Participants pose for Politico camera
By Bampia James Bundu
Country Director of Christian Aid Sierra Leone has described capacity building as a major factor in the operations of Non-Governmental Organisations in the country.
Jeanne Kamara made this statement at the opening in Freetown of a 5-day intensive capacity building training programme conducted by African Community Internship Placement Programme (ACIPP) with support from Christian Aid.
She explained that her organisation considered the training exercise very important as it would help build the capacity of most of their partner organisations across the country and introduce them to international best practice ways of writing reports and project proposals.
She said they saw the need to hire the service of ACIPP, a Dutch-based organisation working in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Ghana, to effectively train their partners and staff on how to effectively run organisations with or without the support of Christian Aid.
“We cannot support our partners always, but with such trainings, they can run their organisations without our support and they can stand on their own”, Kamara said, adding that they believed in effective partnership and they were doing what they could as an organisation to upkeep their partners.
The Christian Aid boss revealed that the training programme targeted 22 of their partner organisations across the country. This, she said, would not only develop the organisations but would also ease their work at Christian Aid because “we will be assured that all documentation from partner organisations will be of international standards and are well written”.
The Executive Director ACIPP, Tsike-Sossah Eyram Simon, said this was not the first training they had conducted in the country as they had already done so for other organisations that believed in building the capacity of their staff and organisations.
He explained that the training would be two-folds, as the first five days would target report-writing, proposal-writing, office management, strategic planning development and social media.
“We are providing the opportunity for organisations to learn new skills of international standards, change their way of reporting and proposal-development to a better format”, Simon said.
He stressed that capacity building posed a serious challenge to organisations, not only in Sierra Leone but also in Ghana and Liberia, observing that with such training, organisations would stand on their own and source funds from other organisations.
(C) Politico 17/04/14
