District Coordination Meeting

District Coordination Meetings are convened monthly in 8 districts ( Jaffna, Trincomalee, Batticaloa, Ampara, Kaluthara, Matara, Galle and Hambanthota), run for approximately 2 hours and held mainly at the Government Agent’s offices, with the aim of collecting information as to the current sector based activities of the particular district to date, the challenges being faced and how better to coordinate their activities.  As District level development and decision making powers mainly lie in the hand of local authorities, CHA will at all possible times ensure that they co-chair these meetings along with CHA. Hence, in addition to the Operational Agencies, invited to attend the meetings will be Government agencies, the relevant Divisional Secretary, and relevant Line Ministries representatives, including Health, Housing, Social Welfare, Resettlement and Disaster Relief Services, Disaster Management, Nation Building, Fisheries, Agriculture and Vocational Training. 

In these meetings the representatives of different organizations representing UN/(I)NGO and relevant government bodies will be updated on all the possible information available and useful to participant organizations. These will be through

1. activities, field visits, studies undertaken by CHA’s district and national stakeholders as well as other relevant institutions that have expertise in the relevant fields;
2. updates from external meetings that CHA staff actively participates in especially high level meetings at national level to advocate issues and update CHA stakeholders
3. briefs and findings from other districts through coordination meetings convened and/or participated by CHA District Officers placed in 12 Districts around the country

In addition to this, these meetings will also create space for these issues to be discussed at length, and for possible advocacy issues to be raised. These will be channeled to the CHA National Fora, and if not resolvable at that level, discussed at CCHA and other high level meetings and reported back to the districts. These issues can also act as a trigger to set off separate and thematic meetings for a focus group to act on and resolve such issues, either at district or national level.

Tentative Schedule is given below