Developing Local Humanitarian Systems in Cameroon

Catholic Relief Services is supporting the National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon to transform itself from an assembly of bishops to a leading humanitarian and development organization. Through the ALLRight project, which stands for Advancing Local Leadership in the Right Way, the bishops’ conference is fostering innovations, revamping organizational systems and strengthening capacities to help the conference manage current and future humanitarian and development programs. To that end, four significant changes introduced at the Cameroon bishops’ conference are paving the way for the institution to become a local leader.

Ensuring program quality  

In 2020, CRS carried out an assessment of the organizational capacity of the bishops’ conference, which led to the creation of a Projects unit within the conference. The role of this unit is to oversee the quality of programs and operations and to support capacity-strengthening initiatives.

“The most important achievement of the Projects unit is the credibility we have gained with our partners,” says Archbishop Andrew Nkea, president of conference. “The Projects unit has worked on the internal working and functionality of the conference and on the relationship between the conference and its partners.”

Through the capacity-strengthening initiatives, the conference staff are acquiring new skills and adopting improved working practices.

“The Projects unit has changed the mentality of the staff of the conference,” says Father Cletus Ashu Amah, head of the unit. “Some of the staff were hesitant to accept the changes introduced by the ALLRight project. Today, over 80% of the staff agree there is need to improve our system of operations.”

Policy documents and procedures

Through the ALLRight project, CRS supports the conference to update existing policies and procedures and develop new ones. Some of these policies are indispensable for resource mobilization and for the proper functioning of the institution.

“Now we have the basic policies for the conference to run in a professional manner,” says Father Cletus Amah. “The conference now has an approved safeguarding policy, which is an essential policy for any organization.”

The Projects unit has put in place monitoring tools to enable projects and services of the conference to better follow up their activities.

“Before the ALLRight project, the conference had no functional monitoring and evaluation system,” says Boris Eloundou Mbia, monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning manager of the Projects unit. “We developed tools for project monitoring. With the support of CRS, we have developed