Welcome to CENFACS’ Online Diary!
25 August 2021
Post No. 210
The Week’s Contents
• CENFACS Annual Review 2020/2021
• Following the Direction of Poverty Reduction this Summer via Natural Capital Assets, Trending Topic from Week beginning 23/08/2021: Minerals
• Street Children in Africa: How to Bring Happiness and Healthiness for Children Living on the Street in Africa at this Time of Enduring COVID-19
… And much more!
Key Messages
• CENFACS Annual Review 2020/2021
CENFACS Annual Review 2020/2021 is a snapshot of what we did between 1 July 2020 and 30 June 2021. As it is stated, it is neither a statutory annual report nor an annual return.
It is a summary of the year 2020/2021 in the life of CENFACS that reports back to our supporters, users and other stakeholders the impact we have made; impact through stories, quantitative and qualitative data.
It highlights accomplishments made and recollects milestones for the above stated year.
It is as well a performance review and annual review story of our finances.
For more on this review, please read under the Main Development section of this post.
• Following the Direction of Poverty Reduction this Summer via Natural Capital Assets, Trending Topic from Week beginning 23/08/2021: Minerals
The last episode of our trending series in following the direction of poverty reduction via natural capital assets will be on minerals (that is solid and naturally occurring inorganic substances). Examples of minerals can include copper, diamond, cobalt, zinc, etc.
There is a long history and various stories about minerals with poverty reduction in Africa and elsewhere, particularly in places that are rich-minerals. Since we cannot deal with all of the issues surrounding minerals and poverty reduction in this short piece of trending analysis, we are going to focus on three areas: direct dividend transfers (from the income realised through sale of minerals) to reduce poverty, local crackers looking for minerals and child exploitation.
• • Following the direction of poverty reduction via minerals, in focus: direct dividend transfers
There are calls that passing on the dividends from the sale of minerals to the poor can help to reduce poverty. There are those who disagree with this. What is true is that this kind of transfer can give a direct stake to the poor people in minerals as natural capital assets. These transfers can be in the form of cash via biometric cards or various subsidies (to food, education, housing, health, transport, etc.).
As Marcelo M. Giugale (1) puts it:
“If a typical African government (think Gabon’s) distributed, say, one-tenth of its hydrocarbon or mineral revenues, each one of its citizens could get about US$100 per year. That may not be much for the well-off; they may not even bother to collect it. But it would be a huge help for poor households – a day-and-night difference in their efforts to climb out of poverty. And if you are not just poor but also a female, the transfer would carry a welcome dose of personal independence.” (p. 112)
In the context of the current trending topic and from what Giugale argued, we are looking at whether or not direct dividend transfers where they exist in Africa are helping poor people to come out poverty. We are as well finding out what it has been done to help these poor people to access those transfers.
• • Following the direction of poverty reduction via minerals, in focus: unofficial crackers
There is always a difference between the official exploitation of minerals and unofficial exploitation of the same minerals. In the context of these notes, we are interested in the unofficial exploitation of minerals which is mostly represented by local mineral crackers. In many places, the crackers tend to be poor and informal. They can be found in many mining sites in Africa.
For example, in the North, East, West and South-west of Burkina Faso; crackers search for gold. Likewise, in the Democratic Republic of Congo crackers carry out their activities in mining cobalt and copper in Kamatanda. In Mauritania, crackers also look for gold.
Our following up activity is about how these crackers are trying to reduce poverty amongst them by searching for minerals and selling them to dealers.
• • Following the direction of poverty reduction via minerals, in focus: child/labour exploitation
Child or labour exploitation has always been a big issue when it comes to minerals and mining companies. This is despite international laws against child or labour exploitation. Child and labour exploitation continues to exist.
For example, there are stories about big mining companies that try to take advantage of child labour in the Congolese cobalt mines.
As part of the process of following the direction of poverty reduction via minerals (which are natural capital assets), we are looking at the nexus or interconnection between minerals (mining activities) and child labour in the time of enduring COVID-19.
The above is our way of following the direction of poverty reduction through minerals.
To enquire about this trending activity and/or to follow the direction of poverty reduction with us, just contact CENFACS.
