Welcome to CENFACS’ Online Diary!
21 September 2022
Post No. 266
The Week’s Contents
• Autumn of Freshness to Cope with Crises
• Starting XI Campaign in 2022: Autumn Programme with Starting XI Projects to Cope with Crises
• Green Spaces-focused Note for Week Beginning 19/09/2022: Green Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Development
… And much more!
Key Messages
• Autumn of Freshness to Cope with Crises
• • What Autumn is about for us
Autumn is the time of natural recycling process of plants and trees. Leaves change colour and fall. Without reinventing the wheels, we can say that Autumn of Freshness at CENFACS is the season after the long sunny weather and break of Summer; season during which our body and mind naturally recycle and engage in renewed energy, strength and thoughts.
Autumn of Freshness is the season of
∝ making fresh start after returning back from Summer to resume our life routine, work, education and voluntary work, particularly poverty relief one
∝ restarting after having some life and/or work experience (e.g., voluntary work or experience over the Summer, project visits, holiday trips, tourism, travel/expeditions of all kinds, etc.)
∝ beginning to apply or introduce and share those new experiences, ideas and discoveries we had during the Summer break or holiday
∝ novelty, creativity and innovation to try to resolve the old, new, challenging and emerging issues of poverty and hardships.
Will this Autumn be same as the previous ones?
• • Autumn of Freshness 2022
This Autumn will be of Freshness or Fresh Start to Cope with Crisis.
In Autumn 2021, we accepted that change was inevitable as the 1960s theory of the five stages of grief or model of change curve by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross (1) told us. Since then, we started to gradually return the nature of our Autumn, which is of Freshness or Fresh Start. Yet, before we finished the return of our service from the coronavirus, another crisis which was already rampant stroke, the cost-of-living crisis.
Because of the interruption brought by the cost-of-living crisis, this Autumn would not be the same. What will it be about?
Autumn 2022 at CENFACS will be about
∝ continuing the unfinished work of return while coping with the cost-of-living crisis
∝ how fresh we are to continue and finish the business of return from the coronavirus while coping with the cost-of-living crisis; that is freshness to simultaneously end one crisis (e.g., the coronavirus) while coping with another one (that is; the cost-of-living crisis)
∝ working together with our local people to positively cope with crises, particularly with the lingering effects of the coronavirus, changing climate and the current cost-of-living crisis.
We are going to work together to try to finish the unfinished business of returning our service, building forward from the coronavirus pandemic and cope with the reality of the cost-of-living crisis.
Therefore, the key words and phrases for our sharing and engaging contents over this Autumn are Freshness or Fresh Start to Positively Cope with Crises; words and phrases which will underpin all our work over this period.
• Starting XI Campaign in 2022: Autumn Programme with Starting XI Projects to Cope with Crises
Autumn of Freshness is about working together with our users and stakeholders through a helpful bundle of Fresh Start projects blended together to give a contemporary and targeted relief, thanks to a good knowledge of users’ needs and expectations.
These projects will implement new and improved ways of working with local people to meet changing needs mainly led by the lingering effects of the coronavirus and the cost-of-living crisis in the Year of Knowledge; a year of knowledge of poor people’s needs in a new era and landscape of poverty reduction and development policies. These projects make up our Autumn 2022 Fresh Start Programme.
• • What is included in the Autumn 2022 Fresh Start Programme?
The Autumn 2022 Fresh Start Programme is made of
(a) Skills, tips, hints, tweaks and hacks to positively cope with crises
(b) Transformative experiences
(c) The Season’s appeal to stand up again against poverty and hardships
(d) A Slice of Africa’s history
(e) A Campaign to end the cost-of-living crisis
(f) Blue and green realignments of initiatives to the principles of greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals and targets
(g) Thoughts and inspirations to finish the unfinished work of building forward from the coronavirus.
All this is flavoured with hopes, dreams and reasons to believe in the future; a poverty-free, sustainable, net zero and crisis-free world.
