Advocacy Centre participates in EU’S “Cross State Regional Reflection for ACT-CSOs”
Youths and Environmental Advocacy Centre (YEAC-Nigeria) participated in a “Cross State Regional Reflection for ACT-CSOs” organized by European Union (EU)-Agents for Citizens-driven Transformation (ACT) Programme in Lagos from May 16-17.
(EU-ACT Programme Rivers State Focal Person, Temple Oraeki setting agenda for the event)
The two days event which held at the Lagos Continental Hotel started from 9AM daily and had civil society organizations (CSOs) who are partners of the EU-ACT programme of the British Council from Rivers and Plateau States in attendance. The programme was organized to further train the partners and have them share experiences, reflect on different capacity development areas, ways of translating same to institutional capacity building for sectorial transformation, effective project implementation and impactful humanitarian service delivery that promotes Civic Action and Sustainable Communities.
Declaring the event open, Hafsat Abdullahi Mustafa, British Council’s Senior Consultant on the ACT Programme welcomed the CSO partners to the program and commended them for the various works that they are doing and implementing in their states for community development. She stressed the importance and purpose of the gathering adding that the Cross State regional reflection was apt to the ACT programme as it would offer partners opportunity to cross-reflect on ideas and learn from each other for more impacts on return to their states.
Hafsat Abdullahi Mustafa, British Council’s Senior Consultant on the ACT Programme speak with seated Executive Director of YEAC, Fyneface Dumnamene
The Day-1 event which was facilitated by Hafsat and a panel of assessors comprising of media representatives including programme officers Chisom Eze, Mary Dalughut and Temple Oraeki, Rivers State focal person of the ACT Programme saw participants breakout session 1 shared into a group of five persons per state and given opportunity to share experiences and make contributions on different topics and thematic areas including;
- Translating capacity building to institutional building is essential to NGO sustainability
- NGO accountability increases legitimacy
- Programme evaluation and documenting outcome result can make your NGO successful Stakeholder identification and influencing are important to project management
Day 1 activities continued with a plenary session and partners’ engagement with the ACT-Team appraising and asking questions to determine how the various capacity building training programs and mentorships so far organized have impacted benefiting participants and their organizations. The guiding questions for this session hover around;
- What was different?
- How will you sustain it?
- What should we improve on?
A further break-out session on day one witnessed Cross- state learning and presentations from two groups on different topics including Citizen Engagement, Government engagement, Regulatory environment, Gender and social inclusion as well as Media engagement and partnership.
Day 2 activities commenced with presentations by representatives of “Capacity Development Providers’ (CDPs) who are consultants to the EU-ACT programme and linkage with CSO partners for further support. The session enabled ACT- programme partners from Rivers and Plateau States understand who the CDPs are, intended outcome of their involvement in the program and partnership with the ACT programme for development service delivery. The session which was facilitated by the CDP representatives gave opportunities for the cross-state regional partners to know the workings of the CDPs and asked questions for clarifications.
The event continued on the last day with presentations by Tolase of the ACT programme on the development of ACT Project Compendium; expectations for ACT project compendium, CSO project briefs and submission of project briefs to ACT-Team by CSO partners who are already implementing EU-ACT funded projects in the affected states.
The programme wrapped-up later in the evening with a dinner night featuring comedy and colourful cultural exchange activities between Rivers and Plateau State partners comprising of people from different cultural backgrounds from the South-South, South East, North Central and North Eastern Nigeria who are EU-ACT partners living and working in Rivers and Plateau states invited for the programme. Participating CSOs from Rivers State include Kabetkache Women Development and Resource Centre, D-Ability Initiative, Harmony Centre, Centre for Creative Development Strategies, VEANI, SISDEV, EIFEY, LOCE, Talklove Africa, Rivers CSO Network, CENGOS, etc. Youths and Environmental Advocacy Centre (YEAC) was represented at the programme by its Executive Director, Fyneface Dumnamene Fyneface and participated in different group activities on behalf of the organization.
PHOTO GALLERY
The event hashtags
A cross section of Rivers CSO Partners on arrival at the Port Harcourt International Airport (Domestic WIng) on May 18 after the programme in Lagos