Welcome to CENFACS’ Online Diary!
01 December 2021
Post No. 224
The Week’s Contents
• What’s on in December 2021: Festive Guide!
• Festive Shopping and Donations
• Festive Income Boost, In Focus for 2021 Edition: Spending Limit – How to live within your means
… And much, much more!
Key Messages
• What’s on in December 2021: Festive Guide!
To keep the festive month and season interesting as well as with healthcare against the rebound of the coronavirus pandemic, we have brought exciting offers and/or new developments which can be found in the Main Development section of this post.
The above initiatives next to the key dates from CENFACS December 2021 Diary including those listed below are the ones that would make the festive month and the Season of Light at CENFACS. They have been selected because of their special features which make them in tune with the season’s theme.
They command the following features:
√ They are seasonally blended projects aiming at providing helpful, healthy and net-zero-CO2-emissions reliefs during the festive time and beyond.
√ They are a stunning selection of poverty-relieving contents designed to help not only to reduce poverty but also to overcome the continuing health and economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdowns as well as the emerging new COVID-19 variants.
√ They are about breaking down the traditional barriers to poverty reduction during the festive rituals while delivering high impact in terms of relief experience for the poor.
√ They can facilitate the creation of a new life in the New Year and the post-pandemic development landscape.
• • Season’s Reliefs
The following are the selected December 2021 initiatives or Season’s Reliefs:
∇ Festive Income Builder, Booster & Calculator, In Focus for 2021: Spending Limit – How to live within your means
∇ Community Value Chains: The CENFACS Community and Leaves of Poverty Reduction
∇ Volunteering in 2022 with Remote Volunteering for Climate Neutrality and Poverty reduction
∇ Cost Centre Project for Africa-based Sister Organisations
∇ Thanking 2021 Year Makers & Enablers
∇ Gifts of Peace (Edition 2021/2022)
∇ Run, Vote & Play for Poverty Relief and Sustainable Development (Action-Results 2021)
The above mentioned projects would make the first part of Season’s Reliefs as being announced above. Some of them intertwine between our monthly and seasonal development calendars. All will depend whether one is reading our development calendar on a monthly or seasonal basis.
To support and or enquire about Season’s Reliefs, please contact CENFACS.
All these initiatives can be found in CENFACS Festive Guide. This Guide for Festive Season is made of the following contents: festive services, gifts of peace and the theme of season’s reliefs.
For further details about the Festive Guide, read under the Main Development section of this post.
• Festive SHOPPING and DONATIONS at http://cenfacs.org.uk/shop/
• • CENFACS Charity e-Store
Go Relief with CENFACS’ Charity e-Store this Festive Season!
CENFACS Charity e-Shop is open for both online festive purchase and goods donations. Under the current strengthened rules and approach to COVID-19 with the return of face coverings on transport and in shops because of Omicron variant in England, we are following the strict restrictions and guidance regarding the control and surveillance of COVID-19 as well as the protection and saving of lives.
For the health and safety of everybody, all goods donations will be quarantined for at least 72 hours.
We have re-enhanced our sanitation and cleaning methods and practices.
We hope you are doing the same in the interest of public health and safety.
Please do not hesitate to donate goods or purchase what is available at CENFACS Charity e-Store.
Many lives have been threatened and destroyed by the coronavirus pandemic. Those who managed to survive need help. We need help as well to help them come out poverty and hardships caused by the coronavirus pandemic and its continuing effects.
To donate or purchase goods, please go to: http://cenfacs.org.uk/shop/
• • Festive season is an opportunity to do something against poverty
Every occasion or every season is an opportunity to do something against poverty and hardships. The festive season, which is a great time to share precious moments with your love ones, is also a period to spread a little extra of that happiness to those who do not have.
We understand that many people including our supporters continue to seriously suffer from the health and economic effects of the coronavirus and related lockdowns. However, for people who are already living in poverty, these effects are even intolerable and unbearable for them. There is a reason to support them during this festive season.
You can give your unwanted and unneeded goods to CENFACS’ Charity e-Store, the shop built to help relieve poverty, including coronavirus-induced poverty. You can buy second hand goods and bargain priced new items and much more. Amongst the goods to donate, we are asking carbon neutral goods as well.
• • Donation of CARBON NEUTRAL GOODS this Festive Season
You can donate carbon neutral or net zero CO2 emissions goods to help reduce the adverse impacts of climate change and poverty, while creating an opportunity to save non-renewable natural resources. This type of donation can boost the circular economy and improve the upkeep of the nature.
