Welcome to CENFACS’ Online Diary!
15 December 2021
Post No. 226
The Week’s Contents
• Season of Light: Starts 21 December 2021
• Festive Trends
• Festive Giving and Gifting
… And much, much more!
Key Messages
• The Lights Season: Starts 21 December 2021
• • Autumn Fresh Start to the Season of Light
The Autumn Season officially will end at the beginning of next week. 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.
Next mid-week, Autumn Fresh Start projects and programmes as well as campaign will end. The Season of Light will start within CENFACS; 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.
During the coming Season of Light, our Blaze of Hope will be extended to those who are continuing suffering from the adverse health and economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic and related lockdowns, particularly those trapped by the growing hunger crisis in Africa. This is let alone the new challenge brought by COVID-19 new variants (like Omicron).
The Season of Light will come with the Lights Appeal or Campaign, which is the project that features the Season of Light. The Season of Light, which usually starts the 21st of December of each year and ends around 21 March in the New Year, runs through the Festive Season, which is between 01 December of the ending year (here 2021) and 31 January in the New Year (2022). The Gifts of Peace, which keep on giving, normally feature the Festive Season.
• • Two Themes, Two Seasons and Two Gifts
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. During the Festive Season, we try to reduce poverty as a lack of peace via the Gifts of Peace; whereas in the context of the Season of Light we work through Lights Appeals/Gifts 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 2021/2022.
• Festive Trends
• • December and End of Autumn 2021 Updates and Trends
The following updates and trends cover three initiatives: All in Development Winter e-Discussion, Autumn 2021 Humanitarian Relief Appeal and Community Value Chains.
• • • All in Development Winter e-Discussion 2021/2022: Remote Volunteering for Climate Neutrality and Poverty Reduction
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.
The following points are under the e-discussion:
∝ Remote volunteering and delivery of an action plan for climate neutrality and poverty reduction in 2022 and beyond
∝ Remote volunteering and the use of digital technologies (especially distance-working ones) to transform CENFACS’ volunteering operations
∝ Remote volunteering and the delivery of a relatively strong impact digital volunteering experience in the post-pandemic age
∝ Remote volunteering and its contribution in the situation of return of COVID-19 threats brought by its variants (like the newly identified Omicron variant)
∝ Remote volunteering and the delivery of a true value poverty reduction in the landscape of climate neutrality
Additionally, we are e-working on the following matters:
∝ The state of volunteering 2021 within CENFACS as 2021 is nearing end
∝ The 2022 volunteering budget
∝ Quantitative and qualitative effects or legacies of COVID-19 and its variants on our volunteering action
∝ Forecasting and projections about volunteering opportunities for the next year
To e-discuss volunteers’ matters relating to Remote Volunteering for Climate Neutrality and Poverty Reduction, please contact CENFACS.
• Autumn 2021 Humanitarian Relief Appeal: Only One Week to Go!
We have only one week remaining for our humanitarian appeal for Autumn 2021. This appeal is about supporting needy people, flora, fauna, communities and organisations in Africa.
• • Projects making this appeal
The appeal includes the following five selected projects:
√ Skills for Building Forward Better
√ Symmetry Project
√ Gender into post-COVID-19 Economic and Social Recovery in Africa
√ Back-to-School Support
√ Save Flora and Fauna projects
A brief summary of these projects can be found on the ‘Support Causes’ page at Support Causes – (cenfacs.org.uk) of this website.
The full proposals for each project making this appeal is available should any of the potential donor or funder makes a request.
• • Supporting the Autumn 2021 Campaign
Donors and funders can directly and respectively donate or fund these projects.
A message about this appeal can also be passed on to a person who is in a position and willing to support. Many thanks to those who will be passing this message!
We understand that the world is still experiencing an extremely difficult time with the coronavirus pandemic and its new variants which are enormously disrupting the functioning of many economies, including the ability of people to support good and deserving causes.
The effects of this health crisis are even stronger in place where there is a high level of poverty like in Africa. This is why this seasonal appeal was launched to help not only to reduce poverty but also to save lives from the coronavirus disaster.
• • Where donors’ and funders’ money will go
We are inviting those who can to donate £2 to create 2 benefits (1 benefit for humans and 1 benefit for other natural livings) or any amount starting from £2 or more as they wish. In other words, for every £2 raised, £1 will go to humans and £1 will be invested in other natural beings.