So, the line-up for CENFACS’ Starting XI Projects and Campaign to end the lingering effects of the coronavirus and cope with the cost-of-living crisis for this Autumn is as follows:
(1) Women, Children and Skills/Strategies to Respond to Crises – NEW
(2) Basic Data Skills to Run your Household – NEW
(3) 3-tier Security (i.e., Food, Energy and Financial Security) – NEW
(4) Making Memorable Difference by Managing and Maintaining Poverty-reduction Infrastructures in Africa
(5) Save Flora and Fauna
(6) Leaves-based Advice
(7) “A la Une” (Autumn Leaves of Action for the Upkeep of the Nature in Existence) with a Focus on Critically Endangered Bird Species
(8) International Advice Service
(9) Autumn Help to Come out the Cost-of-living Crisis
(10) Campaign to End the Cost-of-living Poverty
(11) Autumn Humanitarian Relief Appeal.
For more on these projects, read below under the Main Developments section of this post.
• Green Spaces-focused Note for Week Beginning 19/09/2022: Green Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Development
In this third note of our Green Spaces theme, we would like to focus on these three elements: the meaning of green poverty reduction, the link between green poverty reduction and sustainable development, and how CENFACS can work with the community in order to keep the linkages between green poverty reduction and sustainable development. Let us briefly explain each of these items.
• • Green Poverty Reduction
In order to reduce green poverty, one may need to understand it. Our understanding of green poverty comes from two sources.
The first source of green poverty is from ‘headliners.org’ (2) which states that
“Green poverty is an unequal access to space relating to demographic and socio-economic factors”.
On the same ‘headliners.org’ website, it is said that
“The conversation on green space ignores unequal distribution and factors surrounding private gardens…, inequality in indoor and outdoor spaces”.
This definition approaches green poverty from the perspective of space and access to that space. To reduce green poverty, poor people need to have access to indoor and outdoor spaces, green spaces.
The second source of green poverty is from the theory of a colour wheel for poverty. The proponents of this theory define poverty according to colour. For instance, ‘compassion.com’ (3) defines green as
“The colour of nature that represents balance and symbolises self-respect, growth and harmony. It also symbolises freshness, like a fresh opportunity, a chance to success and break the cycle of poverty”.
From what ‘compassion.com’ has stated, one can argue that if you want to reduce poverty, you better go green.
• • Linkages between green poverty reduction and sustainable development
There could be links between the reduction of the inability to access green spaces and the development that allows both the current and future generations meet their needs without compromising the future ones to meet theirs.
In practical terms, if one wants to access green spaces in order to reduce poverty they are experiencing, this access should not deplete or overexploit natural resources that the generations to come will depend upon. There are ways of working with the green poor so that natural depletion or overexploitation does not happen.
• • Working with the community for a better linkage between green poverty reduction and sustainable development
As we keep arguing, the purpose of these notes about green spaces is not to develop theories or make statements. The real aim is to work with the members of our community so that they can find answers to the problems they are facing. One of these problems is green poverty. And we can work with them to deal with this issue by taking a sustainable development path.
With them, we can work on…
✔ dealing with the state of having little or no indoor or outdoor spaces
✔ having a small environmental impact when accessing green spaces
✔ finding alternative resources than having to rely on marginal spaces
✔ the causes of uneven distribution of both indoor and outdoor green spaces and how these causes relate to them
✔ the identification of possible solutions for them
✔ the relationship between space and demographic and socio-economic factors if it affects their households
✔ the fresh opportunity they may seize in the green economy in order to break the cycle of poverty
✔ the steps they need to take to embrace green development to reduce green poverty if they are not doing it
✔ meeting their needs of accessing green spaces without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.
There could be limitations in what we could offer and what they can do since we are talking about poor people or green poor. However, working together with them, we can achieve more outcomes together than not working together, outcomes in terms of the linkages between green poverty reduction and sustainable development.
The above is our second note for the Green Spaces. To add your input and or enquire about this third note, please contact CENFACS.
