Welcome to CENFACS’ Online Diary!
18 March 2020
Post No. 135
The Week’s Contents
• Arrangements and Support during the Covid-19 Outbreak and Crisis
• Special Spring Relief 2020: Rebuilding and Health as a Joint Theme
• Climate Actions Month and Weeks – In Focus from Week Beginning 16/03/2020: Climate Change Pledges (Climate Action no. 3)
… and much more!
Key Messages
~ Arrangements and Support during Covid-19 Outbreak and Crisis
We hope that everybody is keeping well. For those who may have been seriously affected by the Covid-19 outbreak and crisis, we share all our thoughts and support them at this difficult time for everybody and the world we live in.
During this challenging period, we continue to run our services and projects while applying the relevant advice and guidance given by CENFACS’ Health and Safety Head, the voluntary sector, the UK government, the World Health Organisation as well as the medical and scientific experts on the matter. Like anybody, we are following these health advice and sanitary precautions given and continuing to monitor the situation, reviews and updates.
During this particularly worrying time, we advise all our contacts and stakeholders (particularly but not exclusively users/beneficiaries) to keep the interaction with CENFACS via online and remotely until further notice.
We are not running any activity that will make people or the community to physically move to the event places during this crisis period. All our physical events have been postponed until further notice as health and safety of everybody matter the most than everything else. The above CENFACS’ Health Dashboard provides you with a brief regarding the state of functioning of services and activities.
We would like to take this opportunity to apologise if you have expected us to attend any of your events, but we have not been able to do so. Like everybody, we are following the chronicle of Covid-19 events as well as the advice and guidance regarding the organisation and attendance of events during the Covid-19 crisis.
For those who want to enquire and or access our services, they are free either to phone, text, email us or complete the comments box on our website with their enquiries. We will respond or advise them accordingly.
For those who may have further support, sources of information and stories to tell and share to help keep everybody healthy and safe, please do not hesitate to tell and share them with us and others. This is the time to be resilient, perseverant and to adapt our capacities and to come together to confront this deadly virus, Covid-19.
For those who want to find out more about advice, guidance and updates on Covid-19, they can look at the following sources:
https://www.ncvo.org.uk/practical-support/information/coronavirus
https://www.hse.gov.uk/news/coronavirus.htm
For any query or enquiry about these arrangements and support, please contact CENFACS.
~ Special Spring Relief 2020: Rebuilding and Health as a Joint Theme
~~ General Spring theme
Generally, the key theme for Spring at CENFACS is Rebuilding or Renewing Lives, Infrastructures and Institutions. In other words, Spring Relief is the season of rebuilding from what has been destroyed by wars, natural disasters, bad economic management, mistakes of the past, other disasters (like health crisis of Ebola or Covid-19), etc. We need to rebuild in order to reduce poverty, stop its re-appearance and avoid the emergency of new types of poverty and new generations of poor people.
The Winter Season of Light, which is ending in three days, gives us an opportunity to bring some lights and hopes to those in most need so that they can find the reasons to believe in life again. The Season of Light tackles poverty as a lack of hope and expectations. However, our work does not stop there.
In Spring, we take the challenge of working with those in need to rebuild their lives, infrastructures, buildings, development of relationships, communities, etc. from the damage, loss and worse change experienced or caused.
So, the key words for the Spring Season are rebuilding and renewing. We shall come back on these words with our advocacy project about Rebuilding Africa.
~~ Spring Relief 2020 with Health or Sanitary Crisis as Special
This Spring 2020 is special in its kind as it is dominated by the health or sanitary crisis brought by the Coronavirus pandemic. In other words, we are going to help reduce poverty over this Spring within the context of life-threatening impacts of the global Coronavirus pandemic. This is a new context for our work and everybody. It is a context of rebuilding and sustaining lives, infrastructures and institutions in the world of health or sanitary crisis.
To reflect this special character of this Spring 2020 in our poverty reduction work, we shall add to our usual Spring theme the theme of health. It is in the combination of the ideas of rebuilding and health that our Spring Relief season will be organised.
The announcement of Spring Relief comes with that of projects and programmes making it or the notes making its theme. We have provided under the Main Development section of this post a selection of projects and programmes which will make this Spring – Spring Relief season.
As said above, it is a selection. Therefore, one should expect the introduction of new activities and the continuation of on-going initiatives like our all year round (or triple value) projects. That is also to say, there will be additional projects and programmes as we progress throughout this Spring season.
~ Climate Action Month and Weeks – In Focus from Week Beginning 16 March 2020: Climate Change Pledges (Climate Action no. 3)
As it is indicated by its title, Climate Action no. 3 is about the promises made either solemnly or not to reduce the adverse the impacts of climate change. These promises or commitments, which could be monetary or real (non-monetary), can come from individuals, communities, organisations and governments.