• • Gift-Aiding your donation
You can declare your charitable donation made as eligible for Gift Aid. You can as well support these projects in a way that is the most suitable and related to your situation, budget, capacity and willingness.
To donate, gift-aid and support otherwise; please contact CENFACS or go to our ‘support causes’ page at Support Causes – (cenfacs.org.uk) .
• Community Value Chains, the CENFACS Community
CENFACS as a Community that helps to take a leaf of poverty reduction out of others’ book, which is the Closing Act of the 2021 Year, is being prepared and trended.
• • What is CENFACS’ Community Value Chains (CVC)?
1) 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.
2) 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.
3) It is finally about sharing and celebrating our impact as a community.
To sum up, 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 Reduction and Sustainable 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 continuing coronavirus disturbance with its variants, they could be all the little initiatives one has taken to care each other in order to stay safe, healthy and productive.
• • Sharing and celebrating impact via CVC 2021
CENFACS as a Community that helps to take a leaf of poverty reduction out of others’ book (or the Closing Act of the Leafy Year) will feature our year-end campaign.
This celebratory theme for CVC’s 12th Celebration of CENFACS as a Community is and will be the Closing Act of the Leafy Year and Project. However, this celebration will be a low key one 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.
• • The 12th Celebration of CENFACS Community as way of looking both back and forward
Looking back at 2021 will be about CENFACS as a community that helped its members to take a leaf of poverty reduction out of others’ book, that is imitate those who did well (or led by good examples) in their course of action.
Looking forward 2022 will be a sharing to turn over a new leaf in order to begin a new and improved course of action in the New Year.
Briefly, it will be a virtual sharing of our leafiness on how the 2021 went on in everybody’s life in terms of the positive takeaways from it in order to build forward in 2022. In this virtual sharing, the positive experience from the coronavirus pandemic and strengthened restrictions will be welcome.
We want our community ends the 2021 on a positive note or sharing despite the ups and downs of this year, especially with the disturbance that the coronavirus pandemic has caused and is continuing to cause on many of us. We would like as well our community to start 2022 with hope.
• • 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 end-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 year-end sharing project, please reply by the 23rd of December 2021 so as to ease the end-of-year 2021 celebration/sharing and the start-of-year 2022 preparatory activities, projects and programmes.
For further details about this Closing Act of the Leafy Year and Project as well as the other Leaves of Poverty Reduction 2021 as a “L” Year, please contact CENFACS.
For the timeline of the themes that made the Community Value Chains so far, please also contact CENFACS.
As part of the closure of 2021 and preparation for 2022, 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 Giving and 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 and two days of this year starting from today are those of the last legacy of the Year 2021 as a “Leafy” Year at CENFACS.
To mark the end of and the Closing Act of our “Leafy” Year and Campaign, we are appealing to you to support CENFACS’ year 2021 through a “Leaf” (“L”) 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 “Leaf” 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?
• • • Expressions from the three gifts (of Leaf, Light and Peace)
• • • • The “L” Gift represents the 12 Leaves of Poverty Reduction and bond with poor people as well as harmony with nature, especially during this challenging time of the coronavirus pandemic and its variants.
• • • • 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 and of strengthened restrictions, the Gifts of Peace will enable to re-conquer the lost peace and get new form of peace from the COVID-19 led poverty. This is without forgetting the lack of peace brought by climate change events.
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 different 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 them 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 and Appeal
As 2021 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.
• • • Two ways of responding to this appeal
1) 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.
2) 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 2021 and will do in the coming years.
To make a donation and or enquire about this End-of-year Support, just contact CENFACS with or without your donation.
Extra Messages
• All year round Projects (or Triple Value Initiatives): 2021 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 2021, it is now the time to report on our three All-year Round Projects – which are Play, Run and Vote.
We know that this post-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 2021: Tell it!
You can feedback the outcomes or Action-Results of your…
… Run if you ran for poverty relief over the year 2021 (or organised a Run activity)
… Play if you played the CENFACS League for Poverty Relief
… Vote if you have already voted your 2021 African Poverty Relief and Development Manager.
We would be more than happier to hear your Action and Results to feature and conclude CENFACS 2021 Year as Year of Leaves. Tell it!
