Governance

The IFRTD is coordinated by a decentralised Secretariat working from locations in Latin America, Africa, Asia and the UK.The Secretariat facilitates the international network; providing support to IFRTD affiliated national networks (NFGs), co-ordinating and carrying out the Forum's international activities and raising and managing funds for the Secretariat and IFRTD's international and regional programmes.

In line with ihe strategy 2007-2011, the IFRTD Secretariat will become an independent organisation from its current host Practical Action as of April 1, 2009. In December 2007, a small task force consisting of regional representatives, Chair and the Executive Secretary was commissioned to draft the new governance structure. This new structure was presented to members of the Executive Committee during the last Executive Committee Meeting in Stockholm, November 2008.

New Governance Structure

The key new governance feature is that the new legal entity the IFRTD Secretariat – is governed by an independent Board of Directors who has full legal and financial responsibility for activities carried out by the IFRTD Secretariat (and funded by monies raised on behalf of or donated to the IFRTD Secretariat).  This Board of Directors will replace the host, Practical Action.

The current Executive Committee, consisting of regional representatives, institutional members (now called institutional partners) and co-opted members, will continue its steering and advisory role and be responsible to provide strategic direction to the IFRTD network, the Board of Directors and IFRTD Secretariat.

These changes arise from the obligatory legal responsibilities of the new Charity under UK law and are discussed in more detail by clicking here. As in the old informal governance structure where there were three components (the Executive Committee, Practical Action’s Programme and Policy Director and the IFRTD Secretariat), today the Board of Directors is legally and financially responsible for governing the IFRTD Executive Secretary and Secretariat while the Executive Committee continues to provide strategic direction.

The new Governance structure therefore consists of:

• Executive Committee (representative of the wider IFRTD network and donor community, a steering and advisory body to the IFRTD Board of Directors and Secretariat but with no legal responsibility or status)
• Board of Directors (created by the members of the Executive Committee to implement the strategy proposed by the Executive Committee as well as govern the IFRTD Secretariat)
• IFRTD Secretariat (to implement the actions decided by the Board of Directors and reporting to this Board).

In addition to adopting the new governance structure -which is available in full by clicking here- the Executive Committee also approved the nominated founding board members.

For the first two years (2009-2010) a small founding board (pictured above) has been approved consisting of (from left to right):

• One representative from Latin America: Roberto Aguerreberre, Institute Mexicano del Transporte, Mexico
• One representative from Eastern and Southern Africa: Nite Tanzarn, Gender and Transport Specialist, Uganda
• Chair (and Asia representative) Danang Parikesit, Professor Gadja Mada University, Indonesia (click here for more information about our chairman)
• Treasurer (UK) Roma Thomas, Communications Consultant, Transport for London
• One representative from Central and West Africa: Sirpe Gnanderman, University of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

With this new governance structure in place the IFRTD Secretariat is now moving ahead with the process of registering the IFRTD Secretariat as an independent organisation, which will include establishing a new financial and HR system subject to the approval of the new Board.

To download copies of the agenda and minutes (in pdf and Word format) from the last two Executive Committee meetings, held in Stockholm (2008) and Berne (2007)respectively, then please click on the following links:

Executive Committee Agenda 2008 (pdf 30kb)
Executive Committee Minutes 2008 (pdf198kb)
Executive Committee Agenda 2008 (Word 45kb)
Executive Committee Minutes 2008 ( Word 1.2mb)

Executive Committee Agenda 2007 (pdf 506kb)
Executive Committee Minutes 2007 (pdf542kb)
Executive Committee Agenda 2007 (Word 50kb)
Executive Committee Minutes 2007 ( Word 513kb)

A CD-ROM containing full copies of the presentations given during each ECM accompanies these minutes. To receive a copy please email: ifrtd@ifrtd.org.

For more information about IFRTD's governance please refer to our new governance and advisory structure (December 2008) which replaces the previous structure and IFRTD's current strategy 2007-2011 by clicking on the following links:

IFRTD Strategy 2007-2011
New Governance and Advisory Structure (pdf 122kb)