Green Kitchens for Women and Youths Empowerment

In Uganda, the average access to electricity is small, even more for renewable energy.  According to the Electricity Regulatory Authority of Uganda, the situation is worse in rural areas where only 10% of the rural population have access to electricity, dropping to 2.5% of rural coverage in West Nile. As for refugee settlements, the public transmission lines are not reaching these areas since they are more isolated. In the case of Rhino and Imvepi Refugee Settlements, it means that just among the refugees’ families, more than 200 000 persons don’t have access to electricity or safe and reliable energy for their household functionality. 

In this context, up to 100% of the refugees and host communities in Rhino and Imvepi Refugee Settlements are using non-renewable energy for cooking like firewood (direct biomass) and charcoal.  The traditions are also influencing the use of the 3-stones cooking fire technology or inefficient metal stoves which consumes a lot of biomasses and produce lots of fumes, a health hazard for women and children. Moreover, according to SNV, women and girls being responsible for collecting the firewood, sometimes need to walk many kilometers to bring the biomass home which exposes them to gender-based violence. It also consumes between 2 to 20 hours a week, depending on the household size, of women and girls time that could be used to engage in other productive work or studies for school-age girls (GTZ, 2006).

The lack of alternatives for clean energy leads refugees and host communities to cut lots of trees. Unfortunately, in addition to the lack of knowledge about sustainable forest management, deforestation rate is high, causing other environmental problems like soil erosion, rising average temperature at day and night, and incapacity for groundwater retention. Deforestation also contributes to global warming by reducing the capacity of ecosystem to capture carbon into the ground. Even more vulnerable, the host communities have the monopoly for biomass production and selling, making the refugees adopt negative strategies to be able to buy energy: they can trade their food ratio for wooden fuel. 

Secondly, since the households in the settlements do not have access to electricity, they also don’t have the capacity to use cooling technologies (refrigerators). Being in a warm area with fewer rain, food producers with small gardens or agricultural lands in the settlements can face many difficulties to preserve their vegetables and fruits for various days because of the heat, leading to food waste and loss of income. In addition, families that are buying perishable food cannot keep it for more than 2 days for the same reasons. In fact, according to ESAFF Uganda, up to 40-50% of the root crops, vegetables, and fruits and up to 30% of fish produced can be lost in the markets because of lack of post-harvest resources, like storage. Unfortunately, like World Food Program highlights, food waste has several other consequences on the communities: loss of billions of dollars’ worth of investments made in the value chain, billions of tons of carbon emissions.

The solution is to provide simple, affordable but efficient kitchen technologies to at least 200 households in Rhino and Imvepi Refugee Settlements, to help them improve their general quality of life. The solution also aims at building capacities within communities to improve purchasing capacity and financing of these kitchen technologies.  

To ensure ownership, mobilization, sustainability and scaling up of the technologies, CEPAD WN wants to train youths from refugee and host communities in Rhino and Imvepi Refugee Settlements to build energy saving stoves, pot-in-pot fridge (also called Zeer pot) and briquettes. These three recognized technologies are made of local materials, mostly sand, clay, mud, and biomass waste. Therefore, these technologies will be easily produced and will be affordable for the households to be purchased.

About cooking technology, CEPAD would train the youths to build Rocket Lorena Stoves for two or more pots, according to household size and needs. These Lorena stoves are shown to reduce the need and use of biomass for cooking for more than 50% than with the traditional 3-stones technology as well as the reduction of indoor toxic fumes. 

For the fridge, according to various weather channel, Arua district including both settlements meets the conditions of success for the use of pot-in-pot refrigerator technology, such as weather and humidity (MIT D-Lab Guide), during the dry season from December to end of March. For the rest of the year, the cooling evaporating technology are still functioning but can face reduced cooling effect of the pot during heavy rainfalls and cool days. Even so, the gains made through reduction of food waste during the more critical season for heat are considerable. This innovative fridge is working without energy and only with the use of water, even with non-drinkable water. According to searchers (Odesola and Onyebushi, 2009) this technology is ancestral and has been used for thousands of years in North Africa and can allow the owner to store fresh vegetables and fruits for as long as 20 days. In the knowledge of the NGO, no refrigerating technologies using no energy source are available in the refugee settlement. Knowing that food waste is linked to loss of money and causes tons of emissions, the clay fridge technology can help fight hunger and climate change by reducing the food loss (World Food Program USA, 2021).  

