Welcome to CENFACS’ Online Diary!
05 September 2018
Post No. 55
BACK TO… LA RENTREE
The week beginning 03 September 2018 is our welcoming week.
We are welcoming our users, supporters and other stakeholders who came back from Summer break and holidays.
We are also welcoming back those who are or have been working during this Summer time.
We are finally welcoming back those who lost touch with us for various reasons and would like to come back.
Welcome back to all of you!
The Week’s Contents
• New for September 2018: Back-to-relief Initiatives
• Unlock your Summer Holiday Data and Tell your Story
• Advice-giving Month
… and much more!
Key Messages from the Week’s Contents
The key messages from our weekly communication and menu, which is often made of three courses, is as follows.
New for September 2018: Two New Back-to-relief Initiatives
1/ Virtual Open Days for Back to Relief
It is not always easy for people, especially those who are not feeling well and parents with small kids, to physically move and meet service providers if this service provision cannot come to them even if the need is pressing. This is why we are organising these virtual days to enable those in need to virtually access services.
Virtual Open Days are a back-to-relief initiative organised by CENFACS during this September 2018 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.
For more on CENFACS’ Virtual Open Days and how they work, contact us.
2/ Support for Children of Conflict- and Climate Change-affected Areas in Africa in the New School Year
Another back-to-relief initiative for this September 2018 is Support for the Children of Conflict- and Climate Change-affected Areas of Africa in the New School Year. This initiative comes about the humanitarian relief appeals we launched this year for nine African countries: two countries from Central African region (the Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic), three islands East Africa (Madagascar, Mauritius and Comoros) and four countries from the Lake Chad Basin (Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria). All these appeals were launched under the Light projects.
The appeals were related to countries stormed by destructive environmental events and or armed conflicts. While one can still ask the progress made to save and rebuild lives in these stricken countries, one can also question about the support that the children of the stricken areas within these countries are receiving and/or received. This questioning is relevant as we are in September when a new school or academic year starts.
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.
For further details about this initiative, contact CENFACS.
Unlock your Summer Holiday Data and Tell your Story
Throughout our July and August 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 our Summer experiences.
Now some of you are back, we can feedback our poverty-relieving and development experiences of using Happiness projects, of any creations we made and any volunteering stories, if we volunteered, 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 your Summer data and preparing to tell your Summer story.
Sharing your experiences with us in this way helps to keep the CENFACS Community active. 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 with us.
Advice-giving Month
September is our advice-giving month for both our UK and Africa services. Whether you are African and Minority Ethnic People living in the UK or Africa-based Sister Organisations, you can receive advisory support from CENFACS under our Individual Capacity Development programme (for individuals living in the UK) and Organisational Capacity Development programme (for Overseas Africa-based organisations).
Under these two programmes, we provide advice throughout the year. However, the month September is a special one as it is our Advice-giving Month in accordance to CENFACS development calendar. Advice can be received online, via phone and e-mail or by appointment at CENFACS’ office space.
Main Developments from the Week’s Contents
Back to Relief ∴ Back to the Upkeep of the Nature ∴ Back to Advice
•• Back to Relief this September 2018
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. They are now back for the New Academic Year and New Relief, year for which we have prepared projects and programmes to meet their existing, challenging, changing and emerging needs – the back-to-relief projects and programmes.
This applies to both our UK and Africa Capacity Building and Development programmes. If you are one of our beneficiaries or supporters we wish you Happy Return!
•• Back to the Upkeep of the Nature this September 2018
September is also the month we resume our advocacy work on the upkeep of the nature. This advocacy starts from the protection and care of animals in Africa from illegal killings, extinction and poaching. In the last week of September 2018, we will focus on saving endangered animal species through our “Save Animals” advocacy; the Gorilla, Elephant and the BIG CATS projects being part of that advocacy.
•• Back to Advisory Support this September 2018
Advice is CENFACS’ main theme for September. We provide advice to both individuals and organisations as mentioned above.
Advice service for Individuals
Some of you are aware that most of CENFACS services in the UK are designed to support multi-dimensionally poor children, young people and families (CYPFs). After the long summer break and from September onward, many of them will come back to start their life again. 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 things such as finding a new school for children, registration to health services, finding accommodation, accessing training opportunity or employment 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, interpreting, advice, guidance, signposting, referral and advocacy. 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 things such as capacity building and development, project planning, fundraising and grant-seeking leads, income-generation, sustainable development, monitoring and evaluation.
Again, where our capacity to advice 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 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, contact CENFACS. To register for or enquire about advice services, go to www.cenfacs.org.uk/services-activities.
FOR ONLY £1, YOU CAN SUPPORT CENFACS AND CENFACS’ PROJECTS, JUST GO TO http://cenfacs.org.uk/supporting-us/
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 2018.
With many thanks
