The Lesotho Council of Non-Governmental
Organizations (LCN), founded as an umbrella body of national
NGOs in May 1990, has, within this changing climate,
acquired prominence as a potential development partner, and
has in this respect risen to the opportunities of greater
participation in the country’s development process. However,
LCN and its member organizations lack the required
capacities, at institutional, governance and human resources
levels, to effectively engage in the country’s development.
Given the immediate development priority to make PRS work
and move towards the achievement of Lesotho’s national
priorities as spelt out in the PRS and Vision 2020, and the
unfolding decentralisation process. The following capacity
challenges exist:
- An inadequate coverage of the country outside the
main urban centres by the existing Lesotho NGOs thereby
leaving the rural areas behind in national dialogue and
action around PRS; it is acknowledged by the government
that during the formulation of the PRS, it was the NGOs
that made the difference in engaging grassroots
communities in contributing to the formulation of the
PRS.
- Inadequate capacity of the Lesotho NGOs to take up
the challenge to engage communities in the
implementation of PRS and hold government accountable to
the nation for delivery on national priorities.
- Weak coordination gap of Lesotho civil society;
while LCN is recognised as the legitimate coordinating
body for Lesotho NGOs, it is felt by many stakeholders
that it does not have adequate capacity in terms of
human resources, structures and systems to coordinate
the sector.
In this respect, LCN, as the representative of Lesotho
civil society submitted a project proposal to the Foundation
(ACBF) geared towards strengthening non-governmental
organizations to enable them engage the government, the
private sector and international partners for alternative
long-term development strategies for Lesotho, and contribute
meaningfully and constructively to sustainable long-term
socioeconomic development.
The capacity-building project aims to address aspects of
identified capacity weaknesses of NGOs that still need
redress, based on lessons drawn from previous donor
capacity-building interventions. Hence, the project is
geared towards, firstly, ensuring the leadership and better
governance of NGOs through an emphasis on institutional and
organizational strengthening of LCN and its members. A needs
assessment undertaken aims to inform the development of a
training program that will offer specialized, targeted
professional skills to help increase NGOs’ capacity to
undertake and participate effectively in development
projects. Organizational development is employed as a
strategy to enhance overall management, governance
structures, systems and processes, including effective
coordination between LCN and its members.
Secondly, provision of timely and reliable evidence-based
knowledge resources through research and the establishment
of a library/online resource center. This will help to
increase NGOs influence on policy making process and
decisions related especially to government’s poverty
reduction strategies, budgetary allocation and service
delivery at local levels. The knowledge resources will in
turn also strengthen their advocacy efforts at national and
regional levels. Thirdly, the project will build strategic
alliance among NGOs and other relevant partners in the
development process by facilitating well-targeted outreach
and advocacy strategies at the national and regional levels.
Overall goal of the Project:
The overall goal of the Project is to facilitate the
effective participation of NGOs in the national efforts to
address Lesotho development challenges by enhancing their
capacity to engage government’s policy-making processes.
This will help to promote efficient service delivery and
overall accountability and good governance, for the
betterment of the quality of life of Lesotho citizenry.
The project specific objectives are to:
- Enhance the substantive participation of NGOs in the
implementation of key development frameworks among them
the PRS, PRISP, and Vision 2020, through effective
advocacy, monitoring and partnership building with
government, business and development partners,
especially donors to Lesotho, and
- Strengthen the organisational and institutional
capabilities of LCN, including its staff skill base, in
order to enhance its efficiency and effectiveness and
maintain its leadership role as the coordinating body of
NGOs in Lesotho.
The strategies to achieve these objectives are (i)
building the human capacities of LCN and it members through
training and leadership development; (ii) building strategic
alliance between NGOs and other relevant stakeholders in the
development process through networking and dialogue and by
advancing evidence-based advocacy. This will contribute
towards an overall strengthening of the voice of civil
society as a whole in Lesotho and ensure that government
becomes more responsive to the development needs of the
country; (iii) enhancing knowledge generation, access,
dissemination and sharing among NGOs through the
establishment of a research/library resource and networking
center at the Council.
The project has three components:
- Leadership and Organizational Development – this
aims to provide LCN and its members with requisite
professional skills that will empower them as capable
partners in the development process. The component will
also strengthen LCN’s staff capacity through the
provision of additional highly skilled mix staff, which
will improve its overall coordination, representation
and advocacy services to members. This component will
also facilitate an organizational review of LCN and
propose enhanced linkages aimed at improving the
interface of the Council and its members that would
ensure the leadership and relevancy of NGOs as key
partners;
- Outreach and Advocacy – this is targeted at
sustaining national debate, in form of anti-poverty
campaigns, organized in various outreach activities, and
comprising all stakeholders, of issues related to
poverty reduction, economic empowerment, pro-poor and
budgetary allocation as well as service delivery to
disadvantaged communities; and
- Research and Dissemination – this component will aim
at facilitating accessibility to evidence based research
and knowledge resources that is required to build NGOs
effectiveness, impact and influence of policy issues,
both nationally, regionally and internationally.
