Welcome to CENFACS’ Online Diary!
02 May 2018
Post No. 37
The Week’s Contents
• All in Development Stories project (May Stories): Local People’s Stories, Tell it!
• RILIVES programme
• Halving Poverty continues…
Key Highlights of the Week’s Contents
Before highlighting this week’s contents, let us thank those who spent time to reflect on Making Transitional Economy Work for Poor Families on our last week’s Reflection Day. It is a great gesture to spend only ONE DAY OUT OF THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FIVE DAYS (1 out of 365 days) in a year to think of poor families, and among them are particularly but not exclusively poor women and children. Well done supporters!
Our All in Development Stories project (May month of poverty relief and development stories) has already kicked off. This year’s and month’s stories are made with Local People’s Stories of Poverty Relief and Sustainable Development. We have made this choice to highlight our Local Year Campaign or Local People’s Year.
We have added to the May menu the BIG CATS stories to raise awareness and engineer action against the threats and risks endangered animals (such as lions, tigers, leopards and jaguars), to name the few, are experiencing from extermination and extinction in Africa and elsewhere in the world.
The week is as well of Projects Planning and Development under the RILIVES programme, which is African Rebuilding and Sustaining Infrastructures and Lives programme. Spring 2018 projects planning and development will be to rethink, discuss and develop sustainable ways to rebuild lives of endangered BIG CATS.
So, telling their stories and finding ways of reducing threats on their lives while saving and rebuilding their race will be our wildlife campaigning focus until the end of Spring.
Halving Poverty which started last week continues over this Spring. We are keeping our resilience in making the case to halve poverty experienced by children without access to safe drinking water and sanitation services in Africa. Those who want to donate and or leave a legacy are welcome to do so.
For further details about this appeal, go to http://cenfacs.org.uk/supporting-us/
• RILIVES programme: Spring 2018 Projects Planning and Development
RILIVES (African Rebuilding & Sustaining Infrastructures & Lives) Programme should not be confused with ReLive Spring fundraising campaign, which is done through ReLive communication online and print materials.
RILIVES is a programme while ReLive is a project, a fundraising campaign made of 14 gifts of renewing lives. ReLive is part and practical expression of RILIVES.
Likewise, the gifts or life-renewing projects (LRPs) making the ReLive campaign should not be confused with Light projects. Basically, LRPs are about doing something about poverty and hardships through money donation whereas Lights Projects consist of doing something about poverty and hardships without donating money (by using skills such as communication, negotiation, networking, advocacy, lobbying etc.). Light projects are mostly wintry projects while LRPs are Spring-like initiatives.
As said above, Spring 2018 projects planning and development will be to rethink, discuss and develop sustainable ways to rebuild lives of endangered BIG CATS that are continuously and critically threatened for extinction. We hope our projects planning and development will generate proposals for our new BIG CATS advocacy work, which will revolve around developing actions to stop illegal wildlife trade.
For more information about our work under RILIVES programme for this Spring and the BIG CATS Campaign, contact CENFACS.
• MAY STORIES: All in Development Stories
Story telling is our main content for this month of May. It is the month and time of the year we dedicate ourselves to telling and sharing poverty relief and development stories. Why?
This is because in whatever we do to help reduce poverty and appeal for support to development process, there is always a story to tell and share from various places we intervene and from different individuals and communities or organisations involving in our work.
How do we tell and share these stories? We do it through All in Development Stories project.
•• WHAT IS ALL in DEVELOPMENT STORIES project?
All in Development STORIES (AiDS) is a life story developing, telling, sharing and learning project set up by CENFACS in 2009 in order to give opportunities to volunteers, interns and other development supporters to inspire others and spread the good news and will of better change to the community. The project, which is run during the month of May, has three dimensions as follows:
- AiDS is a telling and sharing story
It is about telling and sharing with us your experience and achievements made in the fields of local (UK) and International (Africa) developments
- AiDS is a learning and development process
It is also about learning from volunteers and interns how they improved their own life, changed deprived lives and reached out to the needy communities. After learning, one can try to develop strengths and better practices to solve problems.
- AiDS is an inspirational and motivational support network
After all, the project seeks to inspire and motivate others in the road of change for change, especially those who might prepare and use their summer break or any other occasions to take up volunteering and or internship roles and positions.
