Welcome to CENFACS’ Online Diary!
29 August 2018
Post No. 54
The Week’s Contents
• The Lake Chad Basin Appeal
• Tourism as Enhancer of Sustainable Development
• All-in-One Feedback (Users’ and Supporters’ Experience): Report on Reports
… and much more!
Key Messages from the Week’s Contents
The Lake Chad Basin Appeal for Peace, Food and Water
The top sustainable development story of this week’s communication is what is happening in the Lake Chad Basin where millions of people have been displaced since 2017 because of long-neglected conflicts and environmental degradation of the Lake.
CENFACS is appealing for something to be done to end this displacement and improve the living conditions of the victims of these conflicts and peoples of the Lake Chad Basin. The case of Lake Chad Basin is a perfect example of the combination of environmental degradation with the shrinkage of the basin and regional conflicts between extremists and regional armed forces. This part of the world desperately needs peace, food and water as well as rebuilding.
For more on this appeal, read under the Main Developments section of this post.
Tourism as Enhancer of Sustainable Development
Our Trending month continues with Tourism as an enhancer of sustainable development. In the last four weeks, we spent time in following the direction of poverty relief through tourism. The remaining two days of our Trending activity will be devoted to tourism as a way of improving sustainable development.
We are following the multi-dimensional aspects of sustainability and how they relate or correlate with tourism. Our focus is not only on how tourism enhances sustainable development generally, but also on how it improves the quality of life or boosts the development that meets the needs of the poor and their future generations specifically.
For further details on this two-day trending activity and Trending in Poverty Relief through Tourism, contact CENFACS.
All-in-One Feedback – Users’ and Supporters’ Experience: Report on Reports
This week’s development news is finally the report on your report about the experiences you had about CENFACS projects and programmes and their impacts. It is about giving you the news about your report or say as users, supporters or web readers about All-in-one feedback we asked you during our Analytics month last July.
Again, read under the Main Developments section about the news on your feedback.
Main Developments of the Week’s Contents
• The Lake Chad Basin Appeal
What this appeal is about
It is about supporting the displaced people around the Lake Chad region as a result of ongoing deadly conflicts between armed militancy and predatory armies of the region.
The appeal is not an awareness-raising campaign about poverty, but it is an appeal to do something against poverty and hardships in the Lake Chad Basin.
CENFACS would like to appeal to you to address a long-neglected conflict which rose into violent extremism and dire insecurity within this region.
What is the Lake Chad Basin conflict?
The Lake Chad Basin includes the following countries: Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria. The Lake Chad has been shrunk by nine-tenths as result of climate change, population growth and irrigation. In addition to this natural calamity or shrinkage, the Lake is now subject to other misfortunes related to high level of insecurity. The insecurity is mostly caused by deadly conflicts between group activists or extremists and regional armies. This has led to the displacement of around 10 million people since 2017 according local sources.
What CENFACS would like you to do
Whenever there is a general humanitarian relief appeal, there is always some concern about asking and giving money. In the contrary, whenever CENFACS appeal to do something about people and communities in desperate need, it is not always about asking people to donate money. Money is not always a king to change deprived lives. Little or simple things can be the real change makers.
There are simple things that one can do to influence the situation on the grounds where there is suffering. These things could include:
making a telephone call to someone who can change lives on the grounds, advocacy, lobbying, campaigning, raising your voice about the issue in a gathering, making the issue top story of your communications, and exchanging views on the social media platforms about the issue.
It is all about communicating or talking with those who may have the powers to change lives and things on the grounds to do something.
In fact, in today’s world of digital and online technologies, it has become even more easier than before to support whether through social media platforms or other networking outlets; to engage people in discussions, thoughts and actions to do something. These little or small things can make BIG impacts on the lives of sufferers.
The above named things are the ones CENFACS want you to do in order to bring a glimmer of hope to the displaced people around the Lake Chad Basin. One can think of those kids, displaced in this region, who may not have (even for ever) the opportunity to enjoy education this September or in their life, let alone the fact of being homeless and have lost all your belongings including your family members as a result of continuing conflicts and environmental degradation in the region.