Rationale for ACBF Involvement
This project is consistent with ACBF mandate to
strengthen and professionalize the voices of civil society
as effective partners in the development process. The
Foundation support will help to strengthen the LCN
governance structures, boost its human resource capacity and
redefine and strengthen its networking capability amongst
NGOs in Lesotho. In particular the strengthening of the role
and capacities of the Sectoral Commissions as the hub of
sectoral activity at national and grassroots level as well
as enabling them to mobilize CBOs and NGOs at district level
for local action. It is envisaged that assistance from ACBF
would help to strengthen dialogue among civil society
institutions, as well as between government, private sector,
development partners and civil society as a whole for
improved policy formulation, implementation and monitoring.
Also, the project will enhance and strengthen NGOs’s
governance structures, which are essential component of good
governance.
Project Components and Activities
The proposed project has three components:
- Leadership and Organizational Development
- Outreach and Advocacy
- Research and Dissemination.
Leadership and Organizational Development
This component will firstly, involve training based on
practical case studies/experiences training in workshops
format and conducted at field level of LCN Sectoral
Commissions to enable their effectiveness and efficient. The
training program will be build upon the areas of needs
identified in the Needs Assessment Report, among them,
Financial management, Leadership and NGO Governance, Project
Management, Community Monitoring Techniques, Rights-based
Policy Advocacy and Marketing and Communications. Secondly,
the component will help towards mobilizing and expanding the
LCN sectoral membership base for increased CSO coordination
and build a critical mass for local action as part of the
field based-training component and by also organizing
rotating Sectoral Commissions meetings at the districts
levels.
Commissions community pro-poor policies engagement
outreach programme will enhance community and commissions
participation in development and budgeting processes.
Thirdly, it will activate and strengthen the direct
participation of the members of the sectoral commissions in
prioritisation, resource allocation, implementation and
monitoring and evaluation of programs through the hands-on
training under activity that will be provided, thereby
making LCN a more accountable umbrella and more relevant at
programming level. The Commissions would also be capacitated
to better access the Know How Funds that have been earmarked
by donors supporting the ongoing capacity building program
at LCN to enable Commissions to undertake projects at local
level, applying their learnt skills.
This component will likewise enhance the capacity of Board
Members of LCN through training in budget analysis,
strategic planning and evaluation of approved plans and
budgets and management of stakeholders’ relationships. In
particular, the Board will be empowered to play a stronger
oversight role in the management of donor funds.
In addition, under this component, LCN institutional
capacity will be strengthened by facilitating development of
appropriate structures, systems and processes, including
financial management, at all levels, that emanate from the
specialized training of staff and management in the areas of
identified needs that will institute performance management
culture towards high quality service delivery to members. It
will also enable better operational delivery at LCN thorough
the recruitment of high quality staff and the facilitation
of extended services to Commissions located at grass root
level through the purchase of a project vehicle.
Training program of LCN and its members will mainly be
delivered through technical assistance with on-the-job
training facilitated by relevant training consultants,
induction courses for newly recruited staff, study tours and
staff exchange to learn best practices. The training will
also include subject matter related workshops and seminars,
and short professional courses at diploma and certificate
levels at identified reputable organizations within the
Southern Africa region. The project will be encouraged to
explore linkages with the Foundation’s supported interface
projects in Swaziland and Botswana with regard to enriching
the scope and content of the training program.
Outreach and Advocacy
This component will assist to strengthen LCN programming
standards and outreach to civil society, business sector and
government through various fora as delineated under the
section of project strategies on PRS monitoring, policy
dialogues and dissemination, and dissemination on the
implementation of the PRS, in order to hold government and
the business sector more accountable to the public.
Activities will include among others, organization of annual
regional and national policy seminars comprising government,
business sector, civil society and development partners. The
component will promote benchmarking and knowledge sharing of
the LCN budget tracking initiative against regional best
practices, through the organisations of exchange visits to
identified countries in Africa.
Research and Dissemination
This component will assist in the development of a library
/resource center at LCN that will facilitate ready access to
evidence-based knowledge for Commissions and other civil
society organizations. This will comprise the conduct of
commissioned studies by LCN on selected key development
issues, including baseline research by the Commissions and
Staff of LCN. These research studies will be repackaged,
documented and widely distributed. They will constitute the
basis of LCN’s online resources. This component will also
ensure publication and wide dissemination of reports of the
annual regional and national meetings. |