Last kitchen technology would be the ecological briquets. According to research (Duguma and al, 2019), the rate of deforestation is high in both camp, unfortunately worse in Rhino Camp: the risk is that in 5 to 10 years, there will be no biomass remining in 4-10 years. Since the rate of deforestation is too high but there is a lack of alternatives as cooking energy, the youths would be trained to manufacture briquettes made of non-consumable biomass like agricultural and construction waste. With these energy sources completely made of recycled and natural materials, the briquettes are burning longer than usual charcoal, are emitting less CO2 and reduce expenditure in energy sources.

The youths are the first part of the community that will benefit from the solution. Since the solution includes capacity building of those youths, it will allow the youths to create a business based on household needs. The solution will then serve the youths in a matter of education, business creation and self-reliance. Job availability is scarce for youths in the settlements, meaning that this solution offers to some of them a mean of income. By empowering them with this informal education, the youths will have a better chance at financial growth and stability to respond to their basic needs and those of their families. 

The second part of the community that will benefit from the solution are the women and girls. Indeed, the solution will require less time for cooking activities and collecting of biomass since they are more efficient and consumes energy more slowly. Moreover, the solution will help improve their health through reduction of indoor fumes. 

The solution will also serve farmers and families that possess lands and gardens. The clay fridge will enable the food producers to keep their products fresh longer. Saying so, the farmers and families will be able to keep better products and will increase the chance of selling them instead of losing them due to heat and lack of other cooling storage spaces. In that sense, this technology is more than useful to protect the environment (food waste reduction) and to improve the economic wellbeing. 

Fourthly, the market sellers will be able to use those clay fridges to transport fresh products to the market whenever they want: some could also use this technology to transport fresh fish from the Nile River to the market without fearing of the fish rotting under the sun.  In that sense, the clay fridge represents a way of offering fresh meat to the communities without fearing for health issues related to unsafe meat. 

Finally, this solution in a complete package will enable the household to improve their economic and nutritive wellbeing: food producers will be able to optimize their sales and to offer nutritious food to their community for a longer period after harvesting. The solution also contributes to gender equality, considering that it will allow women to reduce the time allocated to firewood collection and cooking activities, meaning they will be able to concentrate on economic activities or education. 

Firstly, CEPAD team is well-positioned to realize the solution mostly because of its experience in the targeted location and communities. CEPAD has been implementing other projects with the communities of Rhino (since 2019) and Imvepi (since 2021) Refugee Settlements, with refugee and host communities. Therefore, CEPAD is well positioned to understand the needs of the communities, to select and reach the future beneficiaries and to mobilize them. Also, CEPAD has community-based workers that live with the communities and are capacitated to help communicate with local leaders (public authorities, traditional leaders, women leaders) and the communities. Many local leaders are now used to working with CEPAD and are always open to help the NGO in selecting beneficiaries and mobilizing their communities. In addition, according to the survey realized by GIZ EnDev in 2018, more than 80% of the households in the two locations affirm to be willing to pay (cash) or to offer working hours to acquire an energy saving stove: the demand for this technology is high. As for the clay fridge, the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries says that billions in local currency are needed to tackle hunger among the Ugandan population and storage is one of the key areas to target. 

In that sense, the youths and adults, women, and man, will be consulted to understand where the most needs are and what are their main interests. The design is based on various survey and research realized by other NGOs, enterprises, or schools in West Nile and on discussions that occurred with beneficiaries during others project implementation. Saying so, during implementation, the communities will be mobilized through every step, from the selection of beneficiaries up to monitoring and evaluation activities. Training and activities will also be held with the help of translators to accommodate the non-English speakers to ensure inclusion of all members of the communities. 

