Welcome to CENFACS’ Online Diary!
07 August 2019
Post No. 103
The Week’s Contents
• Track, Trip and Trending Month
• CENFACS Community: Summer 2019 Updates
• CENFACS Analytics Dashboard: Usability Testing Week
…. and much more!
Key Messages
~ Track, Trip and Trending Month
August is CENFACS’ Track, Trip and Trending month.
We do Track at CENFACS as we think that every one of us can undertake basic physical activity of running or racing to help reduce poverty. Our project known as Run to Reduce Poverty is designed to meet that end.
August is also the month we carry out some Trips to our projects. We visit our projects all over the year, but August is the time we highlight this. It is the month of the year we walk again and reach out to the need, to the people, communities, organisations and livelihoods in need.
We thirdly deal with Trending in August as we spend time looking at what we can call Trendy Development. Trending in Poverty Reduction helps us to follow the direction of poverty reduction work. This August we are going to follow this direction by looking at Clothes in reducing poverty and enhancing sustainable development.
This Summer has been all about changing climate at CENFACS. Therefore, we are going to apply this feature to these three activities of August as follows: Track, Trip and Trending in a Changing Climate.
More details about CENFACS’ Track, Trip and Trending month for this year is given under the Main Developments section of this post.
~ CENFACS Community: Summer 2019 Updates
The two parts of our Summer Programme (i.e. Appeal and Happiness projects) are still running. If there is any query about these projects and / or any of our projects, please contact CENFACS.
To support the Appeal projects, let CENFACS know at http://cenfacs.org.uk/supporting-us/
To access Happiness projects, contact CENFACS at facs@cenfacs.org.uk and or by completing the comment form on our website
We hope that everybody is keeping well and enjoying the Summer weather.
For those who are in holiday during this Summer, we wish them well with their holiday time.
For those who are working this Summer, we also wish them well with their work and whatever they are doing.
~ CENFACS Analytics Dashboard: Usability Testing Week
We are inviting Africa-based organisations that wish to test their performance, to diagnose their poverty relief and assess their poverty relief metrics; to let us know.
Usability tests through key performance indicators, poverty relief diagnostics and metrics can help them improve on the way they are trying to achieve their poverty relief goals as well as help their people.
Usability testing of the above components making CENFACS Analytics Dashboard can help boost their credentials and generate further and better support.
To ask for usability tests and / or auditing of your poverty relief system, please contact CENFACS.
Extra Messages
~ Track, Trip and Trending in a “Quadranscentennial” (Q) Year and Project
As part of CENFACS’ “Q” Year and Project and of the month of Track, Trip and Trending; we would like those who can and want to proceed with either of the following activities:
√ Run 2.5 miles (nearly 4 km) for poverty relief this month
√ Name 25 projects or activities of CENFACS that one has been in touch with or supported or think they made change to the lives of those in need
√ Provide 25 trends of CENFACS related to poverty relief and sustainable development in the last 25 years.
The above three types of activities are our way of remembering the 25 years of CENFACS this August.
To undertake any of the above mentioned activities or the “Quadranscentennial” Challenge, please let CENFACS know. These activities can only be done with the arrangement and agreement of CENFACS terms and conditions.
~ Record your Summer Telling Moments to Report Back
Whether one has a Summer break or is working over this Summer, it is always a good idea to record your telling moments or just what you are doing.
After Summer, we often ask people or the community to report their Summer experience back. If you record what you are doing this Summer, after Summer it will be easier to share what you may judge is a shareable part of your Summer experience or story.
If you decide to record your Summer activities or experiences, please do not forget to take photos and pictures, make a video, record your voice, podcast etc. It is also useful to write down dates, places and names of people involved in your projects or experiences. You can plan the way you want to report back whether you want to use words or numbers or tables or graphs, etc.
Reporting back your experiences can sometimes inspire others, especially if your experiences contain poverty-relieving elements.
We hope you will take our message of recording to report seriously. Thank you any way!
~ August Work Review: Poverty Relief in Transitional and Uncertain Times
This month, we are reviewing the works or discussions we had sometimes ago about economic transition and uncertainty.
In the previous discussions about the exiting economies, we separately dealt with the issue of doing poverty relief work in a transitional economy from doing it in economic uncertainty. This month, we are integrating both economic transition and uncertainty in a single piece of poverty relief work.
We previously explained economic transitions happen when economies exit from regional economic integration models (like the EU). There is a transition for the exiting economy and remaining bloc. Economic uncertainty can occur when there is a disagreement or no deal between the exiting and the remaining economies of the bloc.
In both cases (of economic transition and uncertainty), we are looking at the room for manoeuvre in order to pursue poverty relief work. This is important as small organisations working on poverty relief sometimes do not count for the big picture of mainstream development policy. Yet, these are the organisations that are mostly closer to those in need than the biggest ones.
So, this month we are looking at how both economic transition and uncertainty could play part in our work and the work of the organisations we are working with.
