PARTNERS CALLED TO CONSIDER EMPOWERMENT OF LOCAL CBOS IN PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION

Stakeholders during the phaseout engagement.

By Godwin Abedican
Arua City
 
Terego district chairperson Wilfred Saka has decried the limited involvement of Community Based Organizations (CBOs) by national and international organizations during project implementation which he says affects the sustainability of projects when partners end their project mandates.
 
Speaking during an engagement for the phase out of the Technical Assistance component of the Early Childhood and Graduation Project program which has been implemented by BRAC Uganda in Terego and Madi Okollo districts where 40 CBOs were supported on sustainability, Sakka said, there are many organizations that implemented programs and projects in the districts that are hosting refugees, but, since they didn’t have sustainability plans by involving the locals and CBOs, their projects have no traces after they left.
 
“The capacity of CBOs and refugee led organizations that has been built by Brac is a good step in the right direction that other organizations need to take up. That is the biggest way of sustainability. Many organizations come to do interventions in the districts and when projects come to an end, they move out with all their resources including the human resource without building the capacity of the local people who could help sustain their projects,” he said.

Meanwhile according to Joseph Kabanda, the Program Manager Early Childhood and Graduation project at BRAC Uganda, involving Community based organizations helps in local ownership of partner interventions for sustainability.
 
“We were able to customize trainings and packages for the CBOs. We have been happy to see that many of them have been able to benefit from this training and many of them will be able to change their way of doing work especially as they implement teaching and learning in the ECD centers. Teachers or play leaders in the respective CBOs have been able to implement the various strategies that we taught them,” Kabanda mentioned in an interview.
 
“With this we are able to forge a way forward on how we are going to sustain these results in order to see that the little that has been obtained by these several CBOs can be sustained and potentially scaled across different other areas within West Nile,” he added.
 
The support to the CBOs included aspects of material development, class organization, handling children, parental engagement, training of teachers and training of parents.
 
According to Godfrey Dricile, the Executive Director of Community Empowerment for Transformation Action (CEFTRA) West Nile, one of the CBOs that benefited from capacity building notes that much as the CBOs are ready to take up the task of sustainability many face resource constraints.
 
“We learnt a lot and we wish more of such trainings. The project targeted few nursery schools and which means there are still more nursery schools which needed to be included. We have a challenge where the CBOs are not well facilitated via sustainability and which still remains a gap. As we have already committed, we remain steadfast to do what we can and we are ready to continue amidst the challenge of the funds,” Dricile noted.

Over the past three years, the Early Childhood and Graduation Project with the support of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation-has touched the lives of more than 700 households and over 4,200 vulnerable and marginalized children and their caregivers across Terego and Madi-Okollo districts in the areas of play based models for children aged 3-6 years and livelihood support for their caregivers.