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PEACE Prevail in Sierra Leone!
May PEACE Prevail on Earth!
Message from the Community Development Society's Kenneth E. Pigg Vice President, Program
Kenday Samuel Kamara/CEO
Keynote Statement Made by the President/CEO of CADS Sierra Leone: Kenday Samuel Kamara, on the Occasion of the May 1, 1998 Sensitization Conference held at the Miata Conference Center in Freetown.
Mr. Chairman, Deputy Commissioner - NCRRR, NGO Desk Coordinator, Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, Fellow Colleagues in CADS - Good Morning. Today we again feel safe in our troubled country to gather here to talk about development issues and the action CADS is taking to address these issues. And I personally thank you, and for and on behalf of my staff and our beneficiary members. You are welcome to our 2nd Annual Sensitization Conference celebrating nine years of service to our troubled country.
Knowledge is like light. Weightless and intangible, it can easily travel the world, enlightening the lives of people everywhere. Yet billions of people still live in the darkness of illiteracy and poverty - unnecessarily. Knowledge about how to treat such a simple ailment as diarrhea has existed for centuries - but millions of children continue to die from it because their parents do not know how to save them. That qualifies the reason for our Annual Sensitization Conference - to continue the process of education. To continue the process of enlightening Sierra Leoneans and our government to the true principles of survival and national prosperity through pursuit and implementation of plausible and sustainable alternative development strategies our center exists for.
In providing such crucial channels of participation, this needs articulation and advocacy for individual citizens and policy makers in our government to fully understand the rubrics of our CADS agenda and we must strive for participatory process of the eventual sustainable development of our country driven by the knowledge of the citizenry.
With the growing complexity of the challenges confronting our country, the CADS agenda values the expanding role of civil society in governance and development, and a strong need for research-based knowledge on the crucial challenges facing our civil society, especially our rural communities which are often slighted and neglected when it comes to development issues. How we are going to strategize to get the message of our CADS agenda for practical and sustainable development heard nationally and internationally, is all we care about now.
Therefore, bringing together today civil society activists and practitioners, our rural beneficiaries as well as government leaders, to understand the core issues facing our society and to generate new knowledge and innovation in practice consistent with the objects of CADS is all what we have so far to strongly project our message.
Our CADS national strategy recognizes the critical role of rural communities in the development process of our country. Since 1996 when we had actually focussed our energies to participate in the sustainable development of Sierra Leone, we had contemplated on many alternative strategies we believe would alleviate the inadequacies of our society. Our unique approach towards agricultural sector development - the Communal farming System agricultural sector development strategy is one of our very serious agenda.
Last year, notwithstanding the extreme violence that overwhelmed us, we had tested our CFS strategy in the rural communities of Koya and York and we are satisfied with the results even though out of the 17 communal farms we cultivated only 5 we harvested because the other 14 participating farm associations abandoned their villages because of rebel activities in their areas.
We were however able to prove that the CFS approach would certainly help in agricultural sector development. The outcome of that crop season for the five communal farms we were able to harvest benefited the participating farmers and their communities - 70 acres of swamp and upland rice and 28 acres of vegetables were cultivated. And at the harvesting season these cultivated acreage through the CFS system provided food and seeds to our beneficiaries during that darkest year in the history of Sierra Leone.
The CFS strategy therefore provides for the center to work directly with the farming associations, entering into a CFS joint venture agreement which dictates the center providing farm inputs to small farmers in the various rural communities of Koya and York Rural, through the farm associations in return for the small farmers who are members of the communal farming associations to provide the land and labor.
The CFS strategy itself encourages farmers' independence. The center works through farming associations headed by the community chiefs and/elders, and this provides the independence for village communities to work among themselves which makes the system itself very effective. The Chairmen or chairladies of the various farming associations in the Koya and York Rural receive the farm inputs provided by CADS as dictated by the CFS joint venture and they distribute these inputs to their small farmers subjects only when they have verified their small farmer subjects have secured farm lands and have the labor to carry out the work. As such the small farmers are subcontracted by their farming associations.
In general, the majority of small holders operates under customary land tenure laws in these rural communities which, among other things, permits and recognizes the rights of individual families to access community lands. These rights, covering allocation and usage are granted through tribal custodians of chiefs and elders, and remain valid so long as the land is tended. The bottom line of the CFS agricultural development strategy is the sharing of harvested proceeds. According to the system, 45% of proceeds from harvested produce is received by each participating farmers.
