Welcome to CENFACS’ Online Diary!
04 September 2019
Post No. 107
The week beginning 02 September 2019 is our welcoming week. Before starting the contents of this blog and post, we would like to welcome all those who return.
We are welcoming our users, supporters and other stakeholders who came back from Summer break and holiday.
We are also welcoming back those who are or have been working during the Summer time.
We are finally welcoming back those who lost touch with us for various reasons and would like to come back again.
This welcoming message applies to both our UK and Africa Development programmes.
Welcome back to all of you and happy return!
The Week’s Contents
• Back-to-relief Programme: Programme for Pre-autumn Season
• Unlock your Summer Holiday Data and Tell your Story
• September: Advice-giving Month
… and much more!
Key Messages
The key message from our weekly communication and menu, which is often made of three courses, is as follows.
~ Back-to-relief Programme: Programme for Pre-autumn Season
Back-to-relief programme is a set of related activities with an aim of reducing poverty amongst multi-dimensionally poor children, young and families (MDPCYPFs) by working with them to meet their needs after a long summer break so that they can start September without or with less hardship.
The programme is made of a number of supportive elements such as capacity and skills development, advice, advocacy, translation, information, guidance, support to child educational needs in Africa, signposting etc. The programme is generally run around September and can be extended to October depending on the need in the community
For more on CENFACS’ Back-to-relief Programme, please read under the Main Development section of this post.
~ Unlock your Summer Holiday Data and Tell your Story
Throughout our July and August communications, we have been asking everybody to store and keep their Summer data so that when we all return we can report back or share parts of our Summer experiences that are shareable.
Now some of you are back, we can try to feedback our poverty-relieving and development experiences of using Happiness projects, of any creations we made, of any community experiences and any volunteering stories, if we volunteered, over the last two months. One can report back a personal Summer experience as well.
For those who managed to store their Summer data and who would like to share their experiences, this is the time to start unlocking your Summer data and preparing to tell your Summer story.
Sharing your experiences with us in this way helps to keep the CENFACS Community active, engaged and together. It also contributes in carrying out prescriptive analytics that enables to use smart data discovery capabilities to predict market developments and trends to help relieve or possibly end poverty and hardships within our community and beyond.
Please share your poverty-relieving and development experiences with us; experiences that you think are shareable.
~ September: Advice-giving month
Advice is CENFACS’ main theme for September. We provide advice to both individuals and organisations as mentioned above. Although advice is part of our Back-to-Relief Programme, we will treat it separately.
Under the Main Development section of this post, there is much more information about this year’s advisory support.
Extra Messages
~ Add-on relief for this September: Humanitarian Relief and Happiness Re-appeals
Summer 2019 Humanitarian Relief Appeal is still running and will end this September. You can DONATE £4 to Create a 1 World of 9 Reliefs.
To donate or support otherwise, please go to: http://cenfacs.org.uk/supporting-us/
Likewise, we are still re-appealing to bring happiness for the peoples of the North-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where the Ebola epidemic struck and where there is still insecurity.
Recently, it has been reported by the United Nations Children’s Fund that almost 600 of around 850 children who have caught the virus died. Just as the local source has reported the same epidemic claimed more than 2,000 lives so far.
You can support this re-appeal to help the victims of the insecurity and ongoing health crisis in this part of the DRC. To support, just contact CENFACS.
~ Back-to-relief activities in a changing climate
Our theme of changing climate continues this September. After a long summer break or just after August, many people would think the weather would be different in the part of the world they are living and would return to normal.
However, the continuing effects of climate change could prove things different. There are still possibilities of unpredictable and extreme climatic conditions with droughts, torrential rains, high temperatures and forest fires etc.
This week, we would like to raise awareness of this changeability and unpredictability issues linked to the weather or climate. We are doing it so that they can keep in their minds set the strategy to adapt and mitigate these issues in their back-to-relief activities.
For further discussions on back-to-relief activities in a changing climate, please contact CENFACS.
~ All-year Round Projects in a Changing Climate
Our Summer serial of changing climate can be applied to the three components of our All-year Round Projects which are: Play, Run and Vote. What does it mean?
It means that it is possible to take into account the adverse effects of climate change when undertaking any of these projects. In particular, it is likely probable to include climate variability or changeability factor into them.
For those using or participating in these projects, we recommend you to factorise changing climate in them. If there is any problem to carry out this factorisation, please contact CENFACS.
Main Development
• Back-to-relief Programme: Programme for Pre-autumn Season
• • Back to Relief Projects
As previously mentioned, most of our projects and programmes are organised to take into account the lives and needs of our beneficiaries; supporters as well. They are now back for the New Academic Year and New Relief, year for which we have prepared projects and programmes to meet their existing, challenging, changing and emerging needs – the back-to-relief projects and programmes.
