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First hand testimonies

Testing and learning, or implementation at a forced march

2022-03-14T11:16:02+00:00August 30th, 2020|

When a donor launches a call for proposals, the time lapse between the submission of the proposal and the beginning of the project can commonly take from 6 months to a year. This supposes that the circumstances have remained the same – which is obviously untrue! Furthermore, organisations often have limited time and means to write proposals. Of course, they know their work, targets and challenges, but writing a proposal is a clever mix of actual needs on the field, the organisation’s capacities and choices, and donor guidelines. From all this emerges a project, based on hypotheses and priorities corresponding to [...]

How important are my values to me?

2022-03-12T11:40:30+00:00July 30th, 2020|

About a week ago, I met a long-time friend who works for a local human rights NGO. He looked really upset and admitted with regret he was disillusioned as, he explained: ‘…in our organisation, staff is estimated at20 people;50 % of them are trainees working without contracts… For over 5 years, many of them have not had social security, and in terms of salaries, payment is delayed 2 out of every 3 months, although our cash flow is regular... This situation appals me all the more because our internal values are equity –transparency-humanity- integrity’. It made me think about how we choose [...]

“You can’t be what you can’t see” (Aurélie Salvaire)

2022-03-11T13:45:16+00:00June 30th, 2020|

For two decades, I have been committed to the civil society sector, first as a humanitarian worker, and then as an organisational development practitioner. My daily work is to support civil society organisations in reaching their full potential, in becoming strategic and resilient. Working alongside civil society organisations has helped me develop a global view of factors that hinder the effectiveness and development of these organisations. «Be the change you want to see in this world» (Ghandi) It is unanimous: shoemakers’ children are the worst shod. Civil society actors are no different. We must surely all recognise that development actions have [...]

Clean funding for civil society organisations: ethics and racketeering in Cameroon

2022-03-11T13:45:15+00:00May 30th, 2020|

Credibility of funders’ procedures Donors intervening in environmental preservation actions of civil society organisationsin the Congo Basin espouse their reputation of exhibiting and seeking transparency, effectiveness and efficiency in the initiatives they support. This is demonstrated in several areas. Firstly, by the rigidity of the procedures that regulate the funding processes, which are accessible only to a restricted elite of civil society organisations. Secondly, in the monitoring processes that these organisations must follow; compliance with implementation deadlines, operational and financial reporting, etc. However, the added value of expected results is questionable. If we consider all the contributions made to CSOs in [...]

What is the real meaning of partnership?

2022-03-11T13:45:16+00:00April 24th, 2020|

Do relationships between donors and organisations have to involve some form of tension? Does there have to be a power dynamic at play between international non-governmental organisations (INGO) and civil society organisations (CSO)? Some may argue that this is not always the case, but we can’t deny that often it is. Partnerships are fundamental to our work and our sector. Without partnerships it is difficult to resource our work and there is also often a richness in collaboration that allows for more to be achieved together than what can be done alone. Being in partnership acknowledges a mutually beneficial relationship that [...]

Looking for change? Action!

2022-03-11T13:45:15+00:00April 13th, 2020|

Advocacy seems to be “à la mode” and figures in the plans of many platforms and individual organisations as an important strategic area of their work. Putting it in a plan is one thing but putting it in practice is another. Many advocacy efforts end with submitting a position paper to a high ranking governmental official. If your goal is to influence government so they change laws and policies for the benefit of the people you are working with (your beneficiaries), advocacy is a way to go. It demands a diversity of well targeted actions, knowing when to undertake which actions [...]

Wake up the resilient leader in you!

2022-03-11T13:45:15+00:00March 26th, 2020|

These are unpredictable times during which we cannot know from one day to the next how the Covid-19 pandemic will evolve. We can’t anticipate, nor control, the measures our leaders will take. I feel I have been through this before, with a different dimension. I am Congolese from Goma, and I am part of the unlucky, or lucky, generation that has lived in a Congo at war for two decades. But this war against Covid 19 is different: we can’t see the enemy, only the damage it is causing. Our clients, the civil society organisations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, [...]

How interventions in the “North” can jeopardise leadership in the “South”

2022-03-11T13:45:15+00:00March 5th, 2020|

Behind popular concepts, real imbalances remain Working for a long time with European NGOs linked to Africa, I was often embarrassed by the unspoken vertical relationship, and by the imbalance that often occurs between an NGO from the North and a partner organisation from the South. Northern NGOs, and funders, want to implement projects and programmes they care for and to answer problems they have identified as priorities by putting forward the answers they find the most relevant and urgent.   Nowadays, there is a trend to consult southern NGOs and to get them to participate in the conception of projects, to [...]

Local Communities Placed at the Centre of Forest Management in the DRC

2022-03-11T13:45:08+00:00March 27th, 2017|

Stakeholders working to ensure the sustainable management of forests in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have resolved to put communities living in and around forest concessions at the heart of things. Since 2015, national and international actors alongside the government of the DRC have worked to put in place a national strategy on community forestry that will ensure that forest communities benefit from the management and use of their forests. This was in part motivated by publication of the community forestry law no. 011/2002 of 29 August 2002. The development of the strategy benefited from the contribution of Congolese CSOs, [...]

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