Welcome to CENFACS’ Online Diary!
21 December 2022
Post No. 279
The Week’s Contents
• Season of Light Starts on 21 December 2022
• Festive Giving and Gifting
• Community Value Chains, the CENFACS Community
… And much more!
• Year-end 2022 Thanks
We would like to thank all those who produced poverty reduction with us and those who made poverty reduction possible for those in need and for us in 2022.
Key Messages
• Season of Light Starts on 21 December 2022
Today, we are passing from Autumn Fresh Start to the Season of Light. Autumn Fresh Start projects and programmes as well as campaign end today as the Season of Light starts within CENFACS.
• • End of the Autumn Fresh Start Season and Campaign
The Autumn Season has officially ended today. 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 starts today the 21st of December 2022.
• • Start of the Season of Light within CENFACS
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 2022) and 31 January in the New Year (2023). The Gifts of Peace, which keep on giving, normally feature the Festive Season.
During the Season of Light, 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.
In the coming weeks and months of the Season of Light, our Blaze of Hope will be extended to those who are continuing to suffer from the lingering effects of the coronavirus pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis, particularly those trapped by the growing hunger crisis in Africa.
The Season of Light will come with the Lights Appeal or Campaign, which is a set of projects that features the Season of Light.
• • 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 2022/2023.
• Festive Giving and Gifting
As part of the season of giving and gifts as well as of the response to the continuing impacts of the cost-of-living crisis on vulnerable and poor people, we are asking supporters to go extra miles in replying to these two fundraising appeals which are: Festive Gift Set and End-of-year Support.
• • Festive Gift Set
The remaining ten days of this year starting from today are those of the last legacy of the Year 2022 as a ‘Knowledge’ Year at CENFACS.
To mark the end of and the Closing Act of our ‘Knowledge’ Year and Campaign, we are appealing to you to support CENFACS’ year 2022 through a ‘Knowledge’ (‘K’) Gift.
Such a gift will assist in many ways including the following:
√ Dealing with what we now know as pressing and urgent needs within the community (that is; a gift to deal with the community needs)
√ Contributing in the cover of the cost of efforts deployed in the process of helping to reduce poverty (that is; a cost cover gift)
√ Acknowledging CENFACS’ work (that is; an acknowledgement gift)
√ And keeping its momentum over the festive period while carrying us in the New Year and future (that is; a driver and carrier gift).
With the ‘Knowledge’ 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 Knowledge, Light and Peace)
• • • • The Knowledge Gift represents the 12 Knowledge Project Episodes of the needs of and bond with poor people as well as harmony with nature, especially during this challenging time of the cost-of-living crisis.
• • • • The Gift of Light symbolises hope for the victims of the cost-of-living crisis, 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 lingering effects of coronavirus pandemic and of the cost-of-living crisis, the Gifts of Peace will enable to re-conquer the lost peace and get new form of peace from poverty induced by these effects. 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 2022 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 2022 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 2022 and will do in the coming years.
To make a donation and or enquire about this End-of-year Ask or Support, just contact CENFACS with or without your donation.
• Community Value Chains, the CENFACS Community
CENFACS as a Community with knowledge about the needs of its members, which is the Closing Act of the 2022 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. These good little things could have a bigger impact on us as a community.
They could be life and work learning experiences, lifestyles, helpful differences, social responsibilities and principles that underpin them. At this time of the cost-of-living crisis, they could be all the little initiatives one has taken to care each other in order to have access to economic means of copying and survival.
• • Sharing and celebrating impact via CVC 2022
CENFACS as a Community with knowledge about the needs of its members (or the Closing Act of the Knowledge Year) will feature our year-end campaign.
This celebratory theme for CVC’s 13th Celebration of CENFACS as a Community is and will be the Closing Act of the Knowledge Year and Project. However, this celebration will be a low key one since many of supporters and users have been affected by the cost-of-living crisis. Instead, we shall call it end-of-year sharing.
• • The 13th Celebration of CENFACS Community as way of looking both back and forward
Looking back at 2022 will be about CENFACS as a community that helped its members to be open about their problems and needs as well as about the kinds of responses they were expecting to tackle their needs.
Looking forward 2023 will be a sharing of the knowledge and information we now know about our community members. It is also about thinking of the direction and shape that the evolution of the community needs may take in 2023 and how we can effectively and efficiently work with our members in 2023 in terms of improved course of action in the New Year.
Briefly, it will be a hybrid sharing of our knowledge on how the 2022 went on in everybody’s life in terms of the positive takeaways from it in order to build forward in 2023. In this hybrid sharing, the positive experience from the cost-of-living crisis will be welcome.
We want our community ends 2022 on a positive note or sharing despite the ups and downs of this year, especially with the disturbance that the soaring cost of living has caused and is continuing to cause on many of us. We would like as well our community to start 2023 with hope and belief.
• • 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 2022 so as to ease the end-of-year 2022 celebration/sharing and the start-of-year 2023 preparatory activities, projects and programmes.
For further details about this Closing Act of the Knowledge Year and Project as a ‘K’ 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 2022 and preparation for 2023, 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.
Extra Messages
• Income Generation Leads/Advice: Income Generators, Creators and Curators of the Month
• All year round Projects (or Triple Value Initiatives): 2022 Verdict
• Festive Structured Activities are now closed!
• Income Generation Leads/Advice: Income Generators, Creators and Curators 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.
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, Creators and Curators 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.
• All year round Projects (or Triple Value Initiatives): 2022 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 sustainable development.
As we are reaching the end of year 2022, it is now the time to report on our three All-year Round Projects – which are Play, Run and Vote.
We know that this year has been economically 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 2022: Tell it!