• Street Children in Africa: How to Bring Happiness and Healthiness for Children Living on the Street in Africa at this Time of Enduring COVID-19
As part of our Humanitarian Appeal Projects and Summer of Happiness and Healthiness, we would like to include Street Children in Africa. Particularly, we would like to associate the challenging work that Africa-based children organisations are doing in this area.
Indeed, at the time of enduring COVID-19, the situation of the children (boys and girls) living on the street can only become worse. It is known that many of these children live on begging. However, the hardship that the coronavirus and its associated effects have created can only harshly impact on the lives of these vulnerable and poor children.
To bring happiness and healthiness to these children, one needs to take them out the street and provide them with a decent home while supporting the organisations that have been supportive to them so far. In this respect, we would like to acknowledge the work carried out by our Africa-based children organisations which are doing a fantastic and well deserving job for these children. Amongst these organisations, there are for example:
√ Le Réseau des éducateurs des enfants et jeunes de la rue (Reefer) in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo
√ L’Oeuvre de reclassement et de protection des enfants de la rue (Orper) in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo
One can hope that these organisations and mostly these street children will receive the support they badly need and deserve so that the number of children living on street and child poverty in Africa could be sensibly reduced and possibly ended.
For those who would like to support or discuss with CENFACS about street children in Africa, they are welcome to contact us.
Extra Messages
• Happiness and Healthiness Journal, Creative Activity No. 4: Create Your Journal of Income
The coronavirus has threatened and destroyed many people’s incomes and income-generating capacity and opportunities. Despite that one can create a journal that explains their experiences, feelings and thoughts in terms of happiness and healthiness about income over this Summer of enduring COVID-19.
For example, one can explain how with restricted or limited income they have been able to meet Summer 2021 holiday expenses or simply do the things they wanted or planned to do with happiness and healthiness. They can as well include in their journal the financial help they received or given.
They can record their thoughts, feelings, experiences and memories in relation to income and income-generating capacity or opportunities. They can share with the community their experience of happiness and healthiness with income. This can be recorded in their journal and be shared by the end of Summer 2021.
To share the contents of their happiness and healthiness journal relating to happy and healthy financial life, and help build a better Summer holiday experience, they can contact CENFACS.
• All-in-one Impact Feedbacks: Report on Reports
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, numbers and infographics on the experiences you had about the projects and programmes we delivered in the last financial year.
We asked for two feedbacks: feedback from individuals as programme and project supporters and users, as well as feedback from organisations (Africa-based Sister Organisations). Some of you responded and others did not. We would like to thank those who responded.
For those who responded and gave us their mailing address, they will be contacted and will receive a copy of the above mentioned report.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank them again for their testimonial and experiential support.
• Appeal for Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu
Our appeal to end 25 years of sexual and gender-based violence and abuse on women, children and men in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo continues.
You can help to end the kidnappings, killings and collective rapes of women, children and men in Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu regions.
You can help to share happiness and healthiness with the victims of these atrocities.
You can make a helpful difference by removing vulnerability; bringing peace, safety and sustainability to the beneficiaries of this appeal.
You could for example support the Congolese organisation by the name of ‘Mouvement national des survivant.e.s. de violences sexuelles en République Démocratique du Congo’.
To support and or enquire, please contact CENFACS.
Vous pouvez travailler avec le CENFACS afin de réaliser les objectifs de réduction de la pauvreté pour les années 2020.
Si vous êtes intéressé (e), s’il vous plaît contactez-nous pour recevoir nos guides sur ces objectifs.
Main Development
• CENFACS Annual Review 2020/2021
This review aims at explaining to those who are interested in the work CENFACS does to get a glimpse of what happened during the financial year 2020/2021. It is a summary of our activities, performance, achievements and accounts for the financial year 2020/2021.
However, before starting this review we would like to mention three factors which were at play during the above stated period and which made the context of our poverty relief work. They are: life-threatening impacts of climate change, economic consequences of the exit of the UK from the EU regional economic integration model, and the enduring impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.
• • The Contexts of Poverty Reduction of the 2020/2021 Financial Year
As just said above, there are three key factors which affected or impacted our resources, plans and the way we conducted our poverty reduction work, which were: the changing climate, economic transition due to the UK exit from the EU, the enduring coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdowns.
Like any organisation that could face this type of daunting challenges, we had to develop a strategy or plan on how to approach our work differently during the year knowingly or unknowingly that events beyond our own control were going to happen.
