The quarterly reflection meeting was held on 23rd April 2021 and hosted by Rwenzori Anti Corruption Coalition (RAC) at their offices in Booma, Fort Portal city. Participants were from the organizations that make up the Rwenzori governance cluster and included; ToroDev, KRC, Rwepota, KDC among others. These members are from the districts of Kabarole, Kyenjojo, Kyegegwa, Kamwenge, Kitagwenda, Ntoroko, Bunyangabu and Bundibugyo that make up Rwenzori Sub region. Among other issues, the reflection meeting aimed at understanding what different organizations were doing but also sharing their work plans on the planned activities for the year 2021.
ToroDev used the opportunity to share information on the Open Data Platform project. While sharing the 2021 work plan for ToroDev, David Kugonza the Strategic Partnerships and Communications Officer said, the Open Data for National Budget Governance project that started in 2019 with trainings involves analysis and visualizations of data that will later be disseminated to the public through radios, advocacy forums, governance cluster members and other social media platforms. He further said, already information and current work that is on-going can be checked through; http://www.opendata-analytics.org. David encouraged participants especially governance cluster members to always check the link for detailed information and updates that are done regularly and that the information can be used in our advocacy work as civil society organizations.
Many organizations shared their work plans for the year 2021 and a few organizations including ToroDev will be focusing on Governance of the 2021/2022 National budget for evidence informed policy making and duty bearers engagement. This will be done through support and facilitation of citizen groups and CSO’s to participate in the budget processes for the 2022/2023 which include budget conferences that will start in September 2021.
At the end of the meeting, participants agreed that there should be a monthly brief capturing CSO’s work in the region and information will be posted on websites of different member organizations, Formalizing the cluster in order to tap resources through joint fundraising to enable us do our work as CSO’s, Need to organize a civil society reflection for Rwenzori region to discuss issues of Rwenzori sub region and this will be done by end of June 2021, Need for civil society fair which event will raise advocacy issues to worked upon as CSO’s, Kabarole Research and Resource Center (KRC) since they have a radio will offer 2 hours monthly to organizations working on governance issues to disseminate information and share with citizens the work and activities of cluster members and participation to the talk shows will be done jointly where different members team up and share with citizens, plans to build or strengthen our resilience and stay focused as CSO’s by capitalizing on our strength but also focus on leadership and advocacy were also reached among other discussions.
We thank our partners for the support and encourage continued teamwork and participation in our advocacy work.
