Welcome to CENFACS’ Online Diary!
01 September 2021
Post No. 211
Welcome back Message
Before starting the contents of the blog and post of this first Wednesday of September 2021, we would like to welcome back all those who are returning this month.
We are welcoming back the following:
∝ All those who are returning from the coronavirus self-isolation
∝ 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 back message also applies to those using or helping or supporting 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 2021
• September: Advice-giving Month
• Making Zero Hunger Grand Sud of Madagascar
… 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 2021
Back-to-relief Programme is a set of related activities and services with an aim of reducing poverty amongst multi-dimensional poor children, young and families (MDPCYPFs) by working with them to meet their needs after summer break and economic unlocking so that they can start September 2021 without or with less hardship.
The programme is made of a number of supportive elements like the following:
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 and available resources.
This year’s programme will slightly follow the pattern of last year’s since the coronavirus pandemic endures. Many of our project and programme beneficiaries have experienced many months of economic inactivity since the coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns happened. Now that some of them are returning or resuming or still struggling with their outdoor activities, they may need some advice to adjust their lives or build back and forward better from the legacies of the coronavirus and subsequent lockdowns.
The Back-to-relief 2021 programme is designed to include the needs of these returnees. 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 despite COVID-19 vaccine rollout and testing programme.
For more on CENFACS’ Back-to-relief Programme, please read the details under Main Development section of this post.
• 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.
• Making Zero Hunger Grand Sud of Madagascar
Our campaign about Making Zero Hunger Africa continues this September 2021 as we are appealing to step up support for the Grand Sud of Madagascar to reduce and, if possible, to end hunger there. Stepping up efforts will help add value to what has been done so far, such as drones that are supplying food and vaccines to people living in remote areas of Madagascar.
Indeed, climate change and hunger continue to threaten and endanger lives in the South of Madagascar – the Grand Sud of Madagascar. Currently, the peoples in the Grand Sud of Madagascar are experiencing the following life-threatening events: prolonged drought, food insecurity, crop failures, in brief humanitarian crisis.
As part of this crisis, the following data and facts have been recorded from local sources and various development agencies working on the ground:
√ Hundreds of thousands of people are suffering from prolonged drought
√ 3 million people suffered from droughts
√ 14,000 people are on the brink of famine
√ Women and children are amongst these victims
Etc.
You can make zero hunger support or help to the peoples of the Grand Sud of Madagascar.
Your support can help them …
√ To eat
√ To pay for health services
√ To send their children to school
√ To get clean water
√ To access sanitation facilities
√ To get the seeds to plant
√ To manage the hunger season
Etc.
To make zero hunger happen for the people of the Grand Sud of Madagascar, please contact CENFACS.
Extra Messages
• Unlock your Summer Holiday Data and Tell your Story
Throughout our July and August 2021 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 and spreadable.
Now some of you are back, we can try to feedback our poverty-relieving and development experiences of using Happiness and Healthiness projects and of the economic unlocking as well as of the coronavirus restrictions and rules over the Summer period.
One can also feedback any creations, any experiences with natural capital assets, any community practices and any volunteering stories, if they volunteered, they had 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 their Summer data and preparing to tell their Summer story.
Sharing your experiences with us in this way helps to keep the CENFACS Community active, engaged and grow 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.
• COVID-19 Campaign Update: Post-COVID-19 Rehabilitation Strategies (Phase 3)
The Campaign for Resilience against Covid-19 (or the Covid-19 Campaign) is still in Phase 3. After our Summer report on this campaign, the following update will enlighten the progress made about the Phase 3 of the campaign.
• • What is Phase 3 of our COVID-19 Campaign?
Phase 3 is the Post-COVID-19 Rehabilitation Strategies, which are processes of planning and conducting cure and 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 as well.
• • What did happen in this Phase 3?
As part of these processes, we have curated activities and services so that they get fully and healthily back on track. This move goes in tandem with the unlocking of the economy as well as COVID-19 vaccine rollout and testing programme.
Let us repeat ourselves. By speaking about Post-COVID-19 Rehabilitation Strategies, we do not mean that the coronavirus pandemic is over. We just imply 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 is found against it. So, the idea of the existence of COVID-19 has been already passed in our mind set.
• • What do we need do as part of these rehabilitation strategies?
What we need to do is to develop strategies to restore our work while taking into account the new coronavirus-led environment or reality (including the new COVID-19 variants). In this respect, we are trying to Build Back Better our lives through a Build-Back-Better Campaign.
Once we build back better, we could build forward better. This means, we can move to the next level of our Build Campaign, which is a Build-Forward-Better Campaign. We can build back and forward at the same time as the process of building in this context is backward and forward one.
• • Strands of thought on COVID-19 Campaign
Some of you know 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.
• • COVID-19 Campaign Update relating to CENFACS’ work on Africa
Regarding the COVIDd-19 Campaign in relation to our work on Africa, the COVID-19 extra message of this week is as follows.
We are continuing to follow the development of the epidemiological curves of the coronavirus pandemic in Africa where cases keep on increasing. We are doing it via our shadowing model.