What supporting the Lake Chad Basin can achieve: Peace, Food and Water
Supporting this highly deserving cause of poverty relief and sustainable development will be a gift to be treasured by those who will receive it as it will help to achieve the following benefits:
√ Helping poor displaced families to make a living
√ Restoring agriculture, fishing and livestock which are dying with the shrinkage of the Lake and the conflict-driven region
√ Stopping children and young people for earlier becoming forced fighters and helping them to return to and gain education for peace and sustainable development
√ Enabling farmers to earn a living, to self-help and self-sustain
√ Feeding the hungry displaced persons and amongst them children and women
√ Reducing migration due to climate change, insecurity and financial challenges
Above all, addressing the root causes of the insecurity in the region
Your support can help refill the Lake Chad with water and bring hope of peace, food and water for the displaced peoples of the Lake Chad Basin, the poor from conflict-affected and climate change-stricken region.
Thank you.
• Tourism as way of enhancing sustainable development
Recalling the last 4 Trending activities in following the direction of poverty relief through tourism
In the last four weeks, we followed the direction of poverty relief through tourism. Our follow up was much about trying to understand and check the relationships between tourism and poverty reduction than anything else.
In our journey, we particularly looked at the following trends: tourism as way of reaching out to the poor, tourism as maker of job opportunities and supporter of pro-poor growth, tourism as trade creator and income generator, and tourism as means of relieving rural poverty.
The focus on these trends was on what tourism can and cannot bring to the poor and poverty relief. It stems from these trends that tourism does bring substantial contribution to the lives of the poor. Tourism may not totally eradicate poverty, but it is additional path of reducing it.
Following the direction of sustainable development through tourism
Another area of relationships with tourism for our Summer 2018 Trending is sustainable development. The remaining couple of days of our Trending month will be spent on this trend.
Tourism can enhance the process of sustainable development for the poor. To follow this trend, we are going to use the conventional definition of sustainable development as given by Brundtland and others (1), which is
“a development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Brandtland et al., 1987).
By following the direction of international sustainable development for the poor from this perspective, it is possible to find that tourism can help achieve pro-poor economic growth while preserving the quality of the environment for all (including for the poor). Tourism can help meet the social and economic needs of the poor while saving the natural or environmental resources for the generations to come to meet their own needs. Tourism can help reduce environmental degradation while supporting poor people to produce, consume and trade goods and services in a sustainable way.
The above trend concludes our Trending month for this year. For those who are interested in following the direction of poverty relief and sustainable development with CENFACS, please let us know.
(1) Brundtland et al. (1987) Our Common Future, World Commission on Environment and Development (The Brundtland Report), Oxford University Press, London
• Brief News about Analytics Report
All-in One Impact Feedback: Users’ and Supporters’ Experience
Last month was our Analytics month. As part of the Analytics month, we asked some of you to report or give some feedback in your words on the experiences you had about the projects and programmes we delivered in the last financial year. Some of you did respond and others did not. We would like to thank those who responded.
After analysing the information you provided and looking back what happened in the last financial year, we would like to share with you some key information from the preliminary findings about your say and our look at last year’s poverty relief work.
The key news we want to share with you are as follows:
1/ There will be some changes in our projects starting from Autumn 2018.
2/ Some of the projects will disappear as they have been completed or the need has been met or even they are not anymore required.
3/ We will progressively introduce new projects to meet emerging and or unmet needs and demand of the community. One of them will be a new advocacy to follow the global trade rounds to support small African traders.
4/ When these changes come into force, we shall let you know.
However, the main household brand projects making the poverty-relieving pitch at CENFACS will remain.
Please note that the above preliminary news are not the full project and programme reports neither an annual report.
• More news: CENFACS Campaigns
There have been some questions about our services and activities, in particular about the campaigns we are running. To answer the questions raised, we have included and provided summaries on our website, under the Services and Activities page, the main campaigns that we are running. They are five, not in particular order:
African Children’s Sustainable Development Goals, Halving Poverty, Climate Protection and Stake for African Children, World Anti-Poverty System, and Autumn Leaves of Action to Upkeep the Nature in Existence.
To find out more and or get involved in these campaigns, please contact CENFACS.
FOR ONLY £1, YOU CAN SUPPORT CENFACS AND CENFACS’ PROJECTS, JUST GO TO http://cenfacs.org.uk/supporting-us/
Thank you for visiting CENFACS website and reading this post.
Thank you as well to those who made or make comments about our weekly posts.
We look forward to receiving your regular visits and continuing support throughout 2018.
With many thanks
