Community-based institutions, whether they be civil society groups or community radio stations, have the reach and community buy-in to best serve citizens’ needs, and advocate on citizens’ behalf. On a recent trip to Gbarnga, in Bong County, I learned first-hand the breadth of that reach and the exciting cumulative effect of the mentorship and training that the Civil Society and Media Leadership Program in Liberia (CSML) [6] has been providing since 2010.
I recently travelled with a mentor from New African Research and Development Agency (NARDA) (one of CSML’s national CSO partners) to visit one of their mentee organizations, the Community Research and Development Agency (CODRA), to discuss the impacts of the training and mentorship they received through the program. I learned that CODRA participated in a proposal writing training, organized by IREX and facilitated by NARDA in March 2012. Armed with new found knowledge and confidence, CODRA developed and submitted a proposal to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) [7] to oversee a $25,000 environmental protection grant. UNDP sought an organization that could work alongside Yolotown, an isolated community that borders a natural monkey preserve, to find alternative sources of food in order to ensure the preservation of the monkey habitat.
CODRA won the grant in June 2012, and will implement the project through May 2013.
I was accompanied by a CODRA staff member and their NARDA mentor on the challenging journey through the bush to meet the Yolotown community and visit the project site. We visited with community leaders who gave us a tour of the goat and ground hog raising facilities that will serve as their alternative source of meat and livelihood and witnessed first-hand the positive, participatory process and relationships that the CODRA staff had developed with the community members. CODRA holds the community accountable to their deadlines and is always available to consult and encourage the community stakeholders as needed. The CODRA staff member reflected that he had modeled his mentoring approach off of his NARDA mentor and as a result had gained the necessary trust and respect among the people of Yolotown to successfully support their implementation of the project. Importantly, CODRA also has proven to itself that they are capable of managing relatively large grants, and are prepared to share the lessons learned from their own training with CSOs throughout Bong County and beyond.
The priorities and approach of international development aid is shifting toward empowering local institutions by providing more funding directly to national organizations, as indicated in the USAID Forward initiative [8], launched in 2010. Through the capacity building and support of the CSML program, both CODRA and its mentor organization NARDA have proven that they are already accessing these opportunities, strengthening their own institutions, and contributing to the development of Liberia as a whole.