To add your input or support our August Work Review, please contact CENFACS.
Main Developments
• Track, Trip and Trending in the Summer of Happiness in a Changing Climate
Our thematic and working model of Summer of Happiness in a Changing Climate will continue this month through the three activities of Track, Trip and Trending.
• • Track to reduce poverty in a changing climate
This is delivered through the project Run to Reduce Poverty and Vote your African Manager of Poverty Reduction. These are all-year round projects.
However, because of the weather conditions (sunshine) and nature of August (holidays time for many of our supporters) we put a particular emphasis on the Run aspects of these all-year round projects, over this month. This Summer, this emphasis is increased as we are talking about Tracking to reduce poverty in a changing climate
We expect those who sign up to the Run element to take actions and run it by themselves. After summer, they can report back to us or at any convenient time before the end of the year.
• • Trip to the needs in a changing climate
This is the second aspect or part of work over the month of August at CENFACS. We expect and advise our supporters to visit some of our projects and initiatives whether in the UK or in Africa during and around the month of August.
Because we are talking about Trip to the needs in a changing climate, our Trip this year will be to see how climate change affects local people and local needs.
Trip to the need and project includes some of the experiences undertaken by CENFACS All in Development Volunteers through field work involvements and project visits, to reach out to unreached, underserved and unserved people and communities particularly those living in remote areas of Africa. It is the kind of experiences that we recommend to future volunteers to have and report back in September or after.
These trips also help us to check if we are on the right track at helping to reduce poverty and at tracking our records for the work on the ground.
Because the theme of trending for this Summer is about Clothes, we are going to link Trip to the need with Clothing Needs. Some may call it clothing poverty.
• • Trending in poverty reduction in a changing climate
Sustainable development does not need to be trendy, but we can follow the trends in sustainable development and poverty reduction.
During this August we are dealing with Trending in poverty reduction by following the direction of clothes and their capacity of lifting people out poverty. We mean by that we are following the direction of poverty reduction by using clothes.
We will be observing what clothes and the clothing industry are doing to hep to reduce poverty and enhance sustainable development. We will be looking at the extent to which clothes can be poverty reducers or how clothes can fashion poverty relief; following the trends between fashion and poverty relief, finding out the role of fashion designers and budget clothing retailers in the process of reducing and ending poverty.
We will be doing it while integrating the change of climate in the way it affects the way we dress or cover our body to protect it or to reduce clothing poverty.
So, clothing and its respective impacts on poverty reduction in a changing climate are what will be trending at CENFACS as follows:
⇒ From 05/08/2019: Clothes as poverty relief trend (cloth/fashion trends and poverty relief trends)
⇒ From 12/08/2019: Contribution of clothes (or clothing industry) into poverty alleviation; cloth fashioners/designers and cloth makers as poverty relievers
⇒ From 19/08/2019: Clothes donation as contributor to the circular economy
⇒ From 26/08/2019: Clothes donation as poverty reducer
If you are interested in this trend, please share with us your experience or comments about it.
Further explanation about this August month’s activities can be obtained from CENFACS.
• Clothes as Trending in Poverty Reduction in a Changing Climate
In focus from 05/08/2019: Clothes as poverty relief trend (including cloth fashion trends and poverty relief trends)
There are many functions of clothing. In the context of this first week and serial trend on clothing, we are following the direction of poverty reduction via clothes in their function of reducing poverty and hardships. As we are dealing with clothes as poverty relief in a changing climate, we shall add the climate function of clothes.
Thus, clothes can be a source or tool for poverty relief, particularly in helping to meet basic life-sustaining need of covering human body. Clothes can also be a means to protect it against adverse climate conditions.
~ Clothes as a poverty relief tool
Because we talking about poverty and poor people, it is right to argue that clothes can help poor people in a number of ways. Clothes can help them
√ to protect from poor hygiene and avoid sanitation and health problems
√ to take off poverty status (labelling and stigmatisation) from them
√ to identify them as a normal human being with human rights
√ to integrate and give them the place they deserve in the society
√ to give them dignity and respect like any humans
√ to find a rewarding occupational activity
This list can go on about how clothes can help reduce poverty and hardships. But, for the sake of this post, we are going to limit ourselves with the above features.
~ Clothes as a means of protection against adverse climate conditions
As we are working on poverty reduction in a changing climate, we can add the following protection attributes of clothes, which are:
√ Protection from the effects of weather such as sunburn, winds, torrential rains
√ Protection against adverse and extreme climate conditions like strong winds, precipitation, heat, water, snow etc.
The above are the two functions of clothes we are interested in. We are therefore following the direction of poverty reduction by examining these two functions. In other words, we are trying to find out how clothes (through these two of its functions) are helping to reduce poverty in a changing climate.
Besides that, we are following the clothing fashion trends and poverty relief trends this week. We are trying to find out if they evolve in the same direction or in different directions or are related to each other.
To follow with us the direction of poverty reduction via clothes, please contact CENFACS.
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 2019.
With many thanks.
