Welcome to CENFACS’ Online Diary!
16 December 2020
Post No. 174
The Week’s Contents
• Season of Light: Starts 21 December 2020
• Festive Trends
• Festive Gifting
… and much, much more!
Key Messages
• The Lights Season: Starts 21 December 2020
Autumn Fresh Start to the Season of Light
The Autumn season officially ends this weekend. The momentum we have built from the beginning and throughout Autumn Fresh Start season continues to galvanise our poverty relief action and is taking our relief journey into the Season of Light, which will start on the 21st of December next week.
This weekend is thus the end of Autumn Fresh Start projects and programmes, and the beginning of the Season of Light; season during which we light up a Blaze of Hope for people and communities suffering from the effects and impacts of destructive wars and natural disasters in Africa.
This Season of Light, our Blaze of Hope will be extended to those who are still struggling against the adverse health and economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic and related lockdowns. The Season of Light comes with the Lights Appeal, which is the project that features the Season of Light, while the Gifts of Peace keep on giving the Festive Season.
At CENFACS, the theme for the Season of Light is Hope which we try to bring through a Blaze, while the theme for the Festive Season’s Reliefs is Peace. In the case of Gifts of Peace, we try to reduce poverty as a lack of peace, whereas in the context of the Season of Light we are working to relieve poverty as a lack of hope. Those who feel themselves hopeless need some hope.
Under the Main Development section of this post, there is more information about the Season of Light.
• Festive Trends
December and End of Autumn 2020 Updates and Trends
The following updates and trends cover three initiatives: All in Development Winter e-Discussion, Gifts of Peace and Community Value Chains.
• • All in Development Winter e-Discussion: Volunteering in the Post-coronavirus and Post-exit Economic Era
All in Development Winter e-Discussion is currently trending as planned amongst CENFACS’ December products and services. This e-Discussion is in its second week. So far, the items e-discussed are the following:
♦ The state of volunteering 2020 within CENFACS
♦ The 2021 volunteering budget
♦ Quantitative effects or legacies of COVID-19 disturbance and exited economy on our volunteering action
♦ Forecast about volunteering opportunities for the next year
To e-discuss volunteers’ matters relating to Volunteering in 2021, contact CENFACS.
• • Gifts of Peace
Our Wintry fundraising appeal, known as Gifts of Peace, has now been launched and is trending over this Season’s Reliefs. It is run in parallel with our Autumn 2020 Humanitarian Relief Appeal which is due to officially close by this coming weekend.
For those who could not support our Autumn fundraising appeal, they can still support and their donation will be welcome, although this appeal is not live on this website.
For those who are looking for fundraising appeals or projects to fund as festive gifts over this festive time, Gifts of Peace as an appeal is a valuable proposal they could consider.
To enquiry about and or fund the Gifts of Peace, please contact CENFACS and go to Support Causes at http://cenfacs.org.uk/supporting-us/
• • Community Value Chains, the CENFACS Community –
CENFACS as a Community with Poverty Reduction Mission, which is the Closing Act of the 2020 Year, is being prepared and trended.
• • • What is CENFACS’ Community Value Chains (CCVC)?
It is a community value control, inspirational and motivational project of end-of-year celebration introduced by CENFACS in 2009. The project is based on a basic idea of development which is as follows.
What a member of our community best does which well works for them can have an underlying good value. If there is a good value, it is desirable to share such value so that other members of our community could be aware of it and build a sort of chains of beliefs and community spirit/principles within our support network.
It is all about improving lives and outcomes of community members as well as enlivening capacities by sharing good practices, values and achievements; while learning from past mistakes.
In doing so, we can pull together as one community, strengthen our links and bonds, learn our differences and harness transformative changes we all want amongst us and beyond our self-interests.
CENFACS’ CVC or the CENFACS Community is our voluntary local and non-profit making arm inside which all our projects and activities carried out in the UK are grouped and delivered; the other two domains being CENFACS International and CENFACS Fund for Poverty Relief and Development.
• • • What are those Shared Values?
Good practices and good values do not need to be big or exceptional or even spectacular. They are the simple good little things we do every day, which may have worked for us and could work for others as well.
They could be life and work learning experiences, lifestyles, helpful differences, social responsibilities and principles that underpin them. At this time of the coronavirus disturbance, they could be all the little initiatives one has taken to care each other in order to stay safe and healthy.
• • • In focus for CVC 2020 Celebration/Sharing:
CENFACS as a Community with Poverty Reduction Mission (or the Closing Act of the “Mission” Year)
This celebratory theme for CVC’s 11th Celebration of CENFACS as a Community with Poverty Reduction Mission is the Closing Act of the “Mission” Year and Project. However, we will not call it celebration since many of supporters and users have been affected by the health and economic impacts of the coronavirus disaster and related lockdowns. Instead, we shall call it end-of-year sharing.