Within the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 13 (1), which is of taking action to combat climate change and its impacts, there is a target (target 4) that is about jointly (developed and developing countries) mobilising $100 billion annually by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries and help mitigate climate-related disasters.
There are other pledges made by countries as part of the Paris Climate Summit; pledges in the forms of either cutting CO2 emissions by a certain percentage or reducing greenhouse gas emissions by an amount or even lowering their emissions intensity.
In the context this week’s climate action, we are as well looking at actions taken or that can be taken as promises by individuals or organisations to support our Africa-based organisations in their efforts and actions to reduce the impacts of climate change.
For further details about this Action 3 and to support CENFACS’ Climate Action Month and Weeks, please contact CENFACS.
Extra Messages
~ End-of-season Reminder!
Only 3 Days to Go for Halving Poverty for and with the Educationally Needy Congolese Children in 2020!
We are nearing the end of the Light Season together with the closure of this year’s Halving Poverty Campaign.
Since this fundraising campaign about the Educationally Needy Congolese Children will be closed in three days, we are again appealing to you to donate or pledge or make a gift aid declaration for this deserving cause.
You can give a life-kicking educational support to the educationally needy children in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
We are fully aware that many people are having some pressure with the Coronavirus news and threats. The measures about the Coronavirus have enormously disrupted the normal running of lives and plans. It continues to claim many lives while taking us as hostage. However, for those who can support this educational cause, please do not hesitate to help.
To support and or enquire about this Congolese fundraising campaign, please contact CENFACS. To find out further details about this campaign, please go to: http://cenfacs.org.uk/supporting-us/
~ Making Zero Hunger Campaign (MZHC) and The Global Sanitary Crisis
The Coronavirus pandemic that the world is experiencing has probably led to the current global sanitary crisis. This sanitary crisis is affecting the distribution and availability of foods from food retailers, let alone the scarcity of sanitary items. This crisis does not leave untouched our MZHC.
If there is going to be pressure to access foods and sanitary goods, this could lead to price wars on these items, let alone the possibility of creating or increasing sanitary poverty. The history tells us in this kind of pressurized context it is always the poor people who pay the price.
If we are going to make zero hunger Africa and elsewhere, then the sanitary crisis together with the pandemic need to be under firm control. Otherwise, lives will suffer from the effects of both the pandemic and the lack of availability of foods for poor people.
Therefore, there is need to take up a decisive action in order to step up and coordinate efforts to combat the Coronavirus pandemic and the lack of foods and sanitary goods on the retail market.
To enquire and or support MZHC during the global sanitary crisis, please contact CENFACS.
~ Covid-19, Health Budget and Fundraising
Our thoughts on Covid-19 have moved on this week to consider the health and sanitary budgets of Africa-based Sister Organisations (ASOs) and the aspects of fundraising to finance these budgets.
Indeed, like in many societies where voluntary organisations operate, ASOs, which are the closest economic entities to work with people in need, are also the ones that may not have the funding to face and adapt to the current threats that Coronavirus pandemic is posing. Their health and sanitary budgets need to be looked at in terms of equipment and tools they need for their self-protection and the protection of other lives, especially the elderly and most vulnerable, from the Coronavirus pandemic. They are essential and a force in a critical time of crisis of this kind and magnitude, as charities often get involved in dealing with many types of crisis or disaster by their virtue and experience.
Boosting their income and logistics to cover health and sanitary costs will have beneficial effects in delaying the spread of Covid-19 and in containing it. Setting up a rapid fundraising mechanism to help the ASO budgets to support what governments and the rest of the society can do will have a bonus on what has been done so far and what has been planned to do to combat Covid-19.
This new Coronavirus-related fundraising strategy is important since economies around the world are slowing down and non-essential economic activities have been temporary closed. This would allow avoiding a low level of income stream since there could be some signs that the world economy could be leading towards a zero economic growth, without speaking about a recession in the near future. The thoughts on Covid-19 continue…
Main Development
• Special Spring Relief 2020: Rebuilding and Health as a Joint Theme
• • Spring Relief 2020 – In Focus: Sustainable Health
Our poverty relief work depends on many resources. One of these resources is health. At the moment, the world is undergoing a health and sanitary crisis. Our services and users/beneficiaries are not exempt from this crisis.
Because of the health and sanitary crisis that the world is facing is severe and for a generation, our projects and activities have been organised around the theme of health or sustainable health.
There are many ways of explaining the meaning of wealth. From the literature we did, we can retain the definition of health as a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing characterised by freedom from illness or pain and that can be renewed over generations or long term without adverse impacts. One can go further in defining health by integrating the sustainability dimension.
Sustainable health is then about protecting and improving health without simultaneously causing an environmental impact detrimental to human health. It is the state of physical, mental and social wellbeing, that makes humans’ survival and flourishing being depend on sustaining life-supporting ecosystems in a stable state of equilibrium.
