LILONGWE: In realization that Civil Society Organizations speak out for citizens to influence governments’ decisions, Norwegian Church Aid and Dan Church Aid (NCA-DCA) has planned to work on strengthening these CSOs with an aim of bridging the gap that exists between government and its citizens.
Following visibility space for Malawi’s Civil Society Organizations shrinking, NCA-DCA has seen the need to strengthen CSOs to ensure continued delivery of services for the betterment of citizens.
In an interview with Luntha Television, Wezzie Matsimbe, Senior Program Officer for Strengthening Civil Society Organizations (SCSO), Climate Smart Economic Empowerment (CSEE) and Gender-Based Violence (GBV) at NCA-DCA, delivery of services has so far been hindered by internal forces including funding challenges which brings about lack of capacity to carry out their operations.
Additionally, the NGO Act which is gagging civil society to speak out, and also some organizations with international donors have limitations to speak out due to the guidelines set for them in their operations.
She has since said that as NCA-DCA, they have put in place several interventions to strengthen CSOs to continue serving the needs of citizens by acting as a convener between citizens and central government.
Wezzie Matsimbe says, “We have several strategies that we have put in place. One of them is actually capacity strengthening the civil society because some of the challenges we have are institutional capacity.
“Some civil society organizations are a bit challenged internally and we would want to capacitate them by identifying the gaps so that they are able to deliver. We are also going to facilitate networks, create platforms where civil society organizations will come and work together to create social change.”
In addition to the interventions put in place, the Program Officer at NCA-DCA John Chawinga has said they have included advocacy campaigns in these projects to ensure that they initiate change on issues that affect society.
“The partners did submit proposals identifying problems affecting people which they are going to address. Through advocacy, they are going to work to ensure there is a change in terms of those issues affecting the people,” Chawinga said.
The meeting also welcomed concerns from different partners on issues of divided opinions among CSOs claiming they fail to deliver services. Meanwhile, CSOs working with NCA-DCA have been urged to work together in delivering citizens’ concerns to the government to strengthen trust between them.
By Alinafe E. Phiri, Luntha TV