It will be a virtual sharing of how the 2020 went on in everybody’s life in terms of the positive takeaway from it in order to build better in 2021. In this virtual sharing, the positive experience of the coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns will be welcome.
We want our community ends the 2020 on a positive note or sharing despite the ups and downs of this end year, especially with the disturbance that the coronavirus pandemic has caused and is continuing to cause on many of us.
• • • Share, Spread & Tweet the message
To enable us to build chains with you and others and to keep our support network alive and networked CENFACS, please spread the message to/pass it on around you.
If you feel that you need first to talk to us before responding to this invitation of en-of-year celebration/sharing, please let us know.
If you prefer to respond via e-mail, you are free to do so at facs@cenfacs.org.uk.
Whichever way or means you choose to enter this sharing project, please reply by the 23rd of December 2020 so as to ease the end-of-year 2020 celebration/sharing and the start-of-year 2021 preparatory activities, projects and programmes.
For further details about this Closing Act of the “Mission” Year and Project as well as the previous Acts of 2020 as a “M” Year, please contact CENFACS.
For the timeline of the themes that made the Community Value Chains so far, please contact CENFACS.
As part of the closure of 2020 and preparation of 2021, we are as well doing an inventory of skills and are registering the talents and skills of the CENFACS Community.
If you have not yet registered your skills to CENFACS’ Skills Data Bank, this is the opportunity to do it over this festive period.
To register or add your skills to the CENFACS Community’s Skills Register or Database, just contact CENFACS.
• Festive Gifting
As part of the season of gifts and of the response to the continuing impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on vulnerable and poor people, we are asking supporters to go extra miles in responding in these two fundraising appeals which are: Festive Gift Set and End-of-year Support.
• • Festive Gift Set
The remaining two weeks of this year starting from tomorrow are those of the last legacy of the Year 2020 as a “M” Year at CENFACS. To mark the end of and the Closing Act of our “M” Year and Campaign, we are appealing to you to support of CENFACS’ year 2020 through a “Mission” (“M”) Gift. Such a gift will help to cover the cost of efforts made to help reduce poverty, to knowledge CENFACS’ work and to keep its momentum over the festive period while carrying us in the New Year and future.
With the “M” Gift plus the Gift of Light plus the Gift of Peace; the three of them give you a Gift Set of £5 or more. What do these gifts express?
The “M” Gift represents the 12 Acts about poverty relief and bond with poor people, especially during this challenging time of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Gift of Light symbolises hope for the victims of coronavirus, wars and natural disasters.
The Gifts of Peace create long lasting relationships in a world without conflicts between humans as well as between humans and the nature (other living beings and things). At this time of the coronavirus pandemic, the Gifts of Peace will enable to re-conquer the lost peace and get new form of peace from the COVID-19 led poverty.
All these initiatives represent some great ways of helping to reduce poverty at this special time of the year. They give indeed more opportunities to supporters to do something for those in need.
By donating £5 or more for this Gift Set, you will help people in need to leave poverty and hardships behind and may be for ever.
To donate and or enquire about this Gift Set, just contact CENFACS with or without your donation.
• • End-of-year Support
As 2020 is coming to an end, we would like to ask you to donate as a legacy towards CENFACS’ efforts to help reduce poverty and enhance sustainable development.
You can donate to support CENFACS’ anti-poverty campaign and to help reduce poverty and hardships this festive season and in the New Year.
Your support can make helpful differences to CENFACS and to those in need, the people and communities that CENFACS serves.
Make a One-off Festive Donation of £5 or more this festive time…
as a way of helping poor people via CENFACS and / or support CENFACS’ work on poverty relief and sustainable development
You can also support one of the CENFACS projects and programmes if you wish.
Make a Monthly Donation of £5 or £10 or £15 or more per month…
as a legacy for CENFACS’ work
Please make an end-of-year contribution today to help us continue to deliver the work of CENFACS in 2021 and beyond.
This End-of-year Support is an inclusive relief sending a never-ending message from the giver that they are part of what we have achieved in 2020 and will do in the coming year and decade.
To make a donation and or enquire about this End-of-year Support, just contact CENFACS with or without your donation.
Extra Messages
• Poverty Reduction Goals Project, Goal No. 1: Reduction of Income Poverty and of Poverty in Earning Capacity
How to remove obstacles blocking people’s efforts to escape from income poverty
Our help for income generation by poor people to make ends meet continues this week. We have brought in the first goal of our 2020s Poverty Reduction Goals, which is the Reduction of Income Poverty and of Poverty (or weaknesses) in Earning Capacity.
Income poverty is just an iceberg of the all spectrum of the income problems that many poor people face. Income may not be enough to meet poor people’s needs because people’s earning capacity may be limited or they may be experiencing the lack of opportunities.