Extra Messages
• Starting or Renewing your Involvement with CENFACS’ Work this Autumn 2022
• Getting the Most of your Involvement with CENFACS into Poverty Reduction Work from Autumn 2022 and Beyond
• Back-to-school Project: Integrated Training Centre in Doutchi, County of Dosso in Niger
• Starting or Renewing your Involvement with CENFACS’ Work this Autumn 2022
The beginning of every season is an opportunity either to continue to do the things we always do as they work or to think of taking on new initiatives in the new season or to do both. Likewise, in time of the cost-of-living crisis there are not only worries and stresses; there are as well opportunities and possibilities to do things differently. One can use the opportunity of the cost-of-living crisis to review or change things. One way of doing is to start or continue to look forward. There are many ways in which one can look forward this Autumn.
For example, one can use the opportunity of the cost-of-living crisis and rethink on the types of organisations and projects they support. One may find appropriate to start or increase or even reduce their support to a particular development cause. One could also think of getting involved in CENFACS’ work or renewing their commitment to it if they have ever got involved in it before. The decision is theirs.
We have spelled out below various ways in which one can enhance CENFACS’ noble cause and make a useful impact on poverty reduction with us.
• Getting the Most of your Involvement with CENFACS into Poverty Reduction Work from Autumn 2022 and Beyond
• • Where to start: Sign up!
✔ Register with us and or update us with your contact details
✔ Respond to our communications and communicate with us when occasion arises
• • Stay in touch with our…
✔ Newsletter and other paper and free-paper communication materials
✔ Regular updated and upgraded resources and supporting information
• • Involve us in raising awareness of the poverty relief issue
✔ Advertise with us for helpful good and deserving causes
✔ Pass our relief messages on to interested third parties
• • Share your transformative experience
✔ Tell us what you think and or your development story
✔ Help us improve with your voices, comments, reports and feedbacks
• • Boost your support
✔ Support us according to your means and limits as every support counts
✔ Add value to your support, if you can, by improving your support to us to support you and or others
• • Get noticed to go further with your involvement
✔ Register and keep up to date with information about your event, project, activity and so on
✔ Join up our network of poverty relief and development work
• • Stay ahead of the game with us
✔ Communicate with us before hands and when the needs arise
✔ Often read our news alerts, tweets and switch to our new developments
• • Deliver on your promises
✔ If you promise to do something for or with CENFACS and others, please do it
✔ If you can’t do it, please let us know. Don’t just stay silent!
• • Make our communications with you to be a two-way process and multi-channel approach
✔ Talk to CENFACS and CENFACS will talk to you as well and vice versa
✔ Help us improve the flow of information on poverty relief and development using a variety of channels and platforms
• • Be contactable and present via
✔ E-mail, (tele or mobile) phones, physical address and social media platforms
✔ Word-of-mouth recommendations, outreach and other means of contact (like video calls)
• • Get the word out on your communication channels
✔ Spread words about CENFACS’ work on your social media links
✔ Promote CENFACS’ work in what and where you think we can fit in
• • Keep your involvement with CENFACS digitally and on papers
✔ Up-to-date information on to your mobile by our free text alerts and messages
✔ Check CENFACS’ website and make enquiries online 24 hours 7 days a week
• • Act upon information received from us
✔ Don’t just read or hear them and do nothing about them. Please react and be vocal!
✔ If they are irrelevant to you, please pass them onto an interested and committed party
• • Build and protect standards of trust in CENFACS
✔ Correct inaccuracies and misinformation, stop the spread of false information about CENFACS and its community/network
✔ Tackle with us disinformation and distrust about our poverty reduction work and initiatives
• • Continue the legacy of CENFACS’ work
✔ It is now 20 years and two months that CENFACS has been working on poverty relief and sustainable development since it was registered in 2002. You can continue this legacy with us.
✔ You can be the face of CENFACS to those who are looking for a lifeline of support from us.
The above ways of getting involved in CENFACS’ work may not be exhaustive. Should you have any other way, please let us know.
To get involved with CENFACS into poverty reduction work, just let us know.
• Back-to-school Project: Integrated Training Centre in Doutchi, County of Dosso in Niger
As part of our September 2022 work on back to school, we would like to highlight the above-mentioned project from one of CENFACS Africa-based Sister Organisations.
The project aims at harmoniously integrating young people in their rural area and fighting against poverty through local sustainable development.