• • • What we did
To continue to deal with the threats posed by the changing climate, we green and blue aligned our projects and programmes. To handle the unexpected economic consequences of the UK exit from the EU, we continued to work on our post-exit people’s development model. To keep pace with the effects of the enduring COVID-19 on our work, we developed a post-coronavirus poverty reduction restructuring strategy.
• • • Links between climate change, exit economy and COVID-19
Although this review has to be interpreted within these three key contexts of our work, one should not think that they are separate or exclusive. Let us explain. When we speak for example about poverty reduction in the context of COVID-19, it does not mean that the climate change factor has disappeared. We just want to mean and put emphasis on the dominant factor or the factor that impacted us the most at a particular time. In this respect, the three factors were all linked in the way our activities and services were affected.
Having clarified the contexts of work, let us now review our financial year 2020/2021.
• • Activities Review
As part of this review, we are going to highlight six activities we undertook, which are: COVID-19 campaign, the implementation of CENFACS’ 2020s Development Agenda and Poverty Reduction Programme, essential economic activities, sustainable alignment, humanitarian appeals and poverty reduction follow-up activities.
• • • 2020-2021 as a Continuing COVID-19 campaign year
As COVID-19 did show very little signs of abating despite the rollout of vaccine and test, we had together with the community to continue to campaign against the enduring coronavirus while following the evolution of the epidemiological curves of the same coronavirus.
To facilitate the running of this campaign, we set up a COVID-19 Hub for Poverty Reduction. We had to do it together to protect our services, our users and the general public.
• • • 2020-2021 as a programme implementation year
We started the implementation of CENFACS’ 2020s Development Agenda and Poverty Reduction Programme. The seven goals (income, consumption, energy, in-work, intergenerational, digital and situational poverty) of these agenda and programme have been subject of our advocacy during this year in review.
To name just one of them, the reduction of intergenerational poverty, which helped to raise awareness about the need not to transfer poverty to future generations, received a positive feedback within the CENFACS community.
• • • 2020-2021 as an essential economic year
Since almost the entire year non-essential economic activities were restricted, essential economic activities could only be the one to help in the reduction of poverty. Translating in terms of the running of services and activities, we had to rely upon the essential aspects of our service provisioning (such as Advice-giving service) to work with the community in the UK and in Africa during this ended financial year.
Advice was given to the community to manage the situational poverty caused by the coronavirus, to build back better from it, to make the return from the lockdown possible and work, to control COVID-19 and Summer happiness budgets for an ordinary family, etc.
• • • 2020-2021 as a green and clean year of building back and forward
During the outlined financial year, one of the concerns for many in our community was how to resume outdoor life and move on at the time of enduring COVID-19. In order to respond to this pressing and life-saving need, with the support we received we set up a build better together programme which consisted of two parts: build back and build forward from the legacies of COVID-19.
However, there was no any other way of building back and forward together unless we did it greener and cleaner. This meant; we had to align our programme to greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals and targets. Since then, the report we received from the members of our community in applying the programme in reduction their own carbon emissions and in using the circular economic model is encouraging.
• • • 2020-2021 as another humanitarian relief year
With what was happening in places and or regions (like African Sahel, Lake Chad Basin, Horn of Africa, Ituri and Tigray), we could not stay silent as human life was endangered and in some circumstances destroyed. With the support of the community in terms of data and stories from these places/regions, we had to appeal so that lives could be saved from civil violence, attacks, gender-based violence, severe climate conditions and other life-threatening and destroying conditions (such as the coronavirus). In total, we launched eight humanitarian appeals.
• • • 2020-2021 as a leave-no-one-behind year through follow-up activities
Reaching out to those who are difficult to reach, following the direction of poverty reduction and sustainable development via ‘Social’ and ‘Virtual worlds’, making zero hunger Africa, taking action for the upkeep of the nature and so on; helped not to forget anybody (including flora and fauna) in the process of helping to reduce poverty and enhance sustainable development. Through these follow-up activities, we were able to bring the life-saving needs of those unreachable to the poverty reduction supporters and enthusiasts.
