CARE’s PPA is managed by CARE International UK (CIUK) on behalf of the whole CARE International confederation. With the advent of the new PPA in April 2005, which is bigger in scale and scope than its predecessor, and having recently taken on several new staff to work on the PPA, in the summer of 2005 we went through a strategy planning exercise to give focus and direction to our PPA implementation.

We evaluated our experience of supporting CARE’s work under the PPA themes, which has generated a large number of interesting but discrete activities. These activities have achieved impact in a widespread but small scale way. Being guided by the PPA goal — which is to improve development practice — we chose to adopt an approach which is focused on a smaller number of longer-term, more substantial initiatives. This means working with a narrower agenda in fewer locations for each theme, in order to generate deeper, more sustainable impact in the shape of institutionalised and embedded practices which are more effective at addressing the underlying causes of poverty. This approach is also designed to foster change on a bigger scale by placing greater emphasis on capturing and sharing lessons learned and developing some innovative methodologies for dissemination and exchange of experience in many different forums. Working on these is a priority for the next year.

The report is organised under the six themes of the PPA — civil society, conflict, HIV and AIDS, private sector, rights, and urban governance — and describes a few highlights of the work under each theme over the past year. These are necessarily brief so where possible we have referred to more substantial documentation that is available on our website.