Amongst the back-to-relief projects and programmes, there are these two ones: Virtual Open Days and Support to Children
1/ Virtual Open Days under Back-to-Relief Programme
It is not always easy for people, especially those who are not feeling well and parents with small kids, to physically move and meet service providers if this service provision cannot come to them even if the need is pressing. This is why besides our outreach service; we are organising these virtual days to enable those in need to virtually access services.
Virtual Open Days are a back-to-relief initiative organised by CENFACS during this September 2019 to enable people in need to access our advice service and other similar services in order to reduce or end poverty linked to their situations or conditions of life.
For more on CENFACS’ Virtual Open Days and how they work, contact us.
2/ Support for Children of Conflict- and Climate Change-affected Areas in Africa in the New School Year
Another back-to-relief initiative for this September 2019 is Support for the Children of Conflict- and Climate Change-affected Areas of Africa in the New School Year. This initiative comes about the humanitarian relief appeals we launched this year for the following countries and regions: the Lake Chad Basin, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Central African Republic and Region of Africa (CARRA), Burkina Faso and Algeria. All these appeals were launched under the Light projects.
The appeals were related to countries with displaced persons and victims of conflict (e.g. Lake Chad Basin); undergoing peace and rebuilding after elections (e.g. DRC); children victims of conflict (e.g. CARRA); under armed attacks (e.g. Burkina Faso); in peaceful transition to political democratisation processes (e.g. Algeria).
While one can still ask the progress made to save and rebuild lives in these stricken countries and areas, one can also question about the support that the children of the affected areas within these countries are receiving and/or received. This questioning is relevant as we are in September when a new school or academic year starts.
So, during this September we will be working on this back-to-relief initiative to explore ways of keeping education alive for these unfortunate children living in those stricken areas or places.
For further details about this initiative, contact CENFACS.
• • Back to the Upkeep of the Nature this September 2019
September is also the month we resume our advocacy work on the upkeep of the nature. Normally, this advocacy starts from the protection and care of animals in Africa from illegal killings, extinction and poaching. In the last week of September 2019, we will focus on saving endangered animal species through our “Big Beasts” advocacy; the Gorilla, Elephant and the BIG CATS projects being part of that advocacy.
As the month of September is also of the Protection of the Oceans in terms of the environmental calendar, we will be doing some advocacy work around the Protection of the Oceans (particularly the waters surrounding Africa and the rivers and lakes in Africa) as well.
This September is as well of the Climate Summit which will be held between 21 and 23 September 2019 by the United Nations. As part of our Climate Talks Follow-up project, we will be following this summit.
Briefly, Back to the Upkeep of the Nature this September 2019 will include the Big Beasts advocacy, the Protection of the Oceans, and the following up of the Climate Summit.
• • Back to Advisory Support this September 2019
Advice is CENFACS’ main theme for September. We provide advice to both individuals and organisations as mentioned above.
# Advice service for Individuals
Some of you are aware that most of CENFACS services in the UK are designed to support multi-dimensionally poor children, young people and families (CYPFs). After the long summer break and from September onward, many of them will come back to start their life again. They will go back to school for CYPs and to work and training for parents and guardians.
They may need support to restart or look for occupational opportunity or even just resume their routine activity in September. Their needs could include things such as finding a new school for children, registration to health services, finding accommodation, accessing training opportunity or employment etc.
We can provide advisory support to them. Where our capacity is limited, we can refer and/or signpost them to relevant specialist services and organisations to help them meet their needs. We do it under CENFACS’ Capacity Advice service which was established since 2003 (through CENFACS’ Capacity Advice and Development project for Croydon’s African and Minority Ethnic People) to help individuals gain various types of help.
The types of help we provide include: translation, interpreting, advice, guidance, signposting, referral and advocacy. As we are in a digital era, we adapted the provision of this help while still retaining its essence. You can contact CENFACS for the range of issues included in this service and to find out if your problem can be dealt with.
# Advice service for Organisations
The same advice service applies to overseas and Africa-based Sister Organisations. Under our international advice service, we can advise them on things such as capacity building and development, project planning, fundraising and grant-seeking leads, income-generation, sustainable development, monitoring and evaluation. Since we have set up a CENFACS Analytics Dashboard, it is even better to deal with problems.
Again, where our capacity to advise is limited, we can refer and or signpost them to relevant international services and organisations. This advisory support for Africa-based Sister Organisations is throughout the year and part of our work with them. However, they can take advantage of our advice-giving month to seek further advice on any of the above matters.
To access advice services, contact CENFACS. To register for or enquire about advice services, go to www.cenfacs.org.uk/services-activities.
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 2019.
With many thanks.