• • What or who we want to hear
We would like to hear from you about the Winner of CENFACS Virtual Trophy of the Post-pandemic Year, that is one of the following Three Stars or Bests of the Post-pandemic Year:
√ The Best African Country of 2021 which best reduced poverty
√ The Best African Global Games Runner of 2021
√ The Best African Poverty Relief and International Development Manager of 2021
If you have not yet told us, have your say by 23 December 2021! The Verdict is yours!
• Income Generation Leads/Advice: Income Generators and Creators of the Month
Our advisory service on leads to 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 post-pandemic time which itself still restricts the possibility for generating further 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 of the Season. 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 duplicatable 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.
• Structured Festive Activities or Micro-projects under Spending Limit Programme/Scheme: Deadlines expired!
The deadlines we set up for structured festive activities or micro-projects under Spending Limit Programme/Limit (07 and 14/12/2021) have now expired.
For those who still need support regarding their spending limit or planning problems, they can still contact CENFACS. They can contact us for their queries or enquiries relating to any of these following activities:
∝ Spending threshold, respect for spending restriction and little extra income generation under Spending Limit Programme
∝ Elaboration of an action plan for spending limit, and building and understanding cash flow statements or projections under Spending Limit Scheme
Need festive advice or support regarding your spending limit or spending planning problems, please do not hesitate to e-contact CENFACS.
Main Development
• Season of Light: Starts 21 December 2021
The Lights Season at CENFACS kicks off with the theme of Hope as said above. We are going to deliver this Hope with post-pandemic projects and programmes with contents of Climate Neutrality and Poverty Reduction.
• • What will shape the Season of Light?
As we presented in our post 224 of the 1st December 2021, the 2021-2022 Season of Light will be about working on issues revolving around 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.
It will be also about how to harness transformational and structural changes in the context of changing uncertainty in the Anthropocene driven by COVID-19 evolution and climate change so that those who living in poverty can find the means and spaces they need to navigate out of it.
The 2021-2022 Season of Light is also an energy transitional period to work with those living in poverty so that they transition from polluting to clean and green energy and technology. To achieve or start or continue this energy transition to carbon net zero, it requires Hope and support.
The two developments (COVID-19 evolution and climate neutrality) will shape our 2021-2022 Season of Light. In the light of these developments, CENFACS will approach 2022 with a set of climate neutral projects. Details of these projects will be unveiled in the New Year.
So, we will be developing post-pandemic projects and programmes with contents of Climate Neutrality and Poverty Reduction; that is climate neutral projects to help reduce poverty and enhance sustainable development.
• • 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
The theme of Hope is made of notes or pieces of climate neutrality and energy transition. In this sense that we shall bring a glimmer of hope through climate neutrality and energy transition under control by the poor over this Wintry season.
• • • The theme of Peace
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 and lips 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 in the darkness. 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 2021-2022, 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 caused by new variants
However, in these developments and waves, we shall take into account the changing contexts in Africa where there could be scaling down or changing types of crises (for example, the policy of silencing the guns in Africa has changed the types of conflicts). At the moment, there is a growing hunger crisis due to the drastic impacts of the coronavirus, economic slowdown and climate change.
• • • A gift of light that helps people to navigate 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 CENFACS 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. It can as well happen if the pledges made (at the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties held in Glasgow between 01 and 12 December 2021) to help poor nations to transition towards net zero CO2 emissions world are not followed by concrete actions.
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 should make 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 2021, we have initially 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 and its variants 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 Chad (where flooding affected almost 250,000 people last September), 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
∝ Areas of countries where innocent people are the victims of new forms of insecurity (e.g. interpersonal violence and gang violence) and forced displacement like in Mali and Burkina Faso
The above selection is an initial one, which may change depending how and where humanitarian events will unfold in Africa. The selection will help to start our Light advocacy and campaign.
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 the new restrictions due to the newly identified COVID-19 variant, Omicron. Let alone the restrictions on travel and free movements in other parts of the world.
For those who can support Light project, we can count on them to move forward this advocacy or campaign. 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 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.
Donate to support CENFACS!
FOR ONLY £1, YOU CAN SUPPORT CENFACS AND CENFACS’ PROJECTS, JUST GO TO :Support Causes – (cenfacs.org.uk)
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.
