Last week the En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T pre­sent­ed Al­ta with the NGO Award for Good Gov­er­nance dur­ing its 2017 Gala Din­ner. The event was a part of the Cham­ber's an­nu­al two-day Trinidad and To­ba­go En­er­gy Con­fer­ence which is re­gard­ed as the pre­mier En­er­gy Con­fer­ence in the Caribbean.

A to­tal of six awards were pre­sent­ed by the En­er­gy Cham­ber. The award pre­sent­ed to Al­ta was for the NGO sec­tor, while the oth­ers were open to com­pa­nies in Trinidad and To­ba­go and looked at their work in the ar­eas of Cor­po­rate So­cial Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

NGOs that were nom­i­nat­ed or ap­plied for the Good Gov­er­nance award had to show an es­tab­lished record of con­ti­nu­ity of work for a min­i­mum of three years, as well as the promise of sus­tained ac­tiv­i­ty in the fu­ture.

The cat­e­go­ry looked specif­i­cal­ly at Al­ta's abil­i­ty to demon­strate good gov­er­nance, our use of re­sources in an ef­fi­cient, ac­count­able and trans­par­ent man­ner and the mea­sures we have in place to pre­vent cor­rupt prac­tices and to pro­mote ac­count­abil­i­ty stan­dards.

In or­der to be con­sid­ered, Al­ta had to com­plete an en­try form de­tail­ing our back­ground, past, cur­rent and fu­ture ini­tia­tives, our or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture, our Board of Di­rec­tors' com­po­si­tion and elec­tions and our over­all mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­at­ing strate­gies. Af­ter this we learned that we had been short­list­ed and were re­quired to make a pre­sen­ta­tion to a pan­el of judges.

Our pre­sen­ta­tion looked at how we, as an NGO, prac­tice ac­count­abil­i­ty. Us­ing the T&T Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute's self as­sess­ment tool, we showed how Al­ta en­sures ac­count­abil­i­ty ba­sics, ac­count­able gov­er­nance, ac­count­able pro­grammes and ac­count­able re­source man­age­ment.

Al­ta prides it­self on good gov­er­nance.

We have a clear or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture and an in­de­pen­dent, elect­ed Board of Di­rec­tors whose mem­bers ac­tive­ly sup­port and guide the As­so­ci­a­tion's growth.

We are al­so legal­ly in­cor­po­rat­ed with char­i­ta­ble sta­tus and up-to-date au­dit­ed ac­counts. Every year we pro­duce a work plan and our an­nu­al re­port is pre­sent­ed at our An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing and pub­lished there­after.

Al­ta en­sures ac­count­able re­source man­age­ment through our vol­un­teer man­age­ment mod­el that puts vol­un­teers through a se­ries of steps be­fore we in­vest in train­ing them.

This en­sures that about 90 per cent of those trained com­plete their year of ser­vice, while sev­er­al stay on with Al­ta for many years.

We al­so en­sure that we prac­tise re­spon­si­ble mon­ey man­age­ment and do reg­u­lar pro­gramme mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion.

As we turn 25 this year, we are proud to re­ceive such a pres­ti­gious award from the En­er­gy Cham­ber of Trinidad and To­ba­go which speaks to our op­er­a­tions and strength as a lo­cal NGO.

MORE IN­FO

Vol­un­teer, Do­nate or Spon­sor-a-stu­dent. Call 624-2582 or email Al­ta­pos.tt@gmail.com for more in­fo. Keep up to date with Al­ta on Face­book, Twit­ter and In­sta­gram: Al­ta TT