Western Equitoria Civil Society Capacity Building Project

WVI plans to work with 10 CSOs focusing on initiatives that will strengthen their organisational, technical and networking capacities. The first step will be to assess the organizations individually in order to determine the CSOs' capacity gaps. Remedial capacity building activities, strategies and actions will be informed by this initial capacity assessment and TOC validation. The project proposes to work with a total of ten (10) CSOs in GE over a three year period. It is envisaged that participating partners will fall into one of two groups of phases to be absorbed and graduated out of the project ideally on a yearly basis. More realistically however, CSOs will be realized only when considered ready to explore the YWC and other funding. WVI proposes a threefold approach to capacity building; firstly, the development of individual skills and expertise of participating CSOs staff. This will strengthen individual staff professional competency and enhance the capacity for quality programming that better serves the CSO constituency. Secondly, the development of the CSO partners’ capacity in terms of its procedures, systems, policies and culture and its ability to relate and act which also includes its organizational sustainability. Both the first and second components can result in stronger organizations with a more positive and wide roles to play in supporting vulnerable communities, thereby developing a deeper reciprocal relationship with beneficiaries. Lastly, the systemic/societal level which involves changes in societal values, customs, laws, policies and system of governance. This level can be equated to the development of an enabling environment for civil society or the wider development of the civil society sector for the Greater Western Equatoria Region. This level involves coalition building and joint actions among the CSOs, on behalf and with communities and is envisaged to develop the CSOs and community ability to engage and influence decision makers.

Long term goal: The project’s long term goals is to see “Enhanced humanitarian programming and policy engagement capacity among civil society organizations in the Greater Western Equatoria region”. In order to achieve this goal, two outcomes and five outputs are envisaged under the project. Project Outcomes 1. Build the capacity of Civil Society Organizations in Greater Western Equatoria on humanitarian and development programming. 2. Strengthen support for greater engagement and policy influencing by GWER Civil Society Coalitions and Networks

Civil Society Organizations in South Sudan

This project focusses on enhanced humanitarian programming and policy engagement capacity among civil society organizations in the Greater Western Equatoria region.

The Republic of South Sudan gained its independence on the 9th of July, 2011 after a landmark referendum, ending a six-and-a-half year interim period following the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). The CPA brought an end to decades of intermittent civil war reaching back to 1955 between Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) combatants and the Arab military regime in Khartoum, which cost millions of lives. This legacy of conflict and neglect, has had adverse impact on the socio-economic development in the whole of South Sudan, resulting notably in inadequate basic service delivery infrastructure and limited delivery capacity by public service providers. The Greater Western Equatoria (GWE) Region consist of the former Western Equatoria State, now subdivided into Amadi, Maridi, Gbudue and Tambura states. This region shares boarders with DRC to the south, CAR to the west and Lake State to the North. It covers an area of 79,342.65 sq. km. and a population projected to have reached 1,226,291 people by 2015. However, massive displacements and migrations occasioned by among other things, 2015/2016 political instability has more likely rendered these projections unreliable. Like the rest of the country, the region was adversely affected by years of conflict resulting in massive population displacements, basic infrastructure inadequacies and poor service delivery, resource constrained local government and aid dependency among the population. CSO work in the Greater Western Equatoria region is influenced by a diverse number of factors. The Civil Society Organizations operate on a near information vacuum since most government data are lacking or are not shared with development partners. Capable individual organizations who conduct field assessments and researchers use this information exclusively for their needs and are not obliged to share the results with others. This information vacuum leads to duplications and is an obstacle to mutual cooperation and effective coordination of CSO efforts towards intervening in the region’s development challenges. Consequently, most funding goes to the International NGO’s whose resources, capacity and corporate practices enables the generation of development data that support better implementation of projects. Indigenous CSOs are especially weak in emergency response despite their unfettered access to the hard to reach areas and living among the affected communities. This also despite the notable trend of increasing humanitarian crises and unpredictable accessibility constrains that so often call for emergency responses within the region. Developing the means and capacity to respond to emergencies would therefore greatly enhance the contribution of local CSOs to humanitarian work in GWER. Nevertheless, there continue to be proliferation of CBOs, NGOs and other community based associations some without clear mandate, vision or even strategic direction. Many of them collapse within one to two years, mainly due to lack of community support, incompetent staff, poorly designed Programmes and lack of donor funding for the envisaged interventions. World Vision intends to utilize its time-tested expertize and local experience to invest in the development and sustainability of CSO partners in the project. A mix of strategies including direct training, organizational development, mentorship are currently proposed while the exact approaches will more likely be informed by OCA and TOC validation exercise. Due to this lack of mandate, local CSOs find it extremely difficult to engage with their government whether national, state or local on development agenda. This in turn disenfranchise their beneficiary constituents of active representation in policy and decision making forums. This is mainly due to poor coordination and synergy among local CSOs that give rise to inadequate consultation and sharing among CSOs, and unnecessary peer competition that further diminish CSO voices for common causes. The lack of constructive engagement eventually led to simmering suspicion by the state government of the roles of some CSOs at the height of 2015/2016 armed rebellion in the region, culminating in the Gbudue state government’s decision to nullify the registrations of all community based associations (including CSOs) in late 2016. As at November 2016, only 20 organizations had managed to re-register afresh. Thus attempts should be made to promote such engagements and pass the same empowerment to local communities to meaningfully contribute to their own development. This community empowerment should be a deliberate process of tackling systematic ignorance, dependency, socio - cultural stereotypes and discrimination through active interventions among beneficiary communities through active support for local community based organizations. Concurrently, communities should gain the voice to demand accountability for service provision both from the state as well as the CSOs who work among them.

The South Sudan fragile context require agile programming, hence the frequent assessments carried out to ensure flexibility in projects implementation. It is expected that WECAP will afford the appropriate flexibility to adopt to changing operational environment and embrace necessary adjustments in pursuit of the project’s goal. World Vision will prioritize local CSOs as the frontline project implementers, to avoid/reduce the dependency and high expectations often associated with INGO projects by communities and governments. The project envisages to ensure proper project start up and inception by engaging with CSOs and community leadership in honest conversation about the project goal and objectives. Thereafter, the CSOs will be expected to whip their constituencies with regards to expectation management. Policy engagement and advocacy activities also runs the risk of politicization especially if approached inappropriately or emotionally depending on the issue involved. To avoid this, State and County governments will be the target of pre-launch mobilization and deliberate sensitization in a bid to secure consensus on goals and strategies being pursued. Frequent interactions, through invitations and feedback with appropriate authorities will be undertaken with such offices to develop a transparent relationship. It is expected that stronger CSOs with clear mandate, vision and strategies are able to more effectively meet their objectives and serve their communities better, one of which is enhanced policy engagement. Empowered communities can transforms the relationships between citizens, government (civil servants and elected officials), and service providers (like nurses, doctors, principals and teachers) to that of positive engagement that results in in government responsiveness towards community needs and thereby sustaining basic service provision. Stronger CSOs are capable of mobilizing resources locally and internationally, thereby enabling them to continue growing without the current WV support. Already, communities implementing CVA have been able to mobilize resources among themselves to respond to critical needs at service points such as repairs of wind-blown roofs, damaged doors or hire part time teachers. This project will improve the much needed coordination among civil society stakeholders. The synergy among coalition members will unite CSO efforts to achieve greater impacts in their sectoral interventions thus attracting more funding and partnerships.