Civic Space Resource Hub Project: WACSI Hosts Regional Workshop on Civic Space Protection
[Accra – 10 October 2022] – The West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI) is hosting a two-day regional workshop on civic space protection from 12-13 October 2022 in Accra, Ghana under its five-year Civic Space Resource Hub (CSR-Hub) project.
Funded by Ford Foundation, the CSR-hub seeks to strengthen the capacity of CSOs working to expand civic space and promote open societies in West Africa. Specifically, the CSR-Hub provides capacity strengthening support and technical advice to CSOs around four strategic thematic areas: Civic Space Protection, Organisational Governance and Regulatory Compliance, Digital Security and Protection, and Resource Mobilization and Financial Resilience.
The regional workshop will bring together the CSR-Hub cohort 1 beneficiaries (2022-2023) from Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal (25 in number) to have a collective overview of the state of civic space in the region, and to also discuss the core objectives, implementation phases, project expectations, and how they would benefit from the initiative.
The two-day event would be preceded by a key partners’ meeting on Tuesday, 11 October 2022 at the Institute’s secretariat.The meeting will allow partners including Spaces for Change Nigeria (S4C), Nigeria Network of NGOs (NNNGOs), Busara Africa, Penplusbytes, Paradigm Initiative and Placements Ghana to deliberate on the strategic roadmap of the project while charting ways to work collaboratively towards achieving its objectives.
Tinuola Makinde, Project Officer for the CSR-Hub believes the workshop will set the tone for collaboration among the project partners and beneficiaries towards driving the project’s vision for an open civic space and enabling environment.
“It is my expectation that the first cohort of beneficiaries will strategically deploy the hub’s training opportunities, build on one another’s shared experiences and learnings, and adopt best practices to propel their efforts of reclaiming the shrinking civic space in West Africa,” she added.
