Concord Times (Freetown)
PEL Koroma
25 November 2008
Freetown — World Vision Sierra Leone yesterday started a two day advocacy forum at the bank of Sierra Leone complex, Kingtom with the hope of making poverty a history in Sierra Leone.
World Vision believes a collective wisdom and concerted efforts through a well articulated national advocacy strategy are essential as it is at the heart of the holistic transformational community development approach of the organization.
Communications and advocacy manager world vision, Claudius Davies said advocacy hinges on the programmatic approach which seeks to address the structural and systematic causes of poverty by changing policies, systems, practice and attitudes that perpetuate inequality and deny human rights. He said it is a ministry of influence using persuasion, dialogue and reasoning to obtain change by influencing policy makers to change laws or ensure implementation.
"World vision seeks, through its national advocacy strategy, to understand the underlying issues and causes of poverty in Sierra Leone and to work with communities and other partners at the micro, mezzo, macro and global levels to tackle the causes of poverty through leveraging influence and empowering communities using policy formation, policy implementation, mobilization and education," Davies said.
He reiterated that the objective of the forum was to create space for world vision staff and partners to validate the draft World Vision Sierra Leone national advocacy strategy with a view to producing a final version owned by all who would be stake holders in operationalsing the advocacy strategy, to pull together collective wisdom in setting out the next steps for operationalsing the WVSL national advocacy strategy and to gain social capital through strengthening our social networks for advocacy by our mutual consultation and engagement on advocacy issues that affect the wellbeing of children, their families and communities in Sierra Leone.
Davies said: "Child rights, livelihoods security and citizen participation and governance are the three themes for WVSL advocacy. These three themes will form the lenses for identifying and examining advocacy issues as mapped out in the advocacy strategy matrices. Gender and disability are key focal cross-cutting development issues in WVSL's 5 year national strategy and will also identify the gender and disability issues that need to be addressed within child rights, livelihood security, and citizen participation and governance."
He expressed confidence that the forum would inspire hope in participants so that they can make a difference and create the motivation they need to take the next step.
National director of World Vision, Myles Harrison, reminded the participants of the key values of the institution. "World Vision S/L is called to partner with the poor, irrespective of tribe or religion, as a demonstration of God's unconditional love for all people and as a means to empowering communities to experience human and social development that is transformational, community based and focused especially on the needs of children," said Harrison.
On inspiration, he said each aspiration reflects the ultimate desire that WVS/L aims for as it operationalizes national strategy with the ultimate desire to contribute toward achieving the aspirations of the organization.
"The targeted ministries include agriculture, micro enterprise development, education, health and HIV/AIDS, water and sanitation; and the cross-cutting themes are gender, disability and Christian commitment," Harrison said.
The focus of World Vision comprises roles and responsibilities, decision rights and accountability, budgets and authority, organizational culture, character and values, strategic linkages and monitoring and evaluation plan are key choices of their advocacy programme. The forum ends today.
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