You can feedback the outcomes or Action-Results of your…
… Run if you ran for poverty relief over the year 2022 (or organised a Run activity)
… Play if you played the CENFACS League for Poverty Relief
… Vote if you have already voted your 2022 African Poverty Relief and Development Manager.
We would be more than happier to hear your Action and Results to feature and conclude CENFACS 2022 Year as Year of Knowledge. 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 Year, that is one of the following Three Stars or Bests of the Year:
√ The Best African Country of 2022 which best reduced poverty
√ The Best African Global Games Runner of 2022
√ The Best African Poverty Relief and International Development Manager of 2022.
If you have not yet told us, have your say by 23 December 2022! The Verdict is yours!
• Festive Structured Activities are now closed!
During this month, we have conducted two types of festive structured activities, which are:
a) Structured Festive Activities or Micro-projects under Financial Stability Programme and Scheme for households
b) Guidance Programme for Not-for-profit Investors in Africa.
These two types of activities are now closed. They will be repeated in the New Year.
For those households who still need support regarding their financial stability or planning problems, they can contact CENFACS with their queries or enquiries to book an appointment in the New Year.
Likewise, for those potential not-for-profit investors who still need some guidance to invest in Africa, they can contact CENFACS to book an appointment in the New Year.
Message in French (Message en français)
• Remerciements et Voeux Festifs 2022
A tous ceux et toutes celles qui ont permis au CENFACS de réaliser le travail de réduction de la pauvreté et du développement durable au cours de l’année 2022, le CENFACS vous dit un grand…
Le CENFACS vous souhaite une saison des fêtes saine, sécuritaire et paisible.
Main Development
• Season of Light Starts on 21 December 2022
The Lights Season at CENFACS kicks off with the theme of Hope as said above. We are going to deliver this Hope with projects and programmes adapted to the context of cost-of-living crisis. Many observers and planners believe that this context will last until the end of the first quarter of 2023. Hope will also be provided by other initiatives with Nature Goals and Nature-based Solutions to Poverty.
The following items make the contents of our Season of Light 2022-2023:
∝ What will shape the Season of Light?
∝ Two themes to bear in mind this Festive and Lights Time: Peace and Hope
∝ The Gift of Light that Keeps on Giving this Winter
Let us look at these contents.
• • What will shape the Season of Light?
As we presented in our post 278 of 14 December 2022, the 2022-2023 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.
The 2022-2023 Season of Light will also be about how to harness transformational and structural changes in the context of increasing uncertainty and climate change so that those who are living in poverty can find the means and spaces they need to navigate out of it.
The 2022-2023 Season of Light is as well about our preparedness when energy support towards energy payments will end after the first quarter of 2023. When this statutory cost of living support towards the energy bill payments ends, what will happen? For example, when the UK government’s energy price guarantee will end in April 2023.
The 2022-2023 Season of Light is finally an energy transitional period to work with those living in poverty so that they transition from polluting to clean and green energy and technology. We started this process few years ago. To achieve or continue this energy transition to carbon net zero, it requires Hope and support.
There are two developments (that is.; the cost-of-living crisis and new nature goals) that will shape our 2022-2023 Season of Light. In the light of these developments, CENFACS will approach 2022 with a set of new nature projects. Details of these projects will be unveiled in the New Year.
So, we will be developing projects and programmes with nature goals and nature-based solutions to poverty; that is nature-based projects to help reduce poverty and enhance sustainable development. Besides that, we shall continue to respond to the cost-of-living crisis with some of the initiatives (e.g., Financial Stability Campaign) we have already put in place.
• • 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 nature goals and energy transition. In this sense that we shall bring a glimmer of hope through nature goals 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 they will rediscover freedom from disturbance and disorder caused by crises and other events of 2022 like the cost-of-living crisis.
• • 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 2022-2023, 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 threats.
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 crises (e.g., the cost-of-living crisis), 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 cost-of-living crisis if pledges made are not carried out by those who made them while letting the return of the cost-of-living poverty to happen. It can as well happen if the pledges – made at the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), which took place in Sharm El-Sheikh (Egypt) from Monday 07 November to Sunday 20 November 2022 (1), 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 crises (e.g., the coronavirus and the cost-of-living crisis), wars and natural disasters.
• • • A Blaze of Hope for the eruption of any crises, 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 waves of crisis, 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 unexpected crises, 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 2022, we have initially selected five areas that may need lighting a Blaze of Hope, which are as follows:
a) Areas of countries severely affected by the socio-economic impacts of high food prices like in Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo and Senegal
b) Areas of vulnerable countries affected by or prone to torrential rains and cyclones that could cause enormous food insecurity such as in Chad, Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo
c) Areas of countries devastated by weather extremes like Burundi and Djibouti
d) Areas of countries that are the victims of a high level of persisting civil insecurity such as in in Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Mali
e) 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.
The countries listed in this selection are also mentioned in the Crop Prospects and Food Situation of the Food and Agriculture Organisations of the United Nations (2).
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.
• Season’s Greetings
__________
• References
(1) https://unfccc.int/event/cop-27 (Accessed in December 2022)
(2) FAO. 2022. Crop Prospects and Food Situation – Quarterly Global Report No. 4, December 2022. Rome (https://doi.org/10.4060/cc3233en)
_________
• 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 also consider a recurring donation to CENFACS in the future.
Additionally, we would like to inform you that planned gifting is always an option for giving at CENFACS. Likewise, CENFACS accepts matching gifts from companies running a gift-matching programme.
Donate to support CENFACS!
FOR ONLY £1, YOU CAN SUPPORT CENFACS AND CENFACS’ NOBLE CAUSES OF POVERTY REDUCTION.
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 until the end of 2022 and beyond.
With many thanks.