It is the responsibility of CADS also as an entrepreneurship development and business promotion nonprofit to helping participating farmers with the 45% harvested proceeds to start or develop their own post harvest businesses. CADS provides basic business training in six sessions held in each farming community. CADS does not just stop at having these farmers start businesses, future programs include monitoring through periodic visits to the farmers' post harvest businesses in order to ensure they maintain basic records, providing follow up training as necessary, and assist these farming enterprises in solving problems or in securing additional resources where possible.
15% from each participating farmers goes to the farming association. CADS ensures that the 15% received by the communal farming association from participating farmers are accordingly utilized by way of funding community projects like supporting health centers, provision of educational materials to disadvantaged rural school going children, feeder roads construction and/or maintenance, and micro loan financing of post harvest income generation activities like soap making, gara tye dyeing, blacksmithy, "Lumor" Public Market Trading, etc.
CADS is receiving 30% from harvested proceeds to be utilized in related administrative and extension services costs. CADS has a vision to be financially self sustainable in due course. The 30% is therefore a necessary derivation from the CFS joint venture to strengthen CADS in order to be able to independently pursue projects in future without having to suffer the usual delays and rigorous donor support procedures the center continues to experience.
And there is the 10% from each participating farmer's harvested proceeds CADS and the various farming associations jointly put aside. Each community association jointly maintain a bank account with CADS to save the 10% for the repayment of any loans taken during the implementation of the project .
If there are no loans at all to repay, these savings obviously go back to the communities by contributing the 10% to a revolving fund maintained by each community association to further help finance post harvest income generation activities in their local communities. From this fund, small amounts of money are systematically disbursed to participating communal farmers. This surely makes the difference in their capacities to start and sustain individual productive and much needed post harvest businesses.
Therefore, as a proven agricultural development strategy for sustainable rural community development, the center had submitted a presentation of this strategy to the 30th Annual International Conference of the Community Development Society in Kansas City, Missouri, when this society called for papers. The presentation made by CADS was thus approved by the CDS and was proudly selected and will be sponsored to attend the conference. And I will be attending this conference scheduled to be held at the Omri Hotel from July 18 - 21, 1998 in Kansas.
The CEO of CADS (with yellow shirt, seated) listening attentively to one of women's association Chairladies during a field visit at Fabaina Village.
In a letter addressed to me, this is what CDS has to say:
Dated:
April 30, 1998
Attn: Kenday Samuel Kamara
The Center for Alternative Development Strategies
Freetown - Sierra Leone
Dear
Kenday:
I am pleased to inform you that the proposal, "Communal Farming Systems,"
you submitted for the annual conference of the Community Development Society
has been accepted by the Program Committee.
By May 1, you will be able to find the complete program on the CDS www site [http://www.comm-dev.org] and learn when your proposal has been scheduled on the program. I will also be sending you a second letter with this information and the session chair designated.
Remember that all presenters are expected for the conference as participants. I have enclosed a page outlining the formats for concurrent sessions. Please take note of these format outlines for paper, panel, workshop, etc., sessions.
I strongly encourage you to plan your presentation or workshop session with these guidelines in mind. After all, those who attend the annual conference have great expectations for what they might learn and for actively participating in that learning activity, individually and jointly. The Program Committee wishes to stress its belief in the importance of following these guidelines. The 1998 CDS annual conference will be packed with sessions and will include several innovative changes in the format. Your contribution will help all participants learn something new about community development to help improve their professional practice. And, as usual, we will learn from each other as participants and presenters exchange roles and knowledge.
I look forward to seeing you in Kansas, July 19 - 22, 1998 for an exciting professional development experience.
Cordially,
Kenneth
E. Pigg
Vice President, Program
Furthermore, CADS has been considering many other programs like its Women's Development Program, a project which values strategic measures to make better the plight of women and children taking into cognizance five categories of policy approaches i.e. welfare, anti-poverty, equity, efficiency and empowerment.
There is also the center's micro enterprise Rehabilitation Fund (MERFUND), a program of business initiatives administered by the center's Micro Enterprise Administration to help rehabilitate businesses affected by the spate of massive looting and vandalizing of business houses when the government of President Kabbah was violently overthrown by the Armed Forces revolutionary Council (AFRC) and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) that culminated in the disruption of political, economic and social order in Sierra Leone.
CADS is also concerned about the plight of the disabled in the country. Disability has been a pervasive problem in Sierra Leone. And the plight of the disabled is generally miserable, deprived, discriminated, neglected and ignored. They hardly have access to development facilities, employment opportunities and social amenities. Even parents neglect the welfare of their disabled family members. These victims are generally considered unproductive and a burden. CADS has therefore volunteered to cater for and effectively coordinate much needed assistance to these victims.