In the settlements, CEPAD already created Peace Clubs constituted with youths from refugee and host communities. When asked what kind of project CEPAD could design and implement to empower them, many responses were related to this present solution: training including energy stoves making, making of briquettes, developing financial capacity, and projects in support of self-employment and business creation. The project is then in line with the expressed needs of the youths from the communities saying there are few educational and job opportunities in the settlements. Also, since the youths will be trained by the NGO to build the technologies, they will be put up front to promote the solution within the communities with the help of CEPAD community-based workers and to implement technically the solution.

As of now, no one has benefited from this solution directly from CEPAD WN , but some households in both locations are beneficiaries of different energy saving stoves projects, realized by other NGOs. 

However, in Rhino and Imvepi Refugee Settlements, around 20% of households from refugee and host communities use mud energy stoves technologies procured by other organizations (according to GIZ EnDev research realized in 2018). Still according to GiZ EnDev, 80% of households in Rhino Camp and 92% in Imvepi of the rest of the community would like to buy an energy saving stoves. In that sense, tens of thousands of households still want to acquire energy saving technologies, a good indicator of the potential and needs of the communities that could be partially met by the proposed solution. As of briquettes, according to GIZ EnDev, the amount consumed is insignificant compared to firewood and charcoal, even with the few projects realized to raise awareness among the communities. By proposing this alternative to a low cost and by concentrating efforts on sensitization about economical and environmental benefits of briquettes, CEPAD could also reach thousands of households. The needs for this alternative to biomass will increase further with the population growth in the settlement and the competition for biomass resources. The market is then present and will probably increase in the next years.

From CEPAD WN’s knowledge, no family in the settlements use clay fridge technologies or other affordable cooling technologies, even considering all projects implemented by other NGOs in the two locations. In this context, considering that no alternatives to drying food are available in the settlements, the cooling technology will offer a first opportunity to many food producers, sellers, and households for fresh food preservation. 

Saying that, the potential for these technologies is high.

MIT can help CEPAD WN in various ways. 

Firstly, they would mostly help through monetary support since we are functioning through project implementation. If not directly, MIT seems to be in a great position to help CEPAD build relationships with donors or other NGOs that can work for the financing and implementation of this solution. CEPAD would be more than grateful for support to improve their financial capacities so that they can respond to more needs of the refugee and host communities in West Nile. 

Secondly, MIT could be of use to help build technical expertise with the youths and ensure sustainability of technologies. The technical knowledge could be around various thematic: innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship, and sustainability. They can also help to build more knowledge around marketing and business development to these youths. Creating a market for new products can take times and may require many skills: MIT could then help CEPAD in motivating the youths by helping them meet other young entrepreneurs that could have faced similar challenges. Also, by finding potential mentors for the youths, MIT could help in strengthening youths and communities’ capacities in a long-term perspective. They could also help in develop online marketing and online selling strategies, using social medias or other channels to expand youths’ financial capacities.

Thirdly, MIT could also be of help to overcome different cultural challenges. In some case, NGOs have tried to get people adopt new habits and technologies due to tradition and reticence to change. In that sense, since Solve has experience in implementation of new technologies, sharing knowledge around the adoption of new technologies and good practices would be positive and could help ensure the solution implementation success. Technical support could also be positive in communication, to enhance CEPAD capacity to express the importance of technologies in improving livelihood. Technical knowledge could also be acquired around market development and spreading in a context of non-profit organization so that the solution can also be deployed in a wider area.

Instead of giving the contract of building these technologies to already experienced professionals, CEPAD WN believes that giving the opportunity to learn and to work to youths within the communities is an innovative approach. Since there is no business in that area on the two locations, the solution will help creating wealth, wellbeing and livelihood in the communities thanks to their own people instead of external people. In that sense, the solution offers broader possibilities and opportunities to those youths and their families, because having new income can be used to improve their quality of life through education, good nutrition, or health care. And since the technologies will be built with natural materials available in the local surroundings, the project will have very minimal (to none) negative impact on the environment and will instead have a positive impact on climate change through emission and deforestation reduction. Their construction doesn’t even require electricity or sophisticated equipment: therefore, they are easily replicable in other locations.

