Welcome to CENFACS’ Online Diary!
02 September 2020
Post No. 159
Welcome Message
Before starting the contents of the blog and post of this first week of September 2020, we would like to welcome all those who are returning this month.
We are welcoming the following:
– All those who are returning from the coronavirus lockdown
– Our users, supporters and other stakeholders who came back from Summer break and holiday
– Those who are or have been working during the Summer time
– 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 healthy return!
The Week’s Contents
• Back-to-relief Programme: Programme for Pre-autumn Season 2020
• 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 2020
Back-to-relief Programme is a set of related activities and services 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 and Covid-19 lockdown 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 needs in the community.
This year’s programme is a bit special since there has been the coronavirus pandemic which led to lockdowns. Many of our project and programme beneficiaries have experienced many months of economic inactivity since the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown began. Now that some of them are returning or resuming their outdoor activities, they may need some advice to adjust their lives with the new normal imposed by the coronavirus and subsequent lockdown.
The Back-to-relief 2020 programme has been designed to include the need of these returnees from the lockdown. It is also conceptualised to anticipate any changes of situation due to any potential spikes of Covid-19 and lockdown resumption as the battle against the coronavirus has not been yet won.
For more on CENFACS’ Back-to-relief Programme, please read the details under Main Development section of this post.
• Unlock your Summer Holiday Data and Tell your Story
Throughout our July and August 2020 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 Healthiness projects and of the gradual reopening of the economy as well as of the coronavirus restrictions and rules over the Summer period.
One can also feedback of any creations made, of any interaction in the virtual worlds, of any community experiences and any volunteering stories, if they 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 and contents with us; parts of your experiences and contents that you think are shareable.
Should anyone have any concern about data protection issues regarding the sharing of their information, please let CENFACS know. We will be able to assist.
• September: Advice-giving Month
We run Advice service as part of our activities throughout the year. However, Advice is CENFACS’ main theme in September. Because that, it is more pronounced in September compared to other months of the year. In other words, we invest more resources in advice in September than at any other times of the year.
We provide advice to both individuals and organisations as mentioned above. Advice can be given in the context of Back-to-Relief Programme and outside this context. When Advice is given in the context of Back-to-Relief Programme, it becomes constituent part of this programme like other elements making this programme.
Under the Main Development section of this post, there is much more information about this year’s advisory support.
Extra Messages
• The African Sahel and Lake Chad Basin Appeal against Extreme Poverty
After reviewing the situation in the African Sahel and Lake Chad Basin as well as the previous appeals launched for them, it has been noticed that very little has been done on the grounds to deal with the following:
– to reduce extreme poverty and internal displacement
– to improve poor people’s security and resilience
– to stop the life-threatening and destroying impacts of the climate change in these two areas.
As a result, we are re-appealing for peace, security and extreme poverty alleviation in these two areas of Africa.
To support or enquire about this re-appeal, please contact CENFACS.
Likewise, our Summer 2020 Humanitarian Relief Appeal projects are still running and will end this September.
To donate or support otherwise, please go to: http://cenfacs.org.uk/supporting-us/
• Back-to-relief Activities in a September of Covid-19 Compliance
Our call for Covid-19 Compliance continues this September. Many people would have wished the fight against the coronavirus pandemic to finish by now; unfortunately the coronavirus pandemic is still around with its side effects and threats.
Because of that, we have made efforts in the design of these Back-to-relief Activities to test the Covid-19 impact on them and to make them Covid-19 secure. In other words, we have included the recommended measures of health and safety against the coronavirus in these activities. In practical terms, social distancing rules, the use of sanitising and disinfection products as well as personal protective equipment will be fully compliant during the running of these activities.
For further discussions on Back-to-relief activities in a September of Covid-19 Compliance, please contact CENFACS.
• Covid-19 Campaign Update
The Campaign for Resilience against Covid-19 (or the Covid-19 Campaign) is now between its phases 2 and 3.
Phase 2 has been about Impact Monitoring and Evaluation of Covid-19 on our system of poverty reduction. It seeks to answer a specific cause-and-effect question about changes directly attributable to Covid-19. In this phase 2, we have been looking at the causality and attribution approach regarding the overall impact of Covid-19 on CENFACS’ work and system of poverty reduction.
Phase 3 is the Post-Covid-19 Rehabilitation Strategies, which are processes of planning and conducting restoration in order to bring back our programmes, projects, activities, services and products to their original or normal condition. It is a restoration or build-back campaign.
We understand that economies cannot be shut down for ever. Because the economy keeps reopening, we too are gradually moving to the Phase 3 of our Covid-19 Campaign, which is of Post-Covid-19 Rehabilitation Strategies.
By speaking about Post-Covi-19 Rehabilitation Strategies, we do not mean that the coronavirus pandemic is over. We just mean that in our mind set Covid-19 is a reality but not a fiction. We have to understand it and live in the Covid-19 environment until a medicine and vaccine are found against it.