In those circumstances, our help for income generation is about working together with them so that they can improve or create new capacity to boost the earning potentials as well as explore any windows of opportunities for income generation. It is about working with them so that they can find ways of removing obstacles blocking their efforts to escape from income poverty. This help will enable them to mitigate the spending challenge they face on their daily life.
To make more understandable what we are arguing about, let us explain income poverty, essential income and the kind of work that CENFACS can do with income poor people.
• • What is income poverty?
There are many money metric measures of poverty or definitions (both in relative and absolute terms) of income poverty. Most of them revolve around the statistical notions of average or median of standards of living.
For example, the European countries use a line at 60% of the median of standards of living in order to measure poverty in relative terms or approach. Likewise, the UK Government provides a yearly survey of income poverty in the UK known as Households Below Average Income. From this provision, a household is absolute poor if its income is less than 60 per cent of the median as it stood in 2011.
Besides the above ways of approaching income poverty, we can add the following online generative definition from Development Initiatives (1):
“A person (or household) is considered poor if the person’s (or household’s) income cannot acquire the basket of goods and services used to define a threshold for poverty. The monetary value of the basket is poverty line and the population of people and households whose incomes are below this line, is then derived through a head count”.
• • Essential income
As we are in the time of the coronavirus pandemic and essential economy, we would frame our definition of income poverty around essential income. Essential income is needed to reduce income poverty. It is the level of income that enables to meet essentials to live as human beings in a dignified way.
• • Removing obstacles blocking efforts to reduce income poverty
Through Goal No. 1 of our Poverty Reduction Goals Project, we are trying to advocate and work with income poor people to reduce deprivations that exacerbate income poverty. These deprivations can include: lack of access to basic infrastructure, education, health services, etc. In doing so, they can break the poverty circle and progressively come out it. This is a long process that may take the all life of our Poverty Reduction Goals Project.
We shall come back from time to time to the Goal No. 1 during the life time of the 2020s Poverty Reduction Goals and Development Agenda. In meantime, if anyone has any issue regarding this Goal No. 1, please do not hesitate to contact CENFACS.
(1) https://devinit.org/wp-contents/uploads/2016/07/definitions-and-measures-of-poverty.pdf
• Income Generation Leads/Advice: Income Generators and Creators of the Month
Our advisory service on leads for income generation is still on. Through this festive advice service, we are trying to explore the different leads or avenues that those in need can use, depending on their personal circumstances; to find the appropriate means to generate little extra income. This is done bearing in mind that we are in exceptional time of the coronavirus pandemic which itself considerably restricts the scope for generating income.
In this income generation to reduce poverty, we are as well trying to enlist those who could be named as Income Generation Models or Income Generators and Creators under the COVID-19 constraint. We are looking at their models or ways of generating little extra income. We are assessing whether or not their models of generating income are generalizable or just are exceptions to the general rule and to the CENFACS Community.
If anyone has managed to generate little extra income and finds that their way of doing it has an underlying good value that can be shared with the CENFACS CVC members, please do not hesitate to talk to CENFACS.
• All year round Projects (or Triple Value Initiatives): 2020 Verdict
The week is finally an occasion to remind the need to report on All-year Round Projects (or Triple Value Initiatives) which are: Play, Run and Vote projects for poverty relief and development.
As we are reaching the end of year 2020, it is now the time to report on our three All-year Round Projects – which are Play, Run and Vote.
We know that this pandemic year has been challenging for some of you to run some types of activities. However, for those who have managed to undertake and complete the above named projects, we would like them to share with us and others their experiences, stories and reports regarding these projects.
• • The Action-Results of 2020: Tell it!
You can feedback the outcomes or Action-Results of your…
… Run if you ran for poverty relief over the year 2020 (or organised a Run activity)
… Play if you played the CENFACS League for Poverty Relief
… Vote if you have already voted your 2020 African Poverty Relief and Development Manager.
We would be more than happier to hear your Action and Results to feature and conclude CENFACS 2020 Year as “Mission” Year. Tell it!
• • What or who we want to hear
We would like to hear from you about one of the following Three Bests of the Pandemic Year:
√ The Best African Country of 2020 which best reduced poverty
√ The Best African Global Games Runner of 2020
√ The Best African Poverty Relief and Development Manager of 2020
If you have not yet told us, have your say by 23 December 2020! The Verdict is yours!
Main Development
• The Lights Season: Starts 21 December 2020
The Lights Season at CENFACS kicks off with the theme of Hope as said above. We are going to deliver this Hope with Post-coronavirus Poverty Reduction Restructuring and Post-exit Economic Development Projects.
The 2020-2021 Season of Light is about how we can implement structural changes to deal with poverty and any new COVID-19 waves since new COVID-19 vaccines have already been given to people and the new COVID-19 vaccination campaign is under way.