Also, the solution will offer new technologies and opportunities to all the households in the location and without struggling with electricity or expenditures for energy. This solution has an impact on the market by reducing the need for firewood and by offering new products as energy for cooking. Therefore, the household will have a better diversity of choice and will be capable of reducing their expenditure related to this energy need with more efficient technologies. 

It will allow the women beneficiaries to put their energy and time in other daily activities, like income generating activities, since cooking will become faster and easier. Moreover, they will be able to use the cooling technology to increase their income and offer better products to their communities. This cooling technology will reduce loss related to heat, roden and flies, meaning that the producers and sellers will increase their income, but also food availability and quality.

The first goal is to improve the employment rate among youths in the refugee settlements and establish sustainable and self-sufficient network of stove and fridge builders within the refugee settlements, promoting local entrepreneurship and employment.

Training is then a central part of the solution: education is key to help build sustainability around the solution. By training the youths, the solution ensures to create a wealth of knowledge in the communities, knowledge that can be nurtured and spread over the years. Through pair learning, the skills acquired during the training can be replicated, having a multiplier effect. This training includes financial literacy and marketing. The trained youths will be able to create a business around kitchen technologies and respond to needs in the settlements. 

The second goal is to reduce deforestation in the settlements and increase adaptation capacity of the communities to climate change. 

By offering more efficient cooking technologies (energy saving stoves and briquettes), the project will reduce the global purchase of biomass (firewood and charcoal) in the area. CEPAD hopes that, in that sense, less trees will be cut for the purpose of producing cooking energy. With other NGO activities around tree planting, it is hoped that deforestation rate will slowly decrease to make way for a higher rate of reforestation and afforestation in the locations. At the end, with gradually more families adopting new habits and reducing the demand for biomass, the area will be greener and will help the communities to mitigate and adapt to climate change, mostly to soil fertility and warming weather. Sensitization through various channels will be realized to extend the youths’ market and raising awareness about the importance of forest conservation and sustainable energy solutions. The local authorities and community leaders will also help in enforce forest protection and discourage the use of unsustainable fuel sources. 

The third goal is to empower women in the communities by enabling them to allocate more time to income-generating activities. 

By doing marketing and raising awareness about the new technologies, it is expected that the women within the communities will want to obtain the technologies. Community-based workers, community leaders and the youths will be essential mobilizers to sensitize the communities about the offered products, their utilities, and benefits. After reaching the communities, establishing strategies to facilitate technology purchase, to ensure that even vulnerable and less fortunate households can buy the technologies. Also, an important part of sensitization will be allocated to gender issues and how the technologies can help women enhance their wellbeing by cutting their time allocated to collecting firewood and cooking. CEPAD will ensure follow-up with the women beneficiaries to address any challenges and ensure successful adoption. 

To achieve these goals, the project will implement a comprehensive approach involving training, ongoing support, awareness campaigns, collaboration with stakeholders, and fostering entrepreneurship. Continuous monitoring and evaluation will be carried out to assess progress, identify areas for improvement, and ensure the project's long-term sustainability and positive impact on the targeted communities.

General indicators:

• Number of trained youths, disaggregated by age, gender, community (refugee or host) and presence or absence of disabilities.
• Number of beneficiaries of the technologies, direct and indirect, disaggregated by age, gender, community (refugee and host) and presence or absence or disabilities. Special attention will be given to women.

Impacts on Poverty Reduction:

• Percentage increase in income levels of participating households through stove and fridge construction, briquettes’ making and related entrepreneurship activities.
• Percentage increase in income levels related to food loss reduction for food producers and sellers due to better preservation capacity of fresh food using clay fridge. 
• Number of youth participants who secure employment or start their own businesses because of the project.
• Percentage decrease in participating households classified as living below the poverty line.

Impacts on Gender Equality:

• Percentage increase in women's participation in decision-making processes related to energy use and cooking practices within the settlements.
• Number of women reporting reduced workload and increased time for education, income generation, or other activities due to improved cooking technologies.
• Percentage increase in participating women's income contribution to household finances.
• Rate of health problems or disease related to air pollution among the participating women in the communities.

