The event which started at around 9AM daily and had civil society organizations (CSOs) who are partners of the EU-ACT programme of the British Council from Rivers and Plateau States in attendance.
The programme was organized with the intention of enlightening the participating organisations and provide opportunity for them to share experiences, reflect on different capacity development areas, ways of translating same to institutional capacity building for sectorial transformation, proper project implementation and impactful humanitarian service delivery that promotes Civic Action and Sustainable Communities.
Hafsat Abdullahi Mustafa of the ACT Programme who facilitated the first session of the event welcomed the CSO partners to the event and commended them for the various works that they are doing and implementing in their states for community development. She stressed the importance and purpose of the gathering adding that the Cross State regional reflection was apt to the ACT programme as it would offer partners opportunity to cross-reflect on ideas and learn from each other for more impacts on return to their states.
Participants were divided into 4 groups of 5 each to share experiences and make contributions on different topics and thematic areas including:
1) Programme evaluation and documenting outcome result can make your NGO successful
2) Translating capacity building to institutional building is essential to NGO sustainability
3) NGO accountability increases legitimacy
4) Stakeholder identification and influencing are important to project management
A panel which was made up of media representatives including programme officers of the ACT program Chisom Eze, Mary Dalughut,Hafsat, Rivers state Focal Person Temple Oraeki, Hafsat was set up to assess each groups performance.
Other activities introduced was a plenary section were the ACT-Team appraised and inquired in orther to evaluate how the various capacity building training programs,mentorships and peer learning platforms has impacted benefiting participants and organizations. The guiding
Questions for this session:
1)What was different
2)How can organisations sustain it?
3)What should be improved on?
A further break-out session on day one witnessed Cross- state learning and presentations from two groups on different topics including Citizen Engagement, Government engagement, Regulatory environment, Gender and social inclusion as well as Media engagement and partnership.
Participants were asked to come up with hash tags for the event and the following were agreed on by everyone present:
#ACTCSOReflect
#ACTPlateauRiversReflect
#CivicAction #sustainablecommunities
Day 2 activities commenced with presentations by representatives of “Capacity Development Providers’ (CDPs) who are consultants to the EU-ACT programme and linkage with CSO partners for further support. The session enabled ACT- programme partners from Rivers and Plateau States understand who the CDPs are, intended outcome of their involvement in the program and partnership with the ACT programme for development service delivery. The session which was facilitated by the CDP representatives gave opportunities for the cross-state regional partners to know the workings of the CDPs and asked questions for clarifications.
The event continued on the last day with presentations by Tolase of the ACT programme on the development of ACT Project Compendium; expectations for ACT project compendium, CSO project briefs and submission of project briefs to ACT-Team by CSO partners who are already implementing EU-ACT funded projects in the affected states.
The programme wrapped-up later in the evening with a dinner night featuring comedy and colourful cultural exchange activities between Rivers and Plateau State partners comprising of people from different cultural backgrounds from the South-South, South East, North Central and North Eastern Nigeria who are EU-ACT partners living and working in Rivers and Plateau states invited for the programme. EU partners who attended the program were as follows:
1) Kabetkache Women Development&Resource Centre,
2)D-Ability Initiative, (3)Centre for Creative Development Strategies,
4) VEANI, (5) SISDEV, (6) EIFEY, (7) LOCE, (8) Talklove Africa, RINNGOS, CENGOS, etc. Centre for Human Rights Health Ethnic Harmony and Livelihood Development (CHHELD) was represented at the programme by its Executive Director&Team lead Dandyson Harry Dandyson and participated in different group activities on behalf of the organization.