OUR WORK
Democracy and Governance
Citizens Civic Participation Initiative (CIVIPI)
In 2022 we launched, Citizens Civic Participation Initiative (CIVIPI) which has continued to impact civil society and community based organisations to carry out civic education activities in their communities. This program keeps improving citizen’s participation and engagement in public life and political processes. Our efforts in this dimension continue to stimulate a new dynamism for civil society and grassroots social movements to assert themselves as crucial instruments for democratic change, participation and social mobilization. The CIVIPI program emphasizes systematic engagement between citizens and their representatives and support communities to organize learn and participate. Here our work to addresses 3 key concerns
- People living in extreme poverty are systematically excluded from decision making processes and institutions and continue to benefit less from development investment
- Systematic denial of peoples’ right to participate erodes the accountability and effectiveness of institutions making government much more pruned to poor decision making, corruption and malpractices that increase poverty
- The exclusion of women and other marginalized groups such as youths, indigenous persons, persons with disabilities from policy making leads to imbalance perspectives in development priorities.
Transparency and Accountability
Transparency and accountability are fundamental requirements of good governance. Government at national or local level has the obligation to report, explain and is answerable for the consequences of decisions they takes on behalf of the people and the community they represent.
NWADO has over the years continued to mobilize and capacitate civil society and grassroots civic movements, activists and social change influencers with techniques and tools to monitor public sector service delivery, procedures, policies and programs and to carry out whistle blowing where accountability is evidence of poor public management and corruption.
Our “People power against corruption” project is a grassroots campaign to mobilize citizen’s voices against corrupt practices and to foster a culture of transparency and accountability at various levels of governance. The project has worked to empower grassroots citizens on monitoring public investments projects in their localities as well as promote and disseminate the citizen budget in local communities.
Over 580 community based leaders have been transformed to local whistle blowers, denouncing wrongdoing in public investment projects within 7 municipal council areas of the North West Region. Their Work is quiet impactful given that the ongoing armed conflict has destabilized the functioning of public institutions, making it difficult for project quality control and supervision teams to carry out field visits to project sites. This community based partnership approach consistently generates citizens’ controlled report that gives an overall picture of local community projects. Our prospects for 2024 is to make this partnership more engaging and effective main through the development and institution of digital tools at the disposal of grassroots citizens actors.
Constructive Engagement with Government
The relationship between civil society and government is complicated and sometimes constraint by a number of factors. The lack of understanding of each other’s goals, the restrictive government procedures or policies, problems of attitude and distrust on both sides, lack of clear government policy on civil society, poor communication between CSOs and government, contrasting top down government’s approach and the participatory bottom up approaches of CSOs are amongst some of the factors that inhibit collaboration. Our work supports an enabling environment for CSOs to constructively engage with government through dialogue and consultation. We explore new ways of improving state- civil society collaboration while remaining independent in our thinking and approach as civil society.
Our work has led to the creating of the Civil Society Forum on Transparent Governance which is a regional platform for improving good governance and increasing dialogue between civil society and public authorities. In 2021, the strategic plan for this dialogue forum was elaborated and you can see details here
Human rights
Civic Space
Civic space enables citizens to raise their voices, and act on issues that threaten their individual or collective interest and ideas. It is an important instrument for democratic governance, participation, social cohesion and community peace. In Cameroon, the civic space is gradually shrinking and there is an increasing threat to individual liberties and freedoms. The situation keeps worsening with a tensed socio political environment aggravated by an ongoing armed conflict, restrictive government policy and repressive policing of citizens. Our intervention in this area is focused on;
- Supporting government- civil society dialogue
- Strengthening the capacity of CSOs and media on rights based programming
- Strengthening linkages with key stakeholders for effective shared learning on rights-based programming and social accountability.
- Initiate advocacy actions to influence the regulatory/ policy framework favorable for the growth of a vibrant civil society
- Conducting research and raising awareness on civic space constraints
- Strengthening linkages and networks between CSOs to enhance their influence, share learning, and enable collective action
- Advocacy for greater civic space building on evidence base and experience
- Exploring new opportunities for reclaiming civic space
Human rights monitoring and Education
We build a community of people who are committed to defending the ideals of social justice in Cameroon. Our approach involve strengthen and engaging community leaders on human rights education, monitoring and reporting. Within the context of the ongoing armed conflict in Cameroon, we have been able to enhanced local capacities through advocacy, education and redress to those whose rights have been violated. There are community based human rights monitoring units in all 7 Division of the Region which now serve as community entry points to many local and international human rights actors and organizations. While the human rights environment in Cameroon remains challenging and daring, our strength here remains consolidating forces of human rights networks.
Advocacy and Policy
Civil society will hardly do much if the public policy framework is not responsive and meeting the needs for their interventions. NWADO engages on policy advocacy, analysis, education and monitoring.
As civil society organizations work to complement government’s national development agenda through the provision of essential service delivery in health, employment, education, environment etc, NWADO’s work as a network is to strive to ensure that the public policy and institutional framework is responsive, accountable and meeting the needs of civil society development interventions.
NWADO advocates for an enabling environment for civil society organizations to optimize their pro poor agenda. In spite the challenging civil society environment, NWADO has continued to thrive, learning and testing new approaches of engaging decision makers in policy dialogue. Our theory of change reflects on two key lessons, Constructive Engagement with Policy Makers and or public sector authorities and Evidenced Use for Advocacy through credible research
Research and Advocacy
Civil society capacity building
