What exactly is she doing in Cameroon?
on The Road Less Travelled (Cameroon), 19/Nov/2009 07:39, 34 days ago
A couple people have been asking how my work is going, what I am doing and who I am working for.  All good questions and hopefully the blog below will provide some answers.ACDES is the organization that I have been partnered with through CUSO-VSO. What is ACDES? It stands for Association Chrétienne pour le Développement Economique et Social. In English that would be the Christian Association for Economic and Social Development. It currently does not have a website so if you google it you won’t find anything about it. I am currently helping them make a website so I will let everyoneknow once it is up and running.ACDES is a non-profit organization which is based in the Far North Province of Cameroon. Through the efforts of its dedicated staff and volunteers, ACDES strives to improve the quality of life of those who are disadvantaged such as persons infected or affected by HIV/AIDS as well as refugees. ACDES provides micro-credit financing to the disadvantaged of the Far North in Cameroon, thereby alleviating them from poverty and empowering them to be entrepreneurial and self-reliant. ACDES has also run programs to sensitive people to issues around HIV/AIDS and stigma reduction programs.ACDES is currently in a bit of a predicament. They have not had funding for over a year and so they have not been able to continue with some of their programs. The visionary who started ACDES (a priest in Yaounde) gave some money last year to ACDES to start up a refugee program but without consistent funding it will not be sustainable.So what am I doing here for ACDES? ACDES and VSO began working together towards improving ACDES’s Organizational Development (OD) in 2008 with the placement of a VSO Volunteer in the capacity of an OD Advisor (my predecessor, Jacinthe). ACDES has maintained the relationship with VSO in order to continue with the OD process as developed by VSO and hence I have been placed with ACDES.VSO through my contribution as a volunteer is interested in supporting ACDES in organisational capacity building to ensure long term development impact. Through a systematic and structured process, ACDES staff and volunteers will define their organisations priorities for themselves and be empowered with the tools such as good governance, management techniques and various other skills to build their ability to increase the scope, impact and efficiency of their development initiatives.It is difficult to improve the management of an organisation when there is lack of reflection, awareness or interest. The OD process inspires this awakening especially since our approach is highly participatory. Because staff and members self-assess their organisation (perhaps for the first time), they have an increased level of understanding and commitment towards their organisation. They identify their priorities for capacity building and clearly identify the needed areas of support.My role comes into play in guiding them the process of identifying priorities and helping them gain the necessary knowledge, skills and awareness in the areas which they identify as needed support and strengthening. For example, for ACDES, they have had a lot of new staff and volunteer members, so part of my role in the short term will be helping them understand what OD is and how it can help their organization, and then eventually working with them to develop and implement an OD plan. Such a plan would include such things as redefining and focusing their mission and vision statements, developing strategies to improve the governance and management of the organization, ensuring that a monitoring and evaluation system is in place for their programs, developing a process to obtain funding for their projects, as well as educating their staff and volunteers on issue topics such as microcredit theory, engagement strategies with community volunteers, and good business practices.I hope this helps everyone have a better idea of what I do here. Feel free to contact me by email. If you want to“chat” about anything about this or if you have ideas for other organizations which may be useful to approach for funding for ACDES’s programs.