From the Health Emergency Dashboard of World Heath Organisation (1), it is stated that
“as of 31 August 2021, there were 5,634,831 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Africa”.
The rise in the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 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.
Finally, we are monitoring the evolution of the coronavirus vaccine rollout and testing programme in Africa. In this checking process, we are looking at the involvement of our Africa-based Sister Organisations in supporting their local users. Where our hands are needed, we would be pleased to help when we can.
The above is our COVID-19 Campaign update, particularly the 3rd Phase of this campaign. This update can be found at CENFACS’ COVID-19 Hub for Poverty Reduction.
To support and or to enquire about this COVID-19 Campaign update and COVID-19 Hub for Poverty Reduction, please contact CENFACS.
• This September’s Special: Working with the Untargeted and Unqualified for support
As special feature of our Back-to-relief programme for this year, we will be working with those members of our community who have not been targeted for help and or who are not meeting the criteria for support.
For unknown and unjustified reasons, there could be members of our community who have been refused or denied or slept through the net in order to receive poverty reduction service they deserve from services or institutions which are supposed to support them.
We will work with them, re-examine their cases and explore together the level of support they need in navigating their journey toward qualification and eligibility to services and activities available on the market.
If you are a member of our community and not have been targeted or have been told you do not meet criteria for support whereas you have genuine need of poverty reduction, you could contact CENFACS to explore together your case for poverty reduction support.
Pour cette rentrée de septembre 2021, le CENFACS a préparé des activités, projets et programmes pour travailler ensemble avec ses usagers. Ces activités, projets et programmes permettront de répondre à leurs besoins existants, changeants et émergents de l’ère du coronavirus.
Pour en savoir plus et/ou y avoir accès, s’il vous plaît contactez le CENFACS.
Main Development
• Back-to-relief Programme: Programme for Pre-autumn Season 2021
• • 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 Summer break and the prolonged coronavirus disruption. They are back for the New Academic Year and New Relief, year for which we have prepared projects and programmes to work with them so that they can meet their existing, challenging, changing and coronavirus-emerging needs – the back-to-relief projects and programmes in a September of double-jabbed COVID-19 waning immunity.
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 continuing impacts and other crippling effects of the coronavirus pandemic, many of our services are run in hybrid way: virtually/online and in-person run. Besides that, it is not always easy for people, especially those who have some physical handicaps and parents with small kids, to in-person move and meet service providers if this service provision cannot physically come to them even if the need is pressing.
This is why we are carrying on in organising these virtual days to enable those in need to virtually access services despite the continuing legacies of the coronavirus disruption and any physical inconvenience they may have.
• • • What are virtual open days?
Virtual Open Days (VODs) are a back-to-relief initiative organised by CENFACS during this September 2021 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.
• • • How VODs Work
Our Virtual Open Day, which will be every Fridays of September 2021, will be held from 10 am to 2 pm.
You can access VODs by contacting CENFACS.
You do not need to register with us.
Every Fridays, you can either email or phone or even text between 10 am and 2 pm.
For more on CENFACS’ Virtual Open Hours and Days as well as how they work, please contact us.
• • Support for Children of Conflict-stricken and Climate Change-affected Areas in Africa this September
Another back-to-relief initiative for this September 2021 is Support for the Children of Conflict-stricken 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 Tigray, Ituri and African Sahel appeals). All these appeals were launched under the Light projects.
The appeals were related to countries with displaced persons and victims of conflict (e.g. Tigray appeal for Ethiopia); children victims of conflicts (e.g. the Ituri appeal for the Democratic Republic of Congo); under acutely food-insecure people (e.g. the appeal for African Sahel and Lake Chad Basin).
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/countries are receiving and/or received, especially at this challenging time of building forward better together from 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 when 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, please contact CENFACS.
• • Back to the Upkeep of the Nature this September 2021
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 2021, 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). In September 2020, we carried on with the advocacy on waters through the theme of “Blue Spaces”.
This September, we shall have a 3-week work on sea level rise as new notes for the “Blue Spaces” starting from the 6th of September 2021. To conclude the month, we will have some e-discussions on circular economy.
Briefly, Back to the Upkeep of the Nature this September 2021 will include the “Big Beasts” advocacy, protection against “Sea Level Rise” as a new note for the “Blue Spaces” theme and an e-discussion on circular economy.
• • Back to Advisory Support this September 2021
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-dimensional poor children, young people and families (CYPFs). After the summer break, 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
√ Looking for a new occupation to deal with the economic effects of the coronavirus and lockdown
√ Finding help to adjust their life after lockdowns
√ Looking for direction in an unlocking 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 two years, we even went far with our Advice service as we were trying to deal with the coronavirus pandemic effect. We 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
√ Poverty reduction within the context of Africa Continental Free Trade Area
√ Not-for-profit investment and development
√ Absorption capacity development
√ Fundraising and grant-seeking leads
√ Income generation and streams
√ Sustainable development
√ Monitoring and evaluation
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, please contact CENFACS. To register for or enquire about advice services, go to www.cenfacs.org.uk/services-activities.
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Reference
(1) https: //covid19.who.int (accessed September 2021)
________
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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.
