NABOCADO has successfully completed a two-days capacity strengthening assessment and action plans review meeting with EMPOWER West Africa.
The meeting, which was facilitated by The Catholic Relief Services, CRS aims to increase and advance local leadership of humanitarian responses through institutional strengthening and direct funding of Local Humanitarian Actors (LHAs).
NABOCADO as an LHA has been working with CRS to improve its capacity and operations to meet international standards through self-assessment and evaluation.
About 20 staff from all directorates of NABOCADO were taken through presentations and discussions which in the areas of Caritas International, CI Management Standards and CRS HOCAI, EMPOWER sectoral assessment tools and high-level results and findings of NABOCADO
SRFMP assessment.
The EMPOWER (Empowering Partner Organizations Working on Emergency Responses) project began in 2018 in the Latin American and Caribbean Region. It expanded in 2021 to CRS’ Asia Regional Office and is being launched in CRS’ West Africa Regional Office (WARO) at the start of 2023. Leveraging lessons learned and recommendations from the preceding EMPOWER projects, EMPOWER West Africa will grow a team of emergency response technical advisers whose primary role is to strengthen the emergency response capacity of LHAs in West Africa and support them to implement high quality emergency responses.
Based on local organizations’ self-assessment of their self-identified operational and technical support needs and requests for support, EMPOWER provides participating organizations with demand-driven technical resources, on-the-job support, training and accompaniment, and organizes regional workshops to facilitate shared learning and strengthening of peer networks among local humanitarian actors.
EMPOWER also manages a rapid response fund, through which, participating local organizations propose and receive funding for emergency response programs to support communities impacted by crises in West Africa.
Present for the session was Vicar General for the Navrongo-Bolgatanga Catholic Diocese, Very Rev. Fr. Lawrence Azure expressed the Diocese’s gratitude to CRS for its continued support for the activities and growth of NABOCADO whiles urging staff to implement the ideas and learnings derive from the engagement.
The two day’s workshop was facilitated by Head of Office at CRS Tamale, Timothy Akanpabadai, Micheal Augustin, EMPOWER at CRD in Dakar Senegal and Kassoum Ouattara, A Technical Advisor at the Himan Resources Department of CRS in Burkina Faso.
