CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANISATIONS URGED TO NETWORK October 5, 2018

A lead Consultant with Turning Point Development Consulting [TPDC], Mr. Sumaila S. Saaka has advised Civil Society Organisations [CSOs] and other Community Based Organisations [CBOs] to get into networks and unify whenever that need was obvious as that may be the only way out in attracting huge multinational donors to help their course.

 

Mr. Saaka gave the advice at a day’s CSOs meeting organised recently by a Bolgatanga-based local-governance-centered NGO known as TEERE. He noted that networking was the emergent phenomenon in modern times paving the way for like-minded organsiations to embrace a collaborative process, engage in joint decision making and begin to act as a coherent entity. This he further noted, was even more important because some NGOs often lacked the stature and capacity to access and administer certain volumes of grants and donor-packages.

The Consultant urged CSOs not to shy away from networking stressing that, in a proper and a well-structured networking set up, the individual civil society organisations and other member-groups will continue to retain their basic autonomy, with their own identity, mission, and administrative structures intact. According to him, these networks would allow for the mutual exchanging of ideas and resources as well as create an effective platform for achieving common social goals.

He mentioned clarity of purpose and principles, clear timelines and commitment, trust and all-inclusiveness as well as participatory decision-making structures and innovative accountability mechanisms as some basic guidelines to consider in the formation of Networking groups or coalitions. 

Mr. Maxwell Babilo Banu, TEERE M&E Manager Doing His Presentation

Mr. Saaka stated that networks can better enhance the power and influence of citizens’ voice in advocating for policies and improving governance especially, at the local and community levels. He observed that in addition, civil society networks have become partners of choice for many international development agencies that seek to maximise the reach, scale and impacts of their programmes globally.

The Monitoring and Evaluation Manager of TEERE, Mr. Maxwell Babilo Banu in his presentation at the event disclosed that the roll out and implementation of the TEERE Local Governance Forum [TLGF] which started in 2016, led to engagements with the local people in the Zorkor Community in Bongo District, in Pelungu in the Nabdam District and a regional forum in the Upper East Regional capital, Bolgatanga.

He revealed some of the issues discussed at these fora to include forced marriages, teenage pregnancies, lack of critical amenities in the communities such as potable water points, inaccessibility to decision makers at the local level, bad road networks, systematic barriers to all-inclusiveness and the absence of a working development plan for the country among other pertinent issues. 

According to Mr. Banu, the TLGF came under TEERE’s governance thematic area whose major objective was to create an interface for local government actors at the community, district, regional and national levels to discuss Ghana’s decentralisation policy and its implementation, with the ultimate goal of improving livelihoods in the country’s poor communities. The forum also gave a rare opportunity for the expression and inclusion of views from non-traditional stakeholders such as chiefs and queen mothers, spiritual leaders, local structures of political parties, community-based organisations, religious bodies, farmer groups, youth groups and marginalised groups including people living with disabilities.

Participants Listening Keenly At The Meeting

The TEERE officer observed that the TLGF which was mainly funded by the Robert Bosch Foundation of Germany, generated the needed public debate on local government policy to accelerate decentralisation reforms. It also provided a platform for practitioners as well as local governance experts to share ideas on decentralisation and local governance while it provided a platform for interactions between local government leadership and citizens so as to enhance responsiveness to citizens’ needs and citizens’ participation in governance at the local and national levels. Additionally, it promoted activism among CSOs and the public to demand improved service delivery from public institutions.

Touching on other interventions by his outfit, the M&E Officer revealed that TEERE had secured funds from the German Embassy to support 50 women from five communities in the Bongo District in dry season irrigation farming. Meanwhile, the NGO had already secured and donated medical supplies worth 35,000.00 EUROs to the Bongo District Hospital, a donation which was financed by the Inter-NATIONAL CHILDREN Help e.V. 

Mr. Banu hinted that his organisation was awaiting a second consignment of medical equipment due to arrive in Ghana by November 2018.The package he revealed includes, 59 beds, three walkers, tables and chairs, bed cabinets and chests for conveying medicines, two treatment beds, two ultrasound devices, a lung test device, an ECG device and 200 food trays among others.