The OCB programme was started around two women: Anne Weber Carlsen, who was the Program Director, and Dorcas Ansah who was the Coordinator of OCB programme. Today the program has grown to incorporate 5 support staff and 5 program staff. To the program staff, their story speaks for itself.

The program has divided its work into 2 units - one which designs and delivers Learning and Training programs to the NGO community that facilitates civil society empowerment, and a second unit that designs and facilitates Organization Development processes of locally-based NGO’s.

This is in no way a simple and clear-cut set of activities. Indeed a peep into a typical day of work in the life of the OCB program would tell the story. The title of that story would be “The Triumphs and Turbulence of a Team”. As the reader turns the pages of that story s/he would immediately be gripped and thrilled by a key personality who drives and sustains the program and its work. That Person has the intuitive characteristics of the Heart; the playful creativity of Imagination; the cool collected logic of the Mind and the focus and drive of the Spirit. This is a person who has battled to be true to the values that underlie the program’s value-based approach and has therefore now become a credible and competent resource for the NGO community in Ghana.

Watch that Person design and carry out a Leadership Development process to support leaders, who have equated position with power, to use their power to empower. How did she know exactly what to say to that troubled leader with deep questions about his experience with the strong resistance he is experiencing from his subordinates and colleagues?

Watch that Person carry out a Facilitator Development Program that brings NGO workers freedom from set methods of facilitation, and brings commitment to the value of listening to the grass root, of learning and of acting anew. How did he know exactly how to challenge the complacent facilitator of a community-based program, whose approach has quenched the spirit and initiative of his target group?

It was all learnt on the job. Through the turbulence of teamwork this Person has grown into a valuable resource to the program’s target group. And that growth all happened within the team. By applying the very disciplines that the program seeks to imbibe in its target group, Grace, Godwin, Daniel, Osman, Alfred, Dorcas, Kwami, Dzifa, Robert and Esi have metamorphosed into the Heart, the Imagination, the Mind and the Spirit of that Person called the OCB Team.