Finally, • AiDS is a state-of-the-art project as it enables us to get up-to-date information, knowledge and thinking in the fields of poverty reduction and development from those who went on the grounds to learn and experience real-life development works. They return with volunteering stories to tell and share.
This year’s storytelling and sharing will be about Local People’s Stories of Poverty Relief and Sustainable Development.
We have chosen to focus on local people as we are in CENFACS’ Year of Local People. Getting and exchanging stories with them is a great way of sharing the fruits of sustainable development work and change, and of supporting one another.
This year, we have added to our usual May menu a special type of stories – BIG CATS Stories.
•• MAY STORIES ADDITION: BIG CATS STORIES
The BIG CATS stories are the stories of protection and prevention of the extension of threatened animal species, here the BIG CATS. There is an expanded definition of BIG CATS which include many varieties. For the need of our May Stories, we are going to focus on the following BIG CATS: lions, tigers, leopards and jaguars. The stories about them are some examples of the accounts of protection and safeguard of the world’s cultural and natural heritage.
•• MORE ABOUT MAY 2018 STORIES
••• LOCAL PEOPLE’S STORIES
They are human stories from local people as change makers or witnesses in helping to reduce poverty and to enhance sustainable development.
Stories about initiatives taken by local people
Stories can come from what local people do every day to make the world (the local area) a better place to live. What they do can be just little things they do to relieve poverty and hardships experienced by themselves or others. These things do not need to big or spectacular.
An example of initiative-taken story from a local person could be an account related to donating food to a food bank to help increase food stock and reduce food deprivation from those suffering with hunger or starvation.
Stories about projects and events witnessed by local people
They can also be the things local people witnessed that helped to reduce or end poverty as well as to improve the quality of life. They could be witnesses in their daily life, at work, during holidays, at field work environment etc. In this respect, their stories will come from the things they witness.
An example of witness story from a local poverty reliever could be watching, listening and telling the copying and surviving strategies of homeless people, as well as feeding this information to local decision making bodies to change the lives of those homeless people.
••• TYPES OF 2018 STORIES
8 types of poverty relief and sustainable development stories related to each of the following selected local people in their capacities in making the local and global worlds better places to live and work:
Local project/programme beneficiaries (1); Local supporters, volunteers and interns on local projects (2); Representatives of local African organisations such as workers, leaders, managers and board members) (3); Staff members and project/programme employees of local poverty relief organisations (4); Self-employees/local project owners like local farmers (5); Members of African organisations (6); Local authorities linked to overseas development projects/programmes (7); (8) Local environmentalists and conservationists
••• 2018 STORY AREAS OF INTEREST
We take stories that cover any areas of poverty reduction and local and international sustainable developments.
••• CONTEXTS OF STORIES
Stories could come from any level of project/programme cycle (i.e. planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and review) as long as it is to do with poverty reduction and sustainable development. They could also be a result of research and field work activities or studies. They could finally be an experience of every day life.
••• CALL FOR 2018 ENTRIES –
ANNOTED TIME FOR STORY SUBMISSION 2018
Start of online (e-mail) and paper-based submission (01/05/2018)
Story submission deadline (31/05/2018)
Notification of receipt/acceptance (by 17/06/2018)
Submission of revised stories (01/05/2018 to 31/05/2018)
Closing date of submission (31/05/2018)
••• CENFACS STORY TELLING & SHARING TERMS
To tell and/or share your life-changing story, please let us know who you are, where and when your experience took place and of course the story itself. You could also text, twit and send some forms of supporting materials/resources to back up your story. Should you wish not to be named, please let us know. Please see below our story telling, sharing and learning terms.
- We welcome both told and untold stories
- Inside, witness, news, behind the scenes & case stories are eligible
- We only take real life stories, not fiction stories or fake news
- Tell true and evidence-based stories only, not lies
- If possible, back up your stories with facts and data (numbers or words)
- Mention location, dates and names of events in the story
- We accept photos, videos and other forms of resources (e.g. digital or e- technologies) to support, capture and communicate the impact of your story
- Plagiarism, prohibited, offensive, violation of copyrights and unlawful/illegal materials are not accepted
- Hacking, flaming, spamming, ransom ware, phishing and trolling practices are not accepted as well. For clarification, contact CENFACS
Tell and share your story of change for change by communicating the impact you make!
Thank you for visiting CENFACS website and reading this post.
Thank you as well to those who made comments about our weekly posts.
We look forward to receiving your regular visits and continuing support during 2018.
With many thanks
