Dr. Meshesha Shewarega, Executive Director of CCRDA, attended African CSO Aid and Development Effectiveness Consultation and Strategy Meeting in Nairobi, Kenya from 14 to 16 February, 2011.

Dr. Meshesha told CCRDA Newsletter that the meeting was organized to solicit inputs and draft strategy for the Aid and Development Effectiveness Meeting, which is scheduled to be convened in Bussan, South Korea in December, 2011.

The strategy meeting was organized by four CSO platforms involved in advocacy issues related to Aid Effectiveness, CSO Development Effectiveness and Democratic Space, the Executive Director noted.

The four CSO platforms, he said, are: Open Forums for CSO Development Effectiveness, the Reality of Aid Africa (ROA), Better Aid Coordination Group (BACC) and the African CSO platform for Principled Partnership (ACPPP).

Dr. Meshesha said the meeting had five major objectives including, among others, building mutual understanding among CSO partners on the ongoing activities pertaining to CSO Development and Aid Effectiveness.

The meeting was also aimed at forging an agreement on how to build synergy in the various works being undertaken by different CSO initiatives, according to the Executive Director.

The three- day meeting was marked by presentations of papers, group works and plenary sessions. It was attended by more than 40 participants from CSOs and selected partners from donor organizations.

Similarly, Dr. Meshesha took part in Strategic CSO Consultation Meeting on Universal Access held in Johannesburg, South Africa, from 10-11 March, 2011.

According to Dr. Meshesha, the overall background of the meeting was the 2006 international declaration issued to scale up the AIDS response towards Universal Access to HIV and AIDS Prevention, Treatment, Care and Support by 2010.

The strategic objective of this high-level CSO consultation was to lay a foundation and provide strategic mainstay for the upcoming High Level Meeting scheduled to be held in New York in June 2011.

The meeting was also meant to lay a technical foundation for the 2011 African Union High Level Consultation on Universal Access envisaged to be convened in April 2011 in Namibia, on the sidelines of the African Union Ministers of Health meeting.

In addition, the meeting was targeted at providing a forum for key civil society constituencies to take stock of progress made, identify obstacles and make propositions on what needs to be done to achieve the Universal Access and eventually attain the Millennium Development Goals, particularly Goal 6.

In a related news, Ato Tafese Refera, Director of Publications and Information Management Core Team, attended the 6th Annual Conference of the International Council of Voluntary Associations (ICVA) in Geneva, Switzerland from March 3 to 6, 2011.

Ato Tafese told CCRDA Newsletter that the conference was organized under the theme “Does Size Matter?” to review and reflect the effectiveness of NGO networks as well as international relief and humanitarian organizations in addressing natural and manmade catastrophes across the world.

Sharing lessons of various actors in addressing human crisis and building a common understanding was one of the specific objectives of the Conference, Ato Tafese noted.

He said the Conference was also targeted at identifying common problems such as lack of resources and coordination, limited size of NGOs and delay in conducting timely public relations work to avert criticisms in the international media, donors and the community at large.

The Conference deliberated at length on common ground rules and principles that govern humanitarian intervention, Tafese said, adding that ways of helping local governments to assume responsibility for their own humanitarian crises was yet another agenda of the Conference.

Similarly, Wz. Tsehay Admassu, Resource Mobilization and Marketing Officer, took part in a one-day CSOs consultation forum that discussed on the Global Fund Comprehensive Agenda in Nairobi, Kenya on 3 March, 2011.

Wz. Tsehay told CCRDA Newsletter that the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) had assigned a reform team to identify short and long-term reforms that will help maximize the collective impact of the fund’s financial resources, administrative operations and strategic partnerships.

To this end, she said, a Comprehensive Reform Working Group was established and started operation in December 2010. The working group developed nine reform agenda to be further discussed and shared with communities and NGOs.

According to Wz. Tsehay, the objective of the Nairobi meeting was to share the reform agenda and goals drafted by the reform group to CSO representatives and to gather inputs on each reform goal.

Participants of the meeting discussed at length on the nine reform agenda items and shared their different technical practices, experiences and strategic perspectives on implementing the Global Fund, Wz. Tsehay noted.