JFC Naples hosted SHAPE Military Partnership Workshop and Quarterly Meeting. Photo by DEU Air Force Master Sgt. Dennis Tappe
NAPLES, Italy – On Feb. 1-2, JFC Naples Military Partnership Branch hosted the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe’s (SHAPE) Seat Allocation Process Workshop and its Military Partnership Quarterly Meeting. The two-day event was chaired by SHAPE’s Major General Odd Pedersen, Deputy Chief of Staff – Military Partnerships, and attended by partnership experts from International Military Staff, Bilateral Strategic Command, Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, SHAPE, Allied Land Command, Allied Maritime, NATO Special Operations Headquarters, JFC Brunssum and JFC Naples.
The event kicked off with a Seat Allocation Process (SAP) Workshop led by the SHAPE Military Partnership Division team. The SAP is a critical process that ensures NATO’s partner nations have access to various NATO training activities and events at NATO Centre’s of Excellence, NATO School Oberammergau and NATO Partner Training Education Centers. The workshops allowed the staffs to discuss several of the challenges that reside in the process and how workflow between headquarters should be aligned. The end result of the workshop was an agreement being reached on how to best align the steps in the multiple workflows to maximize efficiency of the partnership staffs in all the NATO headquarters.
The SHAPE Quarterly Meeting highlighted the second day with the main focus on partnership issues. Topics ranged from the partnership realm and included the Partnership Staff Program, Partnership Coordination Menu, Mobile Training Teams, Individually Tailored Roadmaps and an insight on how NATO Strategic Direction-South may change the way JFC Naples interacts with its partners. The discussions not only shared information between the different headquarters, it also provided an opportunity for synchronization and standardization of NATO’s many partnership efforts.
During the day, Pedersen had office calls with the JFC Naples Deputy Commander, Lieutenant General Alain Parent, the Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Luciano Portolano, and Assistant Chief of Staff J9, Brigadier General Reinhard Kloss. Pedersen was interested in how the SHAPE Military Partnership Division could best support JFC Naples in its partnership building activities on the Southern Flank.
The two-day event will impact on how the NATO’s Military Partnership Program continues to deliver world class NATO training to its partners while strengthening NATO’s collective defence through partnerships.
Story by JFC Naples Public Affairs Office