During the two-day gathering at the River Gardens hotel in Belihuloya, technical sessions and adventurous outdoor activities helped to foster the team spirit of AGSL. The AGSL Officers of Uva and Southern Provinces along with the team from the Colombo office gathered to share their thoughts, knowledge and experiences. The main technical sessions of the programme were: Evaluation for Project Management’ by Lindsey Mackinnon, Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist – UNDP, Enabling Environment (how to improve productivity and relate in the project implementation process) by Mr. Senaka Palliyaguru -Assistant District Secretary of Matara and the Development Challenges and Future of AGSL by Johannes Krassnitzer – Chief Technical Advisor of AGSL together with Mr. Rajendrakumar Ganesarajah - Senior Advisor on Local Governance and Administrative Reforms of UNDP.’

Further in the discussions, it also included the exchange of experience between the two Provinces, knowledge sharing and cooperation with other UNDP initiatives such as the new Governance LogoPro project.

Throughout the retreat all staff were experiencing the ‘life in a camp site’. Little reluctant at the beginning to adapt to the new setting - the camp site, the team was overwhelmed by the experience brought to them by the outdoor activities. The canoeing and the high rope course made the AGSL team stronger and brought them closer. None had done canoeing before but they faced the competition and re-affirmed their team spirit. The high rope course was the best of it all where the team experienced how the challenges could come in different shapes where all are capable of winning when unleashing one’s full potential.
The Retreat brought the whole AGSL team closer together and motivated them to work even harder with all its partners to foster development in Sri Lanka.

Promoting human development through numerous innovative approaches is what makes United Nations Development Programme’s ART GOLD Sri Lanka a different development project. Its territorial approach to development is multifaceted as AGSL promotes partnerships with decentralized actors in Sri Lanka and the donor countries while focusing on sustainable development initiatives which provide the grassroots communities in the Southern and Uva Provinces to achieve better standards of living. In this challenging way forward AGSL Team needs to strengthen their unity with the right team spirit. The ‘AGSL Retreat 2009’ was the place the team re-affirmed it.