In summing up my statement, Mr. Chairman, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, I think what we are doing in CADS is a laudable undertaking. I am particularly enchanted by the ingenuity and industriousness of my staff. Their work and the work of the entire center are what I would like to call a high degree of patriotism. The likes of us should be encouraged both in our country and abroad to achieve our national development objectives. But I must say this, we are not at all encouraged. Our fundraising efforts have all the time been futile. Even local and international aid agencies have been uncooperative in supporting our important work. And that is bad. And that's why when I extended our invitations to the NCRRR and the NGO desk of the Ministry of Finance, Economic planning and development, I had categorically asked these departments that certainly exist to coordinate support for the work of local nonprofits like CADS to come to our Annual Sensitization Conference to tell us what really are their roles in non-governmental work.
I therefore hope we will know today what these departments have for us and our target beneficiaries, and what help they can generate nationally and internationally to support CADS in its genuine efforts in pursuing its national development objectives. Thank you all.
Statement Made by the Commissioner, NCRRR On the Occasion of the Annual Sensitization Conference of CADS On the Role of the NCRRR, Mr. Kanja Sesay.
Mr. Chairman, the trustees, the executives of affiliated member associations and cooperatives of CADS, our good friend the Paramount Chief of Koya Chiefdom, the Press, distinguished Ladies and gentlemen, let me start by thanking the CADS Management for extending an invitation to National Commission for Reconstruction, Resettlement and Rehabilitation.
According to its mandate, the NCRRR has a key role to play in the planning and implementation of government's Resettlement and Rehabilitation Program. The NCRRR has been mandated to oversee the socio-economic recovery process of Sierra Leone, after over seven years of an unnecessary rebel insurgency and ten months of junta misrule.
Specifically, NCRRR has been charged with providing overall policy guidance and developing the program framework for the nation's recovery, seeking funding from donor nations and organizations for this purpose, coordinating the activities of all relevant actors and sectors, monitoring and evaluation of the entire recovery process.
By the nature of its functions, the NCRRR is not an implementing agency, but achieves by working with implementing partners who have the capacity and experience to implement the recovery program. Implementing partners usually non-governmental organizations (NGOs) both international and local, line ministries if they have the capacity to implement projects and private contractors. Projects, formulated for the rehabilitation of infrastructure and resettlement of internally displaced Persons (IDPs) are not imposed from above but formulated with the participation of those who would be the beneficiaries.
Consequently, the approach that is practiced, which ensures that the target beneficiaries themselves are involved in their own welfare, is the bottom-up approach. This means that projects can only be formulated in the field, in areas that are affected by the war.
After over nine months of AFRC/RUF catastrophe, we no longer differentiate between areas that are behind rebel lines and those that are not. The entire country has been devastated by the acts of wicked and unscrupulous people. If anything, the task confronting us is much greater and needs the urgent attention of the Government the people of Sierra Leone, the donor community and the NGOs.
To succeed in its mandate, the NCRRR is structured in a way that would enable it to reach the grassroots. Apart from the central office in Freetown, it maintains offices in the provincial headquarter towns and districts, adequately staffed with the necessary expertise to carry out its activities in the field. The officers of NCRRR work in close collaboration with the line ministries in the various regions of the country and the NGO community who usually maintain a very strong presence in the field. Since the activities of the NCRRR cut right down to chiefdom level, there is provision in the program of recovery to develop and work with chiefdom-Based Organizations (CBOs), all in the process of enhancing the participatory process in the program of reconstruction and rehabilitation.
As we are all aware, no matter how elaborate our programs and projects, no matter how well they are formulated, they can only be implemented if the resource needs can be met, either from domestic or foreign sources. Sad to say, when one takes into account the fate that befell this country during the rebel war and after, the ability to finance the recovery program from domestic sources is severely constrained. The two largest mines, rutile and bauxite from which the Government derived much revenue have not been in operation since 1995, agricultural output has also been low, because of the rebel war, and business has been severely affected.
