Members of the Rwanda Climate Change and Development Network (RCCDN) met on Thursday, 27 May at Hotel Hilltop in Kigali for the third and final series of training workshops looking at how to strengthen the network and alliance building.
According to Faustin Vuningoma, the Coordinator of RCCDN, this last batch of trainees marked the completion of training 60 representatives from each member organisation that composes RCCDN.
The training sessions were held with a limited number of participants in three separate groups as a way to respect the national Covid-19 preventive measures, each training session brought together not more than 20 persons.
The training equipped members with knowledge of how to strengthen the network for enhancing effective advocacy. Discussions emphasized that RCCDN as a national member-driven civil society network working on climate change and development ought to empower members through capacity building.
Networking and alliance building were underlined among top issues to consider in building a stronger advocacy network and member organisations ought to treat communication as an element sine-qua-non for effective networking
The knowledge acquired from the training is also meant to be passed on to others in the respective member organisations as well as beneficiary communities.
The Coordinator of the network called on the members of RCCDN to be more active in sharing information and best practices to improve network performance. He urged members to streamline communication within their respective organisations.
The participants also voiced their expectations where many wished to always have interactive sessions for networking, link with their fellow members for peer-peer communication and information sharing, capacity building to increase knowledge and skills, and knowledge of funding opportunities among other issues.
The RCCDN secretariat promised to provide a platform in overcoming some of the challenges that members outlined and to continue community participatory advocacy.
Jules Aimable Muhizi, a consultant who facilitated the training advised participants to be more innovative in responding to climate challenges which is a global threat that is mostly affecting the world’s poor in developing countries.
Muhizi encouraged members to play their part in finding innovative solutions in mitigating and adapting to the effects of climate change and continue to support as well as engage beneficiary communities in building resilience.
The training looked at the network through participation, relationship-building and trust, facilitative leadership, structure and control, diversity and dynamism, decentralization and democracy among other things.
These series of capacity building workshops organised by RCCDN were funded by the Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) through the Public Policy Information, Monitoring and Advocacy (PPIMA), a civil society support project aimed at promoting an active interest among Rwandan Civil Society organizations and citizens in public policy affairs and helping them to self-organize and acquire the skills they need to engage effectively in national and local level processes of policy formulation, implementation and management.