• • Achievements of the year
We would be indebted if we end this review without mentioning or adding to the above summary of work carried out these three achievements: CENFACS’ COVID-19 Hub for Poverty Reduction, Build Back and Forward Better Programmes, and Ability to Serve the Community both virtually and in-person.
• • • CENFACS’ COVID-19 Hub for Poverty Reduction
CENFACS’ COVID-19 Hub for Poverty Reduction is a newly set up point where most of CENFACS’ work on COVID-19-induced poverty and hardships are regrouped. The new hub holds and provides information as well as serves as a directory of inquiries about CENFACS’ work on COVID-19 for both internal and external purposes.
The Hub also holds the state of progress about CENFACS work on COVID-19 (such as the Campaign for Resilience against Covid-19 and the various follow-ups of the evolution of the epidemiological curves of the coronavirus).
• • • Build Back and Forward Better Programmes (BBFBPs)
BBFBPs are made of two parts: Build Back Better Programme (BBBP) and Build Forward Better Programme (BFBP)
Build Back Better Programme considers the three classical elements of Build Back Better model which are: recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction.
Build Forward Better Programme is a set of projects and activities designed with the aim to ensure that the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic sits on sound and sustainable foundations that build back better the poverty reduction gains hard-won so far and help beneficiaries to move forward better cleaner and greener. The programme is scheduled for two years depending on the duration of the coronavirus pandemic, with a possibility of rolling it out.
It is hoped that through this programme, beneficiaries will make steady progress in their journey and work of reconstruction from the COVID-19 impacts while preparing to stay resilient to future similar shocks and crises.
Building forward better is also about correcting the asymmetrical and disproportional legacies of COVID-19 containment measures and lockdown restrictions since many of our community members have been unevenly hurt during this current crisis compared to other economic crisis such as the global recession of 2008/9.
Building forward better is finally about adopting green and clean pathways for poverty reduction and low carbon emissions development.
• • • Ability to Serve the Community both virtually and in-person
The coronavirus and associated lockdowns have deepened the process of digital transformation within CENFACS as most of our services (e.g. advice) to the community have moved to online platform. The community can access our services virtually regardless of any face-to-face contact. This offers the community additional and healthy choice. Likewise, we can undertake hybrid work with the community; that is working with the community virtually and/or in-person, at home and/or away.
• • Performance review
After a year of net spell of our cash funds as it passed from 22% in 2018/19 to 33% in 2019/2020 financial year, it went down during this financial year under review. Our cash funds dropped by almost 89%. The aftershock effects of the coronavirus and exit economy started to appear in our finances. The savings we made on payments accounts on items (such as in-person networking and meetings, transport and travel, postage stamps, outreach, printing and photocopying) were wiped out by the enduring coronavirus, prolong lockdowns and uncertain exit economy.
Also, the additional investment we made in online and virtual technologies and infrastructures (as we were trying to respond to an unprecedented health crisis and finding other ways of still helping to reduce poverty and hardships) has not yet materialised or translated into a positive return.
On the receipts side, we could not raise the needy funds we were expecting since the pockets of most of supporters were affected by the dramatic and drastic effects of the coronavirus shock and the prolong lockdowns.
We hope that with the post-coronavirus restructuring and build forward better programmes we set up, together with the unlocking of economies, the ascending trends of our cash funds will resume sooner or later during the 2021/2022 financial year.
• • Thank you
The work of CENFACS is a collective endeavour that relies upon the voluntary contribution of others, a key to our success. As such, there is a number of people and organisations who contributed to the realisation of our financial year 2020-2021, especially in a year marred by the pandemic.
We would like to indiscriminately acknowledge them. Without their helpful and life-saving support, we would not be able to achieve the above. We are grateful to our volunteers, users, website/blog readers and supporters.
We would like to thank all of them for their unwavering commitment and impactful support for helping us to voice and bring once again our poverty reduction message into the world in development, especially at the very daunting time of the coronavirus pandemic and economic unlocking.
Many thanks for making 2020-2021 another deservingly memorable year at CENFACS.
_________
Reference
(1) Marcelo M. Giugale (2014), Economic Development: what everyone needs to know, Oxford University Press, Oxford & New York
_________
Help CENFACS keep the Poverty Relief work going this year.
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One could consider a recurring donation to CENFACS in the future.
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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 2021 and beyond.
With many thanks.
