WELD holds third year planning meeting

Friday, October 28, 2016

The Women Empowered for Livelihoods and Development (WELD) Project have held their third year implementation planning sessions in Makeni from 11-15 October 2016.

WELD is a three-year project funded by USAID and implemented by  World Vision, Action Aid, Advocacy movement Network (AMNET) and Network Movement for Justice and Development (NMJD) with the following objectives: Women’s participation and representation in decision- making process increased; Gender sensitive planning, monitoring and reporting adopted at council, community, and national level, Critical mass of organizations to influence gender policies at the national level increased.

As Prime, WVI oversees planning, implementation, grant administration and compliance, and represents the program to USAID, Government of Sierra Leone and other stakeholders. WVI also implements the project in Kono and Kailahun Districts.

The project was just ending a two-year implementation and changing gears for the third year’s implementation.

The week-long planning session chaired by Catherine Sillah, Base Manager, World Vision Sierra Leone’s Kono base, did not only look at reviews of the previous implementation, but it also created a platform for learning from past experiences and replicating the best practices and also improving on areas that need improvements.

The planning had onboard the National Directors of the four consortium partners, The Ministry of Social Welfare Gender and Children’s Affairs representative, local council rep, beneficiaries, aspiring female  Members of Parliament (MP) candidates for Sierra Leone’s 2018 Parliamentary elections, USAID representative, local council representative, WELD Chief of Party  (CoP) and all staff of WELD from the partner organizations.

Dr. Tom Roberts, WELD CoP, is quoted as saying to all present: ‘’We have made great strides, we have achieved a lot. It was based on this that we did say, it is time for reflection. In the third year, let’s see what we can, and cannot do. We have a great team. And we need to make this project impactful.’’

James Chifwelu, National Director, World Vision Sierra Leone said, ‘’it is rear to find such project. We are proud and happy that this is happening here. We can build on that and look forward to do much more.’’

‘’We will have a lens to ensure we look through a few areas that we think will make us focus on our impact, and, at the end of the day, impact the children. Children are not mentioned much in the project document, but with the money realized from savings groups that the project has reached, World Vision is really interested to see how children are impacted,’’ he further mentioned.

Mohamed Sillah, Country Director, Action Aid said: ‘’we came into this consortium because the issue that the consortium was working on falls within our country strategy. It’s our third strategic objective—Empowering women for strategic positions across all levels. We are grateful for the opportunity and we that World Vision for bringing it onboard.’’

There are a lot of best practices that are worth emulating about the WELD Project. Sillah further mentioned:

‘WELD may not be physically present in all Districts in Sierra Leone. But I assure you, we have taken the learning of WELD to Kambia, Bo, Moyamba Districts and even the Western Area, Freetown. A typical example is the Savings Groups model. We  (Action Aid ) are doing it in 32 communities. But with our own separate funding, we are implementing it in extra 120 communities outside WELD implementation Districts.’’

Abu Brima, Executive Director said during deliberations: ‘’NMJD is happy that this project has been going on. As this project is set for its third year implementation, we should be very strategic in terms of what we want to see.’’

Brima further mentioned the need for partnership with other key ministries like local government, the role of local authorities, organized women’s platforms and fora, accompaniment process in place, Civil Society well organized at the levels where WELD is being implemented, local level engagement as being key components taht the project should intentionally incorporate in the third year of implementation.

Hawa Samai, CEO AMNET said: there are promising signs within AMNET coverage and implementation of the WELD Project. Women’s voices are gradually being  heard at the household level as a result of the strong leadership training, as well as the economic empowerment component through the self-generating fund—Savings Groups model.

Group discussions and plenary sessions climaxed the planning session.And these discussions produced action points that are worth considering for inclusion into the third year implementation.

 

 

Some key actions worth remembering from the deliberations during this planning meeting are: more engagement with local leaders enforced, all staff and consortium partners have a clearer understanding of key policy documents, Conscious efforts to transform Savings groups into women’s movement in place, adult literacy for women, Civic education, regular and quarterly visits to implementation areas, exchange visits with a view to exchanging ideas across women’s groups and strengthen the Ministry of Social Welfare Gender and Children’s Affairs with monitoring.