CBOs meet potential donors at WANA’s civil society project

AMMAN — Twenty two Community-Based Organisations (CBOs) from Karak, Zarqa, Mafraq and Amman this week completed a series of capacity-building workshops by meeting potential donors with whom they discussed future funding opportunities.

In the final workshop of the Middle East Partnership Initiative’s civil society project carried out by the West Asia-North Africa (WANA) Institute, the CBOs received critical feedback from a number of donors including the German Agency for International Cooperation, CARE, UNDP, UNHCR and the Middle East Partnership Initiative, among others.

The final presentation on project budgeting followed a number of trainings started in September 2017 on community development, human rights, research methods, problem assessment, project design and proposal writing, as well as monitoring and evaluation, said Mahmoud Nabulsi, WANA’s civil society team leader.

“After each training, the CBOs carried out a work assignment under the supervision of the WANA’s team which guaranteed the correct implementation of the theories explained during the workshops,” he told The Jordan Times after the session, noting that "at the beginning, the CBOs had some challenges in submitting the assignment as it was their first time putting the knowledge into practice, but they quickly got used to it and found the technical feedback very beneficial". 

A participant in the training, Amal Al Sayed from the Society for Community Development, expressed her happiness with the benefits of the programme, which she said “contributed to her organisation’s collaboration in a joint project with the Ministry of Social Development which will help her develop a training toolkit and implement training workshops on addressing violence alternatives for women prisoners". 

 “The workshop on developing financial and administrative policies was particularly useful to me as I have become familiar with what the donors are asking for in terms of administrative requirement and budgeting, all of that through a participatory hands-on approach,” she said, adding “the variety of sessions included in the project helped us gain both practical skills such as project design and a number of networking opportunities with large international institutions and important local institutions such as the Hayat-RASED Centre.” 

For Nabulsi, the programme was a great success in terms of “setting up networking opportunities between associations and donors”. 

He expressed WANA’s keeness to “continue cooperating with the associations and involve them in future programmes that contribute to their development”.

Programme Director of the German Foundation for Civil Peace Service in Jordan Karim Al Thabet, whose organisation's programme focuses on CBOs at the governorate level, called on associations to “recognise their identity within their community and legal framework” and to “continuously communicate with their local communities in order to provide them with the best suited services”.

“The WANA Institute’s training has contributed to building the capacity of these associations and supports the process of representative communication," he commented, underscoring the importance for CBOs to enhance their cooperation with existing local bodies.

Al Thabet stressed the need for CBOs to “change their structure in terms of quantity and quality, by increasing the number of their employees and volunteers, in order to achieve the goals of their programmes and donors optimally”.