It is through this theme of sustainable health that we are going to engage stakeholders and work over this Spring. We are going to do it by helping to reduce poverty within the context of life-threatening impacts of the global pandemic (like Coronavirus).
Through this theme, we hope to bring about what is needed to put in place in order to achieve a renewed support and engagement throughout the Spring season and under the new health conditions and circumstances that our users/beneficiaries are experiencing and the world.
Spring Relief 2020 will also take forward our 2020s Development Agenda and Poverty Reduction Programme. In particular, it will deal with one of the seven poverty reduction goals we set up for 2020s; goal which is about relieving situational (or transitory) poverty; characterized by the new type of virus, Coronavirus pandemic (or Covid-19).
• • Special Spring Relief 2020: Projects and Programmes of Rebuilding Lives, Infrastructures and Institutions in the World of Health or Sanitary Crisis
CENFACS is delighted to present its new season Spring collection of selected projects and programmes with a choice of relief services. For each of these projects and programmes, you will find user-friendly and –centred relief.
These projects and programmes are free but we do not mind donations. The more you donate, the more we can relieve.
Please find below the selection of Spring Relief projects and programmes.
April: Protection Month
Protection against health disaster/risk and insecurity will make the joint protection theme for our April month of protection. They will be two projects to deal with this joint theme.
••• Women and Children projects (3W & PPS Reflection Day):
Reflection on the Protection of Women and Children in Times of Health or Sanitary Crisis (Protection project)
Our Reflection Day will try to think of the best way of protecting people and communities, especially the most vulnerable, in times of health crisis like of Ebola and Covid-19. As our Reflection Day is about Women and Children, we are going to think about ways of protecting vulnerable women and children in this particular time.
••• Self-protection: 2020 Actions on Protection against Insecurity with Poor People taking their own Protection in their own Hands (Protection project)
Ideally, there should be a recognised body to protect people from wars, armed attacks, climate change, disaster, etc. In places and times of history, where and when poor people have no one to protect them, what can they do to protect themselves?
May: Stories Telling Month
May Stories – Entries for Stories on Poverty Relief and Development for May 2020 are now open. To tell your story of change for change to CENFACS, contact CENFACS for story telling terms and conditions.
••• All in Development Stories: Tell your Story of Volunteering in Places of Health Crisis– Tell it! (Volunteer’s & Stories Telling project)
In difficult times of major crisis like of Covid-19, it is unrealistic to expect that all the work to be done should be paid, especially the service provided to the most vulnerable (such as young children , pregnant women, the sick and the elderly). There are kinds of volunteering that needed to be done to keep them protected and safe in times of crisis.
••• Rebuilding Africa: Rebuilding the Health Assets, Structures and Infrastructures for Africa-based Organisations (Advocacy project)
Support Africa-based Organisations to develop their basic health and safety assets, structures and infrastructures can help to overcome health crisis since these organisations are the ones that closely work with those in need.
June: Creation & Innovation Month
In challenging times like of Covid-19, creation could be the key to manage the crisis during this transitional period. This is why in June, we try to deal with creative initiatives. This June, we will expand these creative initiatives by supporting the economies of voluntary organisations.
••• Supporting the Economies of Africa-based organisations (Micro-economic project)
The organisations that care for others on a voluntary and charitable basis need their economies (i.e. finances, accounts, services, products, etc.) keep working so that they can keep supporting others. Supporting their economies make sense.
••• Creations and Innovations within the Context of Life-threatening Impacts of the Global Coronavirus Pandemic (or Health and Sanitary Crisis) to Reduce Poverty with Jmesci project (Creation project)
This project will as well feature Similar Creations that deal with Health Crisis.
Managing a crisis is also about using our skills, knowledge and talents to find techniques, technologies and new methods to deal with crisis. It means there could be a pressing and immediate need to create and innovate to address the crisis.
To request further information about Special Spring Relief projects and programmes, please contact CENFACS.
Note:
The above initiatives are only a selection of what we have planned for Spring Relief season. We may introduce new initiatives and or upgrade the existing ones depending on the circumstances as we have from time to time to respond to emergencies and urgent humanitarian issues like we have done with the current sanitary crisis. In which case, we shall let you know.
Also, in every work we do to try to help reduce poverty, there is always a cost to bear. If you could help alleviate some of our costs, we would more acknowledge your support than just appreciate your gesture.
Help CENFACS keep the Poverty Relief work going in 2020.
We do our work on a very small budget and on a voluntary basis. Making a donation will show us you value our work and support CENFACS’ work, which is currently offered as a free service.
One could consider a recurring donation to CENFACS in the furture.
Donate to support 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 2020 and beyond.
With many thanks.