The 2020-2021 Season of Light is also a transitional period since the UK will theoretically cease from the 31 December 2021 to apply the EU trade rules. This situation requires Hope to manage the post-exit economy and trade rules since our action depends as well on the health of the UK economy and its trade ties with others.
The two developments (post-coronavirus and post-exit economy) will shape our 2020-2021 Season of Light. In the light of these events, CENFACS will approach 2021 with a set of post-projects, which are: Post-coronavirus Poverty Reduction Restructuring Projects and Post-exit Economic Development Projects. We started this approach a few years ago with Post-exit Economic Development Projects since the process of exiting economy began. Next year, we will deepen our action on this approach.
So, we will be developing Post-coronavirus Poverty Reduction Restructuring Projects and Post-exit Economic Development Projects to help reduce post-coronavirus poverty and post-exit economic hardships.
• • Two themes to bear in mind this Festive and Lights Time: Peace and Hope
While the theme of Peace will be dominant over the festive celebrations period, the theme of Hope is the overall theme of the Season of Lights. The theme of Hope is made of notes or pieces of restructuring and economic development. In this sense that we shall bring a glimmer of hope through restructuring and economic development over this Wintry season.
The Gifts of Peace are included in the Season of Light. Peace is the festive theme we choose to spread the joy of Season’s Reliefs to those in need. We try to help their wishes of poverty relief become true through the Gits of Peace that put a smile on their faces with relief notes while hoping their faces will become again uncovered in the post-coronavirus time.
• • The Gift of Light that Keeps on Giving this Winter
• • • A gift of light for every person in need everywhere!
The Lights season is the season during which we try to bring light or shine light to impoverished lives. We try to bring clarity, brightness to people who need to see clearly and accurately about their life. It is about helping them see the light of relief so that they can see the world in a new relieved light or version.
• • • A gift of light that ignites and sparks the life of those in need!
This is why we have the Lights project at CENFACS; projects which enable us to bring lights to those in need. Like the last Winter, this Winter 2020-2021, our Lights projects will focus on two parts or two waves of action:
1/ post-coronavirus, post-war and post-natural disaster developments
2/ current and emerging armed conflicts and environmental catastrophes as well as new waves of coronavirus
• • • A gift of light that helps people to find their own way out poverty with pride!
The Gift of Light is about helping people to help themselves. By using the light, they can find their own way out poverty and hardships, out of darkness instead of we telling them what do. They can act with self-esteem and self-respect. In this respect, the Gift of Light is a blessing of empowerment.
• • • A Blaze of Hope for post-life following coronavirus, armed conflicts and natural disasters
When there are environmental disasters and armed conflicts, there are pledges and commitments to end the effects of wars and disasters. For various reasons, some of these pledges do not always materialise. The post-war and post-disaster developments are sometimes left without support even until the conflicts and disasters return and or strike again.
The same situation can happen with the coronavirus disaster if pledges made are not carried out by those who made them while letting the return of coronavirus-induced poverty to happen.
As we cannot wait the return or repeat of the same coronavirus, wars and disasters; our first Blaze of Hope will go this Winter to the unfinished business of previous destructions and disruptions brought by coronavirus, wars and natural disasters.
• • • A Blaze of Hope for the eruption of any coronavirus, armed conflicts and natural disasters
We always advocate for preventive development and we do not seek for destructive events to happen. However, our preparedness and readiness made us to assemble as quickly as possible advocacy tools should any effects and impacts erupt from new COVID-19 waves, wars and natural disasters in Africa.
So, our second wave of intervention or Blaze of Hope will go this Wintry season to erupted effects of coronavirus, armed conflicts and natural disasters in the areas of our interest in Africa.
With these two waves of action over this Wintry Season, we hope to enlighten the lives of those in pressing and emergent need.
• • • Examples of areas where a Blaze of Hope may be needed
For this December 2020, we have selected four areas that may need lighting a Blaze of Hope, which are as follows:
∗ Areas of countries severely affected by the socio-economic impacts of COVID-19 like in Madagascar, Cameroon and Burundi
∗ Areas of vulnerable countries affected by or prone to torrential rains and cyclones that could cause enormous food insecurity such as in Djibouti, Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo
∗ Areas of countries devastated by killing diseases like in North Cameroon with cholera and malaria in DRC
∗ Areas of countries that are the victims of a high level of persisting civil insecurity such as in Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad and Niger
The selection will help to start our Light advocacy. We know that many of our supporters have been affected by the health and economic impacts of the coronavirus and the prolonged impacts of lockdowns as well as restrictions on travel and free movements. For those who can support Light project, we can count on them to move forward this advocacy. And we would like to thank them in advance.
For any queries or enquiries regarding the Season of Light, please do not hesitate to contact CENFACS.
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.