Impacts on Affordable and Clean Energy:

• Percentage reduction in fuel consumption and expenditure for cooking purposes in participating households.
• Number of households transitioning from traditional cooking methods to energy-saving stoves and clay fridges.
• Percentage increase in the use of sustainable fuel sources, such as agricultural waste or renewable energy, for cooking purposes.

 Impact on Climate Action and Life on Land:

• Percentage increase in the use of energy-saving stoves and clay fridges as a measure to mitigate climate change. 
• Deforestation rate in the locations. And comparison between before the solution implementation, after a year and after 5 years. 

Goal: To empower women and youths, combat deforestation, and reduce food waste through the use and the making of energy-saving stoves, clay fridges and ecofriendly briquettes in Rhino and Imvepi Refugee Settlements.

Outcome 1: Increased capacity of youths to build energy-saving stoves, clay fridges and briquettes.

• Output 1.1: Training sessions conducted on building techniques, safety measures, and maintenance of energy-saving stoves and clay fridges.
• Output 1.2: Youth participants acquire practical skills in stove and fridge construction.

Outcome 2: Improved cooking practices and empowerment of women through the use of energy-saving stoves, clay fridges and briquettes.

• Output 2.1: Trained youths on energy saving stoves making, clay fridges and briquettes in Rhino and Imvepi Refugee Settlements.
• Output 2.2: Training sessions conducted on efficient cooking practices, fuel management, and food preservation using the new technologies.
• Output 2.3: Women gain knowledge and skills to utilize energy-saving stoves and clay fridges effectively.

Outcome 3: Reduction in deforestation and environmental degradation in Rhino and Imvepi Refugee Settlements.

• Output 3.1: Promotion of sustainable energy practices and environmental awareness campaigns.
• Output 3.2: Monitoring and evaluation of deforestation rates and environmental indicators.
• Output 3.3: Collaboration with local authorities and community leaders to enforce regulations on forest protection.

Outcome 4: Decreased food waste through improved food preservation and storage techniques.

• Output 4.1: Training sessions conducted on proper food preservation and storage using clay fridges.
• Output 4.2: Women adopt improved food storage practices and reduce food waste.

Outcome 5: Creation of employment opportunities for youths in Rhino and Imvepi Refugee Settlements.

• Output 5.1: Youth participants provided with entrepreneurship training and business support.
• Output 5.2: Establishing a network of stove and fridge builders, creating employment opportunities for youths.
• Output 5.3: Monitoring of employment rates and income generation among youth participants.

Impacts: Empowered women and youths, reduced deforestation, improved cooking practices, decreased food waste, and increased economic opportunities in Rhino and Imvepi Refugee Settlements.

Assumptions:

• There is a willingness among youths to learn and engage in stove, fridge, and briquettes construction.
• Access to necessary resources and materials for stove, fridge and briquettes construction is available.
• Adequate support from local authorities and community leaders for the project implementation.
• Women in the settlements are open to adopting new cooking technologies and practices.

The technologies that CEPAD is promoting through this solution are ancestral, traditional, and based on the available natural resources in the locations. In the context of application of the solution, no modern technologies are needed, making the technologies more accessible for the targeted communities and more marginalized or vulnerable households. 

The Rocket Lorena Stoves are a natural technology since using simple materials in the environment: mud, clay, straw, and dung. Using at the same time some simple engineer knowledge for the construction, the technology can be realized without using a variety of tools. Regarding the briquettes, it is also a natural technology since using materials available in the environment. It requires a process of mixing different natural resources together, following different steps, to achieve a final ecofriendly product. For this technology, simple tools and techniques are used, without having to invest in a lot of tools and can be done easily in any location.

