Mata'afa, the Minister for Women, Community and Social Development, we will be establishing a National Leadership Development Forum in Samoa in 2011. This will be a cross-sectoral group of leaders that will come together to discuss key leadership issues in Samoa, and provide direction to PLP on appropriate programming for Samoa.

Preliminary discussion in 2010 has identified the issue of the conflict between traditional governance systems, and Constitution based decision making in the Courts as a key leadership issue in Samoa. We are looking forward to the development of the NLDF in 2011.