The Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC) has extended its consultative meeting to the Southern part of the country to harvest ideas from sister Civil Society groups to engender institutional growth and financial sustainability.
The meeting formed part of STAR Ghana Foundation’s eight-year Civil Society Strengthening Fund – Shift the Power (CSSP – StP) project, which seeks to build sustainable partnerships with community-Based Organizations and less formalized networks, alliances and with social movements to effectively represent their constituents, and to improve access to social services and public goods by members of underserved population networks and associations’.
The one day meeting, held in Accra on Friday, May 24, 2024, brought together stakeholders from the civil society space in the south part of the country including, Action Aid Ghana, Institute of Energy Securities, Trades and Livelihoods Coalition, Ghana Anti- Corruption Coalition, VALD, Third World Network Africa, Faith Alliance in Ghana, Arocha -Ghana, Natural Resource Governance Institute among others.
Contributing to the discussion via zoom, the Executive Director of ISODEC, Mr Sam Salifu Danse, said the gathering was to help shape ISODECs focus to enable the organization address its institutional and financial sustainability, whilst repositioning itself to respond to the priorities of its constituents.
The meeting, according to Mr Danse was to engage diverse stakeholders to enable ISODEC design and implement an initial two-year programme with support from STAR Ghana Foundation.
Mr Bernard Anaba, a Policy Analyst at ISODEC, acknowledged that the organization has faced some challenges in the past and it’s time for a self-introspection towards the future.
Mr Anaba stated that ISODEC wants to be more effective in meeting its strategic objectives as well as communicate and campaign in a way that moves the public. The organization also desires to diversify its income and raise income locally and be more financially sustainable.
He added, “ISODEC wants to be more responsive to local priorities and better able to deliver social accountability.”
The stakeholders present unanimously held that,ISODEC was renowned and have calved a niche for itself over the years, thus, there was the need to open up and leverage on its past achievements and also consider revisiting its right- based advocacy approach.
They advised that visibility was key, hence, ISODEC needed to take advantage of both traditional and Social media to trumpet its work and make the organization more visible.
By:Mohammed Suleman / Publicagenda,news