The specific objectives of this project include:
✔ To create autonomy for young people
✔ To respond to the local need of lack of skilled and competent labour
✔ To win back local parents’ trust and help them to take part in the education and training of their children.
The performance of this project will be measured by the following indicators:
✔ The number of girls to be educated compared to boys
✔ The number of young people going back to school or returning to the educational system
✔ The schooling rate to be achieved in this rural area
✔ The illiterate and innumerate rate to be decreased
✔ The reduction of the percentage of migration flows towards urban areas
✔ The employment rate of school leavers.
This project, which is unfunded, has been selected and highlighted as part of CENFACS‘ back-to-school programme of work. We know that at this current time of the cost-of-living crisis, things are difficult for many people including small individual donors. However, for those who may be interested in this project, they can contact CENFACS for full project proposals and budget.
Message in French (Message en français)
Commencer ou renouveler votre implication dans les travaux du CENFACS cet automne 2022
Le début de chaque saison est l’occasion soit de continuer à faire les choses que nous faisons toujours parce qu’elles marchent, soit de penser à prendre de nouvelles initiatives dans la nouvelle saison, ou de faire les deux. De même, en période de crise du coût de la vie, il n’y a pas que des inquiétudes et du stress; il y a aussi des opportunités et des possibilités de faire les choses différemment.
On peut profiter de la crise du coût de la vie pour revoir ou changer les choses. Une façon de le faire est de commencer ou de continuer à regarder vers l’avenir. Il y a plusieurs façons d’envisager cet automne.
Par exemple, on peut profiter de l’opportunité de la crise du coût de la vie afin de repenser les types d’organisations et de projets qu’on soutient. On peut trouver approprié de commencer ou d’augmenter ou même de réduire son soutien à une cause de développement particulière.
On pourrait aussi penser à s’impliquer dans le travail du CENFACS ou à renouveler son engagement si on s’y est déjà impliqué. La décision vous appartient.
Ceux ou celles qui sont intéress(é)es à s’engager ou s’impliquer sont pri(é)es de contacter le CENFACS.
Main Development
• Starting XI Campaign in 2022: Autumn Programme with Starting XI Projects to Cope with Crises
The following two items provides the main idea of our Starting XI Campaign in 2022:
∝ What is Starting XI Campaign?
∝ Starting XI Projects to Cope with Crises
Before highlighting the projects making the Starting XI Campaign in 2022, let us explain this campaign.
• • What is Starting XI Campaign?
It is an organised series of actions and operations designed to help achieve the goal of poverty reduction during the autumnal season. Normally, there are eleven projects that make this campaign and help work with the communities here in the UK and Africa to freshly start Autumn. These projects are our Fresh Start ones which will help beneficiaries to cope with the lingering effects of the coronavirus and the current cost-of-living crisis. What are these projects?
• • Starting XI Projects to Cope with Crises
The XI projects we are talking about will allow us to start our overall Autumn Season’s poverty reduction campaign. This is why we call them as Starting XI Projects or Campaign.
11 PROJECTS TO COPE WITH CRISES: 11 WAYS OF HELPING TO REDUCE AND END POVERTY THIS AUTUMN 2022
Please find below key highlights of projects making CENFACS’ Autumn 2022 of Positively Coping with Crises, including the month each of these projects is supposed to start.
• • • Key Highlights of Starting XI Projects
September 2022
(5) Save Flora and Fauna projects (including the Big Beasts sub-advocacy) will continue our advocacy work on the protection of plants and animals while we are carrying on to implementing new ways of working with local people and organisations in Africa to help save flora and fauna (Advocacy)
(6) Leaves-based Advice is a step forward within the framework of the advice service we provide to the community. The leaves element within our local advice package, which marked CENFACS’ 2021 Year of Leaves, will continue to feature the advisory process of helping the community to reduce poverty. (Advice)
(7) A la Une (Autumn Leaves of Action for the Upkeep of the Nature in Existence) will include our sub-advocacy work on nature, which is Sustainable Trajectories for the Nature. This year, A la Une project will focus on Critically Endangered Bird Species. We shall focus on saving endangered bird species through our new initiative called ‘Mbulu’.