CENFACS’ Charity e-Store needs your support for Festive SHOPPING and DONATIONS.
You can do something different this Festive Season by SHOPPING or DONATING GOODS at CENFACS Charity e-Store.
You can DONATE or SHOP or do both:
√ DONATE unwanted GOODS and PRODUCTS to CENFACS Charity e-Store during the festive period and beyond
√ SHOP at CENFACS Charity e-Store to support good and deserving causes of poverty relief during the festive period and beyond
Your SHOPPING and or GOODS DONATIONS will help to the Upkeep of the Nature and to reduce poverty as well as the continuing health and economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.
• Festive Income Boost, In Focus for 2021 Edition: Spending Limit – How to live within your means
The 2021 Edition of our Autumn ICDP (Individual Capacity Development Programme) resource, known as Festive Income Boost and which is designed to support Multi-dimensionally Income Poor Children, Young People and Families (MIPCYPFs) was already published at the beginning of November 2021.
This year, our focus is on Spending Limit; that is on ways of Living within your means and earnings. We have included it in these Key Messages as we are in the Festive Month. Also, it is an occasion to remind the CENFACS Community that this resource or additional support is available for use during the festive season.
The resource is available as a booklet from CENFACS Charity e-Store. It is normally free of charge but we will appreciate a donation of £5 to help us help reduce poverty and the cost of renewing and producing this resource on an annual basis.
At this prolong time of the coronavirus and of huge challenge for those living in poverty, we need financial help like many voluntary and charitable organisations do to work with the most in need in the community.
To order and or find out more about the Autumn ICDP resource, please contact CENFACS with your mailing details.
Extra Messages
• Impact Monitoring and Evaluation of “A la une” (Autumn Leaves of Action for the Upkeep of the Nature in Existence) Campaign (this impact was scheduled for 29 and 30/11/2021)
Although we finished to compose the seven notes or themed activities of the “A la une” Campaign during our 7-week campaign, this campaign for the Upkeep of the Nature does not stop with these notes. Our action for the Upkeep of the Nature continues.
We are now carrying on with the collection and analysis of information regarding this 7-week campaign in order to get its impact or at least its output. The findings from this Impact Monitoring and Analysis will help to figure out what has been achieved through this campaign and give us some flavour about the future direction of this campaign.
As part of this Impact Monitoring and Analysis exercise, we would like to ask to those who have been following our 7-week campaign to share with us their feelings and thoughts about these two areas:
(a) The overall “A la une” Campaign
(b) Any of the themed activities you/they followed with us during this campaign
By sharing with us your feelings and thoughts about “A la une” Campaign, this could suggest that you value our work and show interest in what we are trying to achieve as an organisation generally and or in respect to the Upkeep of the Nature specifically. Your intervention could as well indicate that we share interest and concern regarding the health and wealth of the nature.
You can share your feelings and thoughts with us by:
∝ Phoning
∝ Texting
∝ E-mailing
∝ Completing the contact form with your feelings and thoughts
When sharing your feelings or thoughts on the matter, please do not make statements to only please us. We do not expect people to please us. Instead, we would like you to give an objective and fair opinion.
We would like to thank in anticipation those who will be giving their opinions about the “A la une” Campaign.
• Learning, Development and Action Plan from the Month of Economics of Education and Skill Formation (Skills Development Month)
Through November month of Skills Development, we focused on the following: planning skills, implementation skills, analytical skills, and income generation skills.
As part of keeping the culture of continuous learning and professional development within CENFACS, we are examining what the running of Skills Development and Skills Focus have brought and indicated to us. We are particularly looking at the learning and development priorities and initiatives in the post-pandemic and post-exited economic development worlds. In this exercise, we are considering the action points and plan we may need to make in order to improve or better change the way in which we deliver our services and work with users.
For those who have been following the running of the Skills Development Month with us, this is the time or opportunity they can add their inputs to our learning and development experience so that we can know the skills gap that need to be filled up in 2022 and beyond. They can as well have their own action plans on how they would like to take forward the contents of Skills Development month. And if they have a plan and want us to look at it, we are willing to do so.
Have an action plan for your skills development and want CENFACS to look at it, please do not hesitate to contact us. To add your input to our exercise on learning, development and action plan; just contact CENFACS.