So, the idea of the existence of Covid-19 has been already passed in our mind set. What we need to do is to develop strategies to restore our work while taking into account the new coronavirus-led environment or reality. In this respect, we are trying to Build Back Better our lives through a Build-Back-Better Campaign.
Some of you may have noticed that in our Covid-19 Campaign, there are two strands of thought. There are initiatives that we took that are related to our work in the UK. There is a set of campaigning initiatives that have been linked to our work in Africa.
Regarding the Covid-19 Campaign in relation to our work on Africa, the Covid-19 extra message of this week is that we are continuing following the development of the epidemiological curves of the coronavirus pandemic in Africa where cases keep on increasing. This increasing trend of the “epi-cruves” can only mean to us to keep up shadowing them (“epi-curves”) while motivating our Africa-based partners to carry on in rebuilding health systems to keep tight control on the Covid-19. We continue to monitor the development of the “epi-curves” in Africa and respond with our shadowing model accordingly.
To support and or to enquire about the Covid-19 Campaign update, please contact CENFACS.
Main Development
• Back-to-relief Programme: Programme for Pre-autumn Season 2020
• • 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. Some of them will be back this week after the coronavirus disruption. They are 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 coronavirus-emerging needs – the back-to-relief projects and programmes in a September of Covid-19 Compliance.
Amongst the back-to-relief projects and programmes, there are these two ones: Virtual Open Days and Support to Children
=> Virtual Open Days under Back-to-Relief Programme
Due to the health-threatening impacts and other crippling effects of the coronavirus pandemic, many of our services are virtually and online run. Besides that it is not always easy for people, especially those who have some physical handicaps 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 we are organising these virtual days to enable those in need to virtually access services despite the coronavirus disruption and any physical inconvenience they may have.
Virtual Open Days are a back-to-relief initiative organised by CENFACS during this September 2020 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.
=> Support for Children of Conflict- and Climate Change-affected Areas in Africa in this September
Another back-to-relief initiative for this September 2020 is Support for the Children of Conflict- and Climate Change-affected Areas of Africa in this September and beyond. This initiative relates to the humanitarian appeals we launched this year (such as the 3-Frontier Area, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the African Sahel and Burkina Faso). All these appeals were launched under the Light projects.
The appeals were related to countries with displaced persons and victims of conflict (e.g. Burkina Faso); undergoing peace and institutional rebuilding work (e.g. DRC); children victims of conflict (e.g. the 3-Frontier Area); under armed attacks (e.g. African Sahel).
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, especially at this difficult time of the coronavirus pandemic.
This questioning is relevant as we are in September when a new school or academic year starts in many parts of the world. This questioning is even founded at this time where educational systems in many countries have been affected by the adverse impacts of the coronavirus and subsequent lockdowns. This negative effect is even greater for children from poor places in developing countries (like of Africa) where educational opportunities have been denied to many of them regardless of the coronavirus situation.
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 2020
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 2020, we shall focus on saving endangered animal species through our “Big Beasts” advocacy, which has already kicked off.
In September 2019, we worked on the Protection of the Oceans (particularly the waters surrounding Africa and the rivers and lakes in Africa) as well. This September, we would like to carry on with the advocacy on waters through the theme of “Blue Spaces”. We shall have a 3-week water protection work on “Blue Spaces” starting from the 7th of September 2020. To conclude the month, we will have some e-discussions on circular economy.
Briefly, Back to the Upkeep of the Nature this September 2020 will include the “Big Beasts” advocacy, the Protection of the “Blue Spaces” and an e-discussion on circular economy.
• • Back to Advisory Support this September 2020
As above mentioned, Advice is CENFACS’ main theme for September. We provide advice to both individuals and organisations.
=> 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 the Covid-19 lockdown, many of them will come back to start their life again. From September onward, 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 the following:
√ Finding a new school or a nursery for children
√ Registration to health services
√ Finding accommodation or relocating
√ Accessing training opportunity or employment for those who lost their job due to the Covid-19
√ Looking for a new occupation to deal with the economic effects of the coronavirus and lockdown
√ Finding help to adjust their life after the lockdown
√ Looking for direction in a gradually reopened economy
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 (English to French and vice versa)
√ Interpreting
√ General advice
√ Guidance
√ Signposting
√ Referral
√ Advocacy
Etc.
As we are in a digital era, we adapted the provision of this help while still retaining its essence.
In the last months, we have even gone far with our Advice service as we were trying to deal with the coronavirus pandemic effect. We have included the coronavirus restrictions and rules into our Advice service.
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 the following matters:
√ Capacity building and development
√ Project planning and development
√ Fundraising and grant-seeking leads
√ Income generation and streams
√ 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 constituent 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.
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 future.
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.