‘Mbulu’ (that is; Mobilising for Birds’ Useful Life for Us) is a new advocacy project planned by CENFACS to help protect critically endangered bird species in Africa. Birds like African Grey Parrots, Congo Peafowl, African Green Broadhill, etc. are endangered species. The ‘Mbulu’ project will help to advocate together for a safe life for birds. (Campaign)
October 2022
(11) Autumn Appeal to Support projects is a renewed engagement with supporters via an appeal to deal with the exacerbation of poverty by climate change, the cost-of-living crisis and the coronavirus in Africa. (Humanitarian appeal)
(4) Making Memorable Difference (MMD): The focus for this October History Month will be on the difference that was made in people’s and communities’ history in the way infrastructures (that is; basic and permanent structures, services and equipment) were managed and maintained. Our work for this year’s MMD will be about identifying the historical figures of Africa who could be called Managers and Keepers of infrastructures to reduce poverty. (History project)
(10) Campaign to End the Cost-of-living Poverty: It is an organised series of actions to gain support for the cost-of-living poor so that something can be done for them. These actions need to result in change, particularly the reduction and end of the cost-of-living crisis. The latter is now a barrier for many poor. In the coming days and weeks, we shall specify the kind of actions to be taken. (Poverty-relieving campaign)
November 2022
(9) Autumn Help to Come out the Cost-of-living Crisis: Those who cannot afford the cost of living because of soaring prices of goods and services do not match their levels of income, they need someone to contribute towards making their problems or pain less severe. They require financial help to cover the difference between their income and inflation.
Autumn Help to Come out the Cost-of-living Crisis, which will be a resource, will contain new information, tips and hints to help the community lifted out of the cost-of-living crisis. This initiative or resource could start or be published before November 2022. (Resource)
(1) Women & Children FIRST Development Day: This year our Development Day will still be about skills that can be learnt and developed in order to freshly start Autumn 2022. This year, it will be about skills to respond to crises and risks.
Every day, women and children respond to crises and risks they face. The nature of crises and risks is changing, so do the responses to them. Learning and developing new crisis-response skills for women and children could be one of the ways of approaching this Autumn season.
This year’s Development Day, which will be about Skills to Respond to Crises and Risks, will resonate with the November month of Skills Development within CENFACS. (Thoughts)
(8) International Advice Service: Our support to Africa-based Sister Organisations via advice will continue to operate to help these organisations to overcome many challenges they face such as changing climate, the coronavirus and the cost-of-living crisis. Under this service, we have planned to conduct more activities this coming November 2022.
(2) Basic Data Skills to Run your Household: We have amalgamated literacy and numeracy skills into data skills. The latter aims at empowering users with skills to prepare, identify and visualise data (i.e., words and numbers) that run their life. It will help them to have control over their data and life. (Data Advocacy & Skills)
(3) 3-tier Security (i.e., Food, Energy and Financial Security): The Three Tiers of Security against Poverty are designed to provide users with freedom from the possibility of future energy, food and financial worries and stresses. 3-tier Security is also a freedom from vulnerability to energy, food and financial poverty. The initiative takes stock of the work we have done so far with users on energy, food and financial security. (Support and Resource)
Note:
As said earlier, the above XI projects will allow us to start our overall Autumn Season’s poverty reduction campaign. This is why we call them as Starting XI Projects or Campaign.
Although they are scheduled for Autumn 2022, we may slightly alter our initial plan and or introduce occasional initiatives to cope with the reality of the unpredictability and complexity of development situations (e.g., coronavirus uncertainty, side effects of the cost-of-living crisis, humanitarian and emergency situations), in which case we shall let you know as early as we can.
________
• References
(1) Kübler-Ross E., 1969: On Death and Dying, New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc.
(2) https://www.headliners.org/what-is-green-poverty (Accessed in September 2022)
(3) https://www.compassion.com/poverty/color-wheel-poverty.htm (Accessed in September 2022)
_________
• 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.
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 throughout 2022 and beyond.
With many thanks.