• Review of our Appeals for the Horn of Africa Region
• • What this review is about and how different it is
This review is different from the one we did about Tigray in Ethiopia, which was about what specifically happened in Tigray. The current review is instead about the greater Horn of Africa Region appeals we previously made to help the peoples of this region to help themselves to deal with drought and hunger they were experiencing.
• • Why we are reviewing our previous appeals about the entire Horn of Africa Region
The Horn of Africa Region is under review within CENFACS as climate change is not doing justice to the poor people, fauna and flora there, particularly in the North of Kenya (in arid and semi-arid areas). In this part of Kenya, thirsty and hungry humans and animals are looking for water and food as drought and aridity have destroyed crops and breeding.
According to the United Nations and the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (1), 465,000 children of ages below 5 years and 93,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women are suffering from malnutrition there. Food insecurity touches almost 2.5 million people in the North of Kenya as they heavily depend on cattle breeding.
The situation is so tragic that there are scenes of animals (such as okapis and others) killed by thirst of water and hunger while they were on the way of searching for water and food. There could be an increasing risk that this life-threatening and –destroying situation could expand to other parts of the greater Horn of Africa (such as South Ethiopia, Somalia and North-Eastern Uganda).
Due to this alarming humanitarian situation, this week we are reviewing our previous appeals about the Horn of Africa Region for a new action plan for the region. While we are reviewing these appeals, we would like to remind those who do not know that we are running a Humanitarian Relief Appeal this Autumn 2021.
Through this appeal or campaign, people can donate at least £2 to create two benefits:
one benefit for humans and one benefit for other living beings (e.g. flora and fauna) in Africa.
People can donate or gift aid or support otherwise, according their financial ability and capacity.
• • Contacting CENFACS about this review and support
You can contact CENFACS to discuss or talk about this review and support at http://cenfacs.org.uk/contact-us/
La saison de la lumière débutera ce 21 décembre 2021 et se terminera le 21 mars 2022.
Pendant cette période, nous développerons des projets de lumière pour travailler ensemble avec et accompagner ceux ou celles qui souffrent ou continuent de suffrir des effets néfastes des événements suivants:
∝ des guerres civiles (comme dans le Burkina Faso et le Mali)
∝ le dérèglement climatique (tel qu’en Corne de l’Afrique)
∝ des désastres naturels (comme dans la République Démocratique du Congo avec l’éruption volcanique de Nyiragongo).
On peut espérer qu’à travers ce travail commun et cet accompagnement, les bénéficiaires retrouveront la lumière ou le chemin de la réduction de la pauvreté et du développement durable.
Pour ceux ou celles qui veulent travailler avec nous sur les sujets susdits, veuilez contacter le CENFACS.
Main Development
• What’s on in December 2021: Festive Guide!
• • Festive Guide
Inside this guide, there are three main listings: Festive Services, Gifts of Peace and Season’s Relief Theme.
• • • Festive Services
These services are made of two types of projects: regular and festive projects.
(a) Regular or on-going projects are continuous including during the festive period. The project known as All-year Round Projects (Triple Value Initiatives) is one of them.
(b) Projects for the festive occasion only; projects which are specially designed for that occasion. The project Community Value Chains is one of them.
Both types of projects are included in our December 2021 programme and planned to be delivered over the month of December 2021.
• • • Gifts of Peace
These are CENFACS Wintry Gift Appeal initiative to support people living in poverty in Africa.
CENFACS’ Winter Gift of Peace to Africa is indeed …
√ A festive life-sustaining support that helps to reduce poverty and bring sustainable peace
√ A festive giving to acknowledge and do something about poverty over the festive period, which is also an occasion to trans-give and think of those who are not as fortunate as others
√ A festive means to support those who don’t have peace because of poverty, particularly in the developing regions of the world like Africa
As the world is still battling against the economic and health legacies of the coronavirus pandemic at multiple speeds, there are many of these people who desperately need support.
However, we must acknowledge that this is a challenging time for both those who support and those who receive that support. We have various situations like the following:
∝ There are those who are trying to build back from the coronavirus
∝ There are those who are trying to build forward from the same coronavirus
∝ There are those who are caught or threatened by COVID-19 mutation with its new variants
∝ There are those who are trying to build back and forward at the same time.
Because of this collective and differentiated challenge, we are going to make sure that our appeal reflects the circumstances of the post-pandemic time at various speeds. This appeal (CENFACS’ Winter Gift of Peace to Africa) will be launched by the end of Autumn 2021.
In meantime, those who would like to have for more information about this Wintry appeal, they need to contact CENFACS.