However, the government anticipates sourcing the international donor community for the resources needed to implement its recovery program; resources for this purpose had been trickling in through the international NGOs before the coup d'etat of May 25, 1997. This was facilitated by the UNDP, which convened a Round Table Conference on Sierra Leone's recovery program in September, 1996 in Geneva. At this meeting, you may recall, donors, both bilateral and multilateral, pledged a total US$232million (Two Hundred and Thirty Two Million Dollars) to the recovery program. Following on the UNDPs efforts, the World Bank also convened a Consultative Group Meeting on Sierra Leone in March 1997, in Paris. At this meeting a total $642 million (Six Hundred and Forty Two Million Dollars was pledged towards the country's rehabilitation and economic reform programs.
Now, let me take this opportunity to make some clarifications on certain issues that have been misconstrued. Many people in the past were of the opinion that the pledges made at these meetings were actual resources that had been bequeathed to the Government. Unfortunately, this was not the case. These were only pledges or promises made by the donor community. Until these pledges or promises were honored, they were just promises not yet translated to real resources. Unfortunately, the coup cased a temporary abrogation of our programs, especially after the donor community suspended all assistance to Sierra Leone. Now that the democratically - elected government has been re-instated, the rehabilitation and resettlement program will be vigorously pursued by government.
Where are we on the 90-Day Program??? Well, so far, there are no funds for this program, but donors are expected this week end. In fact, the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the Islamic Development Bank, the European Union, are already here, and we are anticipating as well bilateral sources for this program.
To conclude, let me state once more, that for NCRRR to perform its duties effectively, it must have the cooperation of NGOs. With regards to accessing resources, NGOs must prepare well thought-out projects in cooperation of the commission. The guiding principle is that there must always exist an atmosphere of respect and understanding between NGOs, the target beneficiaries and the Commission. I thank you all.
Statement Made by the NGO Desk Coordinator, Mr. A R Dumbuya on the Role of NGO Desk in the Ministry of Finance, Development and Economic Planning.
Mr. Chairman, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen: It gives me great pleasure to be invited by the Center for Alternative Development Strategies to talk or brief you on the ROLE OF THE NGO DESK IN THE MINISTRY OF PLANNING.
The topic as I see it is purely factual and as such limited in terms of how the presenter would want the Desk Office to function. Mr. Chairman, before the Lakka Workshop of 7-9 June, 1994 and the eventual approval by Council of the Procedures, Policies and Guidelines for the Collaboration between the Government and Non-Governmental Organizations operating in Sierra Leone, NGO operations in this country was an every body's and all ministry's affairs. What this meant was that every ministry or department was doing some kind of registration and certification.This meant that organization "A" would be registered in one, two or three Ministries/Departments and the case may be. This proved tedious and cumbersome. It was this laborious process of registering in several Ministries/Departments coupled with other problems that prompted Government to mandate the then Ministry of Planning and Economic Development to play a coordinating role in all matters of NGO operations in Sierra Leone.
In sum, the Ministry was charged with the under-mentioned responsibilities:
a) Facilitate NGOs especially International NGOs in matters relating to the recruitment of their expatriate staff, extension of visas, duty free waivers, etc.
b) Register, (work with an Inter-Agency Committee comprising senior staff of line Ministries and SLANGO).
c) Certify d) Monitor and Evaluate NGO programs
e) Discuss NGO programs with a view to determining areas of operation, sectors, funding sources and amounts, to avoid duplication of efforts on the one hand and the equitable and efficient use of the captured resources on the other hand.
f) It also serves as an information dissemination desk.
g) Advocacy for partnership where the opportunities and institutional capacities exist.
Mr. Chairman, you will agree with me that NGOs are institutions through which lots and lots of financial and other resources come into this country. The NGO Desk Office in an attempt at fulfilling its role has established a data bank which has helped not only the Government of Sierra Leone in knowing the quantum of Aid in the couture through these institutions but has also helped consultants, students and other interested parties seeking information on NGO activities in Sierra Leone. Minimum use has been made of the Desk Office by the agents for which it was created. For example, for most NGOs the collection of their registration certificate and the signed country Agreement is like driving them away from the NGO Desk Office. But for those who have made it a responsibility to liaise with the Desk Office can safely say that they have realized some benefits, either by way of relevant information or networking.
Finally, Mr. Chairman may I end up by encouraging NGOs to make the maximum use of the Desk Office which will prove beneficial to NGO operations. I thank you for sparing your time to listening to me. God bless you all.
For more Information about the work of the NGO Desk Office, Contact: The NGO Desk Office Rm. W602 6th Floor - Youyi Building Freetown - Sierra Leone Tel: (232 22) 240548
The General Secretary of the Council of Churches Sierra Leone (CCSL), Mr. Alimamy Koroma, eruditely chaired the conference.
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