AMECEA Social Communication, Pastoral under-go Resource Mobilisation Training
By Prince Henderson in Addis Ababa,Ethiopia
The Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in Central and East Africa (AMECEA) social communications office bearers have been to be good agents of accountability and transparency after benefiting from grants offered by different donors to support different activities.
The AMECEA Social Communications Coordinator Rev. Father Chrisantus Ndaga said this during a workshop on resource mobilization for key Pastoral Agents and communicators held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
“These agents should utilize grants provided by the donors effectively without going contrary to what was expected, if they do this it is obvious that the donors will never sponsor future projects,” he said
He said currently there is the scarcity of resources to support Church activities, hence agents of Pastoral and communication need to be proactive and come up with as many projects as possible in order to improve performance of their offices.
“We thought of conducting this workshop because demand is high, there is scarcity of resources and at the same time there is the need for these offices to run their activities smoothly.”
Furthermore, he said the agents of Pastoral and communication will establish good relationship with donors, serve humanity and improve their performance.
In an exclusive interview, facilitator of the workshop Hillary Korir said the workshop is timely because it has brought together agents of Pastoral and communication and capacitated them to improve their skills and knowledge on project proposal development.
“Earlier it was simple to acquire funds, you could simply seat down and write just a letter to the donor hence get funding, However, this is not the case these days-things have changed. The requirements are many, competition is higher and resources are no longer easy to find,” he said
Korir said projects are rejected by the donor due to several reasons including none compliancy to given requirements, lack of acknowledgement, untimely reports, lack of accountability and lacking skills to prepare projects.
He challenged participants to have an art of developing proposals, involve consultants in need be, coming up with proposals that addresses specific community needs and at the same time, strive to integrated initiatives.
Malawi,Ethiopia,Kenya,Tanzania,Zambia,UgandaEritria and Sudan forms part of AMECEA member countries.
The workshop was funded by Missio Munich