The clay fridge is inspired by the ancestral technology known as the Botijos, a water-cooling jug (Amigo, Atlas Obscura, 2019). The pot-in-pot refrigerator, also known as the desert fridge or Zeer, has been invented in the 90s by a Nigerian professor, Mr. Mohammed Bah Abba. The technology is simple: you need clay, sand, water, and good ambient conditions. The technology is working with an evaporative system, using two pots made of clay and of the same shape but different size. The smaller pot is put inside the bigger one, the space between both being filled with sand. Vegetables and fruits are put in the middle of the pot, water is had to humidify the sand 1-3 a day and the technology is covered by a wet cloth or other lid. This technology will ensure to reduce food waste, meaning reducing carbon emissions.

CEPAD is a women-led organizations that believe in social justice. The NGO believes in equality, mostly by working directly with more vulnerable groups like women, girlchild and youth to induce social transformation. CEPAD approach is to empower communities through training, mentoring, coaching and sensitization to enhance capacities leading to, among many, better economic stability and wellbeing, political engagement, girlchild education, enhanced leadership, and peacebuilding. 

Therefore, CEPAD WN shall use a rights-based approach that will ensure total consideration and representation of the community in all activities from needs assessments, throughout implementation and to evaluation for collecting all valid input and unique experiences. The selection process is always impartial and consider everyone interested in our projects: CEPAD never discriminate someone according to gender, presence of disability, cultural background, socio-economic status, or other identity traits. CEPAD also consider vulnerability when selecting beneficiaries, which is based on United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees standard criteria as well as our (partner) specific protection, GBV and disability inclusion protocols.

The technologies can be adapted according to the needs and reality of the beneficiaries. The conception of those technologies is flexible: they can be big or small and have different height according to the main user. In that sense, the solution can distribute adjust to meet the needs of people with disabilities as well as for the family size and infrastructures already on site. This approach is also applying to all other goods and services offered to the communities: people with special needs are always included and considered when selecting beneficiaries.

In Uganda, the approach for refugee installation differs from other countries: every family is given piece of lands that they can use as they want (for housing, agricultural development, other). They are also settled within a host community already living in the location. In that sense, the solution will be available for all people in the settlement, based on their interest and needs, not on their nationality or ethnic identity. CEPAD will ensure that refugee families as well as host communities can benefit from the solution. This approach will be also applied for the training: youths from any background, men and women, will be able to participate. 

Activities are also realized with the help of leaders and community-based workers that ensure that every person can understand the content through translation. The participants are then welcomed equally and included during all the process of projects. All participants are also welcomed to help with translation to their peers during the activities and to support people with disabilities to create a team spirit, to enhance mutual support, respect, and inclusivity. Activities always aim at strengthening the community members, whether they are youths, girls, women, or coming from other vulnerable groups, to ensure transformative component and enhanced leadership to every action taken in the locations. CEPAD always think about creating peace within the community: diversity being central to achieve this end.

At CEPAD WN our strategic goal is to contribute towards sustainable peace through non-violence, conflict transformation, development and well-being of refugee and host communities in Uganda. CEPAD WN envisions a nonviolent and peaceful society where every person has access to basic human rights and needs by empowering communities for sustainable peace and development. The NGO acts through training research and advocacy in the program areas of 1) Conflict Transformation, Peace Building and non-violence; 2) Governance and Democracy; 3) Gender, Women, Girl-Child and Youth Empowerment; 4) Land, Environment and Climate change; and 5) Internal Organizational Development of CEPAD and its Grassroots’ Partners.

CEPAD WN operates under the guiding core values of; Social justice, Integrity, Voluntarism, Inclusiveness and Accountability.

CEPAD WN uses the human centered approach, where the project design and feedback loop begin from the beneficiary and ends with the beneficiary. Accountability to the communities and stakeholders is at the heart of our work. Informed by by five principles;  (1) leadership and governance, we ensure that feedback and accountability procedures are integrated into all our programs, implementation procedures, and reporting; (2) transparency, we provide timely and accessible information to the communities and stakeholders about our procedures, structures, and processes that may affect them and facilitate a dialogue between ourselves and communities we serve; (3) feedback and complaints, the implementing team actively seeks the views of community to improve policy and practice in programming, ensuring that feedback and all our complaints mechanisms are streamlined, appropriate, and robust enough to deal with complaints in friendly manner; (4) participation, we shall enable the communities and stakeholders to play an active role in the decision-making processes of the project life; and (5) design, monitoring, and evaluation, we shall design, monitor, and evaluate the goals and objectives of programs with the community and stakeholders. To ensure the involvement of the target population in project implementation, we shall work closely with the beneficiaries. These primary beneficiaries will be crucial to communicating with the community, developing community-driven solutions, monitoring and evaluating the project, and sharing community feedback with the project team. The community feedback systems will be public (the dialogues and conferences) and shall be accessible to all so that everyone is able to understand the interventions being carried out.

