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WACSI organised two ‘fantastic’ and ‘spot-on’ trainings for 33 KAIPTC staff

Five days of knowledge and experience sharing were definitely not enough for KAIPTC staff to imbibe all available knowledge on report writing, proposal writing and resource mobilization. But, these days were good enough to provide 33 KAIPTC staff from different programmes and administrative units of the Centre with requisite knowledge and skills to enhance their report and proposal writing aptitudes.

WACSI, a seven year old capacity building Institute that has been strengthening the functional competencies of civil society organisations in West Africa, organized two successive trainings on Report Writing from June 18 – 19 and on Proposal Writing and Resource Mobilisation from June 20 – 22, 2012 for a diverse, dynamic and friendly group of KAIPTC staff.

The training took place in Accra, the sea shore capital city of Ghana. It served as a strategic opportunity to empower KAIPTC staff with knowledge and provide them with enhanced skills to think through and develop targeted reports, write winning proposals and have the aptitude to raise funds to support and promote their peacekeeping training and research initiatives.

While Mr. John Pokoo, Programme Officer for Small Arms at KAIPTC convincingly described both trainings as ‘fantastic’, Lieutenant Colonel Jerome Jackson of the United States Marine Core, and African Liaison Officer to the KAIPTC satisfactorily remarked that the trainings were ‘spot-on’. The Lieutenant attested that the facilitator employed a common sense delivery approach that simplified the technical issues associated with proposal writing and resource mobilization.

“The experienced and savvy facilitator [Mr. Alex Kala] used an excellent approach that would enable a novice to be conversant with the techniques of writing winning proposals”, Lieutenant Colonel Jackson said. He appreciated the excellent management of time throughout the training and remarked that whoever organised this training [WACSI] did a good job.

On his part, Mr. Pokoo expressed his satisfaction at being a part of the training. He confessed that, “these are things [trainings] we need”. He added that, in two months’ time, he will be writing the proposal for 2013 and, “will use the knowledge and skills gained from this training to write a better and more coherent proposal”.

The facilitator enabled participants to understand proposal writing terminologies and to know when and how to use them. He drilled the participants on how to perceive and respond to donor guidelines and how to develop budgets in their proposals. He emphasized that the proposal writer must make the proposal easy to read and understand, use simple words, short sentences and avoid the use of jargons.

The facilitator commended the engagement of the participants during the training. “The participants are committed to what they are doing, they are very enthusiastic and willing to learn how to mobilise resources to do their work”, he said.

WACSI organizes such demand driven trainings for civil society organisations across West Africa. Since January 2012, the Institute has organized four of such trainings; one for IFES partners in Niger, two for IBIS partners in Ghana and this for KAIPTC staff. The Institute is steadfast to its goal of strengthening the capacities of civil society organisations. It is ever willing to provide its competencies to improve the functional modus operandi of civil society within the sub-region.

View pictures and video of this training.

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