• • • Season’s Relief Theme
The theme for Season’s Reliefs which would carry us throughout the entire festive period is Peace. The Festive Season, which is part of the worldwide celebration, kicks off in December for CENFACS and ends by the 31st of January in the New Year.
During the Festive Season, we normally start the Season of Light. The Season of Light is one of the four seasons of CENFACS Development Calendar. It is the Winter season which goes on until March and is featured by Winter Lights and Light Projects or Light Appeals.
During this Season of Light, we shall also do a lot of work about light (or energy) and poverty reduction since the global climate community has committed itself to phase down coal as source of energy whereas many energy poor people in Africa are coal-dependant.
• • What the Month December is about at CENFACS
December is a month of Income Generation, Record Tracking and Winter Lights at CENFACS.
• • • December as Income Generation Month
December is the Income Generation month according to CENFACS monthly development calendar and planner. It is the month during which we advocate and provide tips, hints and other types of advisory support on how to generate additional income to cover shortage in regular income, by using other avenues within the boundaries of the law and order.
This additional income can enable multi-dimensional income poor children, young people and families (C, YP & Fs) to exercise their basic human right to celebrate the end of the year in their own way.
However, this December 2021 will be mostly about Spending Limit as we highlighted in this year Edition of Festive Income Boost, rather than Income Generation. This is to help C, YP & Fs to have a control over their spending in order to avoid poverty or further poverty because of lack of control over spending.
The coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdowns have created the collapse of many ways and capacities of earning income especially for the kinds of people we are trying to look for support. Many of them have become further income deficit. To help them live within their means and earnings/capacity, we will be working with them during the festive season to balance their household books via spending limit.
So, supporting multi-dimensional poor C, YP & Fs to explore ways of improving their spending habits, and where possible generating, building and boosting their incomes to exercise their human right to a decent end-of-year celebration is not only a one-off or seasonal business to make ends meet; but can also become an additional way of building and developing the capacity to reduce and end income poverty. They are poor not only because of lack of income but also due to their failing capacities to control their spending as well as generate enough income to cover their needs.
As part of festive support, our Edition 2021 Festive Extra Income Builder, Booster and Calculator would be available for those who need it. We launched this resource earlier in Autumn in order to enable those in need of the resource to get the tips and hints they need to early start exploring ways of reducing their unneeded or not life-saving spending while finding ways of boosting their income and generational economy.
This year, this resource focuses on Ways of Living within your/our Means as the means to overcome intergenerational income poverty and improve intergenerational transfer accounts.
Besides this resource, we planned two periods of work on spending limit programmes and schemes starting from this Wednesday as follows.
⇒ 01 to 07/12/2021: Spending Limit Programmes (SLP) Period
SLP is a set of initiatives designed to help users to set up a spending threshold on their entire budget (including billed and unbilled invoices) and stay within self-restriction and/or restriction agreed/imposed/suggested by third parties.
During the SLP period, we will be working on how people and families can set up and or be involved a series of structured activities or small projects to limit their spending without creating damages to their basic life-sustaining needs, and where possible to generate little extra income in order to reduce poverty.
For example: In the activity relating to Spending Limit Plan, it could be about what items of spending limit budget to cut or to cancel or to increase in order to maintain a healthy and affordable spending limit. Fig. 2 gives an idea of Spending Limit Plan or Budget. In this exercise, potential users will be remembered the following say from ‘raisingchildren.net.au’ (2):
“The key to budgeting is sticking to a basic rule – Spend less than you earn”
Another example could be to help families to write their Cash Flow Statement like in Fig. 1. Although, this Fig.1 does not show the opening and closing balances, it is nevertheless useful in understanding cash receipts and cash payments. We can as well lead project beneficiaries to a variety of resources on the matter such as online budget planners, builders and calculators, etc.
⇒ 08 to 14/12/2021: Spending Limit Schemes (SLS) Period
SLS helps to work with users so that they can elaborate an action plan about their spending limit for a week or month or year (2022). Through this exercise, we shall use some tools to work with users. In particular, we shall look at with them household or family cash flow projections or statements, particularly the spending side. Again, during this exercise we shall focus on a spending limit plan that does not adversely impact the basic life-sustaining needs of a given household or family. As it is said on the website tomorrow.me (3):
“Cash flow is a great tool to help you establish New Year’s Resolutions, but they can be done at any time”.
