Joel Kaigre, Founding President of our NGO HAMAP-Humanitaire, was invited by the African Development Bank to take part in the 3rd African Resilience Forum from 4 to 6 March 2019 in Abidjan. On the theme « Fragility, migration and resilience », the event brought together representatives of regional and international organisations, of the private sector, of universities and of the research world, along with figures from civil society.
Resilience is a fundamental theme for HAMAP-Humanitaire. During the conference Joel Kaigre stressed that we work exclusively by building local capacity: our international solidarity NGO supports the local partner from the first statement of their needs through to the delivery of their project and its long-term future. The aim is to strengthen resilience by raising community awareness and by helping communities take ownership of the means to meet their own needs, through training and the setting up of sound, lasting governance.
« We want to be sure there is a genuine, productive dialogue between all local actors, whether the authorities, the population or the project holder. We also want to be sure that the organisation, the management and the governance are accepted by everyone. And we want to make sure that the actors concerned (technical, financial, managerial, organisational) are trained to see the project through. » Joel Kaigre
So we work every day to meet 4 challenges:
First, our challenge of communication and transparency calls for every actor in the project to be mobilised: the project owner (the beneficiary population), the local authorities (regional, national), private actors (companies), partner funders, NGOs and so on. We give the teams involved structure by defining each person's role rigorously and by including all the active groups able to support the projects (women's groups, sports associations, diaspora organisations and so on).
Second, our challenge of efficiency means checking that the assessment of the needs presented is sound and that proven, robust technical solutions, easy and quick to deploy, are actually put in place.
Our third challenge rests on financial sustainability through solutions that are viable for the communities using and managing the facilities and for the companies involved in a public-private partnership.
Finally, our challenge of good governance calls for community awareness-raising and for training local actors so that they take ownership of the project and can govern it sustainably.
This way of working gives projects durability: their upkeep and viability are secured by passing the necessary skills on to local people. They then take a fully active role in delivering the project and keeping it going, so that we reach our shared goal of international solidarity.