There will be regular stakeholder review meetings to keep track of progress of the interventions. Narrative and documented reports including financial update reports shall be shared to all stakeholders like Public, Government, Learners, Cultural and religious leaders for proper accountability.

Diversify funding sources: Over the years CEPAD WN has built trust with current and prospective donors to enable continuity of her funding base through Periodically undertaking effective documentation and dissemination of results to evidence value for money and the impact created on the lives of the communities we serve with the funds received from donors. We have also a donor database to enable us reach out to prospective donors by making Expression of Interest for collaboration. CEPAD-WN is also keen to continue strengthening its partnership with both local and International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGO) to address its set priorities under the 2021-2025 strategic plan.

Partnership with National and International Organizations: CEPAD-WN will collaborate and ride on the experiences and clout of these organizations to build and strengthen its systems, policies and funding base. The funding sought through consortia partnerships will help bridge the RM gaps and support the implementation of the strategic plan.

Communication and outreach/advocacy: CEPAD-WN will pursue direct advocacy at sub county, district and national levels and ensure that the advocacy events and results are widely disseminated to increase visibility of the organization. CEPAD-WN’s advocacy and communications work will be closely related to resource mobilization efforts to support effective engagement with existing and potential donors as well as key influencers; all results/outcomes/impacts of program activities including advocacy events will be disseminated to all the key stakeholders including existing and potential donors.

Develop Capacity for Resource Mobilization: CEPAD-WN will enhance the capacity of the institution in terms of policies, conducting regular financial audits by establishing functional systems, procedures and acquiring the right accounting packages. At the same time CEPAD-WN shall strengthen the capacity of staff to document quality reports, effectively represent the organization in all external engagements and participate in resource mobilization initiatives including proposal developments at organization and consortium levels.

Membership fees: CEPAD WN is open to all individuals or corporate bodies who genuinely share in the vision and the desire for the promotion of the noble objectives of the organization. Membership fees are paid annually to the organization mostly to serve for institutional development costs.

Online fundraising: CEPAD WN also ensures diversity in fundraising by making available a donation link on her website to enable philanthropists make donations towards the work of the organization. Develop, register, and operationalize social enterprises/business ideas to raise own resources to finance unfunded or underfunded priority areas of the strategic plan.

CEPAD WN so far has been able to secure funding from credible international donors who have walked the journey with us from years back. This is because of the trust built and the quality of services offered to the vulnerable communities we serve (impact oriented). With this we have been able to keep close contact with our beneficiaries and spread our services/ impact to a wider population. We have also been able to attract funding through international NGOs to co-implement projects in which we have built expertise over the years. IN 2022 we received funding worth 7,500 Euros from  Umverteilen STIFTUNG for implementing a six months project, We received financial support from the German Federal Foreign Office (FFO) through Institut Für Auslandsbeziehungen (IFA) worth 168,000 Euros to implement a 18months project, CEPAD WN in partnership with CARE received funds worth 74,000 Euros from ECHO for implementing a 9 months projects. Through creating meaningful partnerships CEPAD WN has been involved in applying for funds in various consortium arrangements to be able to build our portfolio and sale our experience and expertise to the world.

At the verge of completion, we also have developed social enterprise ideas which are in the process of being operationalized, this will be the basis for funding unfunded and underfunded priorities of the organization.

CEPAD WN also has members who contribute membership and subscription fees every year, this has catered for some of the day-to-day operation costs of the organization.