We shall work with family/household users to evaluate their financial health and better plan for 2022 via cash flow projections or statements.
In the Fig.2, the Grand Total Expenses could be your Spending Limit which you will try not go beyond in your plan in order to stick to the basic rule of spending less than you earn.
Briefly, during the SLS period, we will be working on how people and families with spending limit problems can find available systematic plans for future action to limit their spending without damaging their health and welfare, and where possible generate income in order to reduce continuing poverty and hardships; particularly what scheme is workable or unworkable for them.
Throughout and at the end of these two periods, we hope that people and families with spending limit problems can develop their own individual working SLP and SLS plans or policies to limit spending and generate little extra incomes not only for the festive period, but also beyond the festive time. In doing so, they can improve their intergenerational economy and transfer accounts.
• • • December as Record Tracking Month
December is also the time of record tracking on our All-year Round Projects (or Triple Value Initiatives), particularly
√ CENFACS Poverty Relief League (The African Nations Poverty Relief League)
√ Run to Reduce Poverty in Africa in 2021
√ Vote your African Poverty Relief and Development Manager of the Year 2021
We expect those who took part and or organised activities on our behalf about these projects to come forward, report and share with us their actions, results and experiences about the three stars or bests of 2021 (Best Country, Best Runner and Best Manager).
As these activities have been organised within the difficult contexts of enduring coronavirus pandemic which has taken almost two years and half, we can count on them to tell us their Winner of CENFACS Virtual Trophy of the Post-pandemic Year.
• • • December as the start of Winter Lights Season
As said above in our Festive Guide, December is finally the month we start CENFACS Winter Lights Season, the first season of our development seasonal calendar. The Season of Light, which kicks off around Mid-December, includes the Gifts of Peace.
Each year, we produce an edition of the Gifts of Peace that makes up our final fundraising campaign and last humanitarian appeal of the year. This year, we are doing the same while taking into account the continuing health and economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic in our last humanitarian appeal or fundraising campaign of 2021.
Peace is the festive theme we choose at CENFACS to spread the joy of Season’s Reliefs to those in need, especially at this time of the post-coronavirus pandemic and post-lockdowns. We try to help their wishes of relief become true with the Gifts of Peace, by putting a smile on their face with relief notes.
With face coverings imposed by the coronavirus pandemic, many of them cannot find the smiles they need for relief. One can hope that the Gifts of Peace will bring back the lost smiles.
To support the Edition 2021/2022 of Gifts of Peace, please contact CENFACS.
• • • CENFACS Community Value Chains Celebration
As part of the Season of Light is the CENFACS Community Value Chains celebration. This celebration generally closes our seasons at the end of the year and concludes our yearly development calendar and planner, while marking the end of civil year at CENFACS.
It is an end-of-year eventful project enabling us to look upon us again as a community of shared vision, values and beliefs which connect us as human chains with a purpose of reducing and ending poverty amongst us, and of enhancing sustainable development as well.
This year we shall again focus on ourselves as a Community with its Leaves of Poverty Reduction. It will be about re-purposing leaves of poverty reduction in face of the continuing health and economic damages brought by the coronavirus pandemic.
• • • Sustainable Volunteering: 05/12/2021 to 05/01/2022
To carry the CENFACS Community into the New Year, our discussion on Sustainable Volunteering is scheduled to take place from 05 December 2021 to 05 January 2022. The discussion theme for this year is on Volunteering in 2022 with Remote Volunteering for Climate Neutrality and Poverty Reduction.
• • • CENFACS into 2022
To take the other two domains (International and Fund) of CENFACS into 2022 and engage with stakeholders, we shall develop post-pandemic projects and programmes with contents of Climate Neutrality and Poverty Reduction.
For any enquiries or to support CENFACS in the month of December 2021 and in the New Year, please contact CENFACS.
Before closing this week’s post, we would like to inform all our readers and stakeholders that the above planned programmes, projects and activities are subject to the evolution of COVID-19 and its new variants. If there are any significant changes in terms of this evolution and rules to combat any new threats from COVID-19, we shall revise our initial festive plan and activate our contingency plan.
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• References
(1) www.un.org & https://fews.net (accessed in November 2021)
(2) https://raisingchildren.net.au/grown-ups/family-life/managingmoney# (Accessed in November 2021)
(3) https://tomorrow.me/general-family-lifestyle/how-to-create-a-family-cash-flows-statement/
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Help CENFACS keep the Poverty Relief work going this year.
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.
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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.
