By Ndefru Melanie in Buea
Hope Advocate Africa HADA Organization, together with its partners, Search for Common Grounds organized a joint strategy workshop and drilled young civil society organizations; executive directors and their financial officers schooled on pertinent issues with regards to building trust amongst donor community, a project called the Women’s inclusion in New Security.
The two-day capacity building and designed workshop took place on the October 25 and 27 at Buea Mountain Hotel. The Women’s Inclusion in New Security (WINS) program was a four and a half-year program implemented by Search for Common Ground (Search) and its global partner the University of San Diego’s Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice (Kroc IPJ) across five target countries; Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uzbekistan, and Yemen.
Implementation across each country happens on a rolling basis, with some countries starting up in Year 1 (2021-2022) and others later in Year two or three. The order of start-up is being decided in close consultation with S/GWI: Search country implementation teams, National WLO partners, and external stakeholders.
According to them “this is based on specific opportunities or challenges that we see in each country (see the updated Gender Analysis for the WINS program from January 2022), and Search country teams and partners’ readiness to kick-start implementation”.
Based on the results of the landscape analysis, Hope Advocate Africa with its partner Search for Common Grounds organized this joint strategy workshop where national and local WLOs were invited to discuss jointly the current gaps, challenges and priorities in the WPS and anti-GBV landscape in their countries, with particular interest when it comes to serving the needs of marginalized and minority women and girls.
The workshop methodology used Search’s tried and tested Community Dialogue Approach, which have often being applied to facilitate inter-generational dialogue or dialogue between WLOs from across a wide political and ideological spectrum.
Facilitation was done by Search’s Gender Expert for Africa, in-country Search staff, HADA staff, and possibly other WPS experts coming through Kroc IPJ’s WWPN network.
“Strong emphasis was on the co-design process for the workshop and in-depth preparation will be do to get more direct funding from international donors”, Madam HiweDeman talks on her message to the participants and what they intern to archive.
The Executive Director of Hope Advocate Africa HADA, Madam Caryn Dasieh talks on the reasons for the workshop.
“We are drilling young civil society organizations, on some very pertinent issues in regards to building trust amongst donor community and this project, which is called the Women’s Inclusion in New Security. It talks on the inclusion of more women within the security sector because we realized that women are more of peace builders”
“When we have more women in the security aspect which have to do with the peace building aspect, we all are faced by an ongoing conflict and we cannot undermined the role of women in building peace in Cameroon, so this project seeks to empower this women organizations so thwhen they go back to their communities, they can build peace”.
Hope Advocate Africa HADA Organization is making efforts on a daily basis to ensure women take their place in the Lamplight, bringing women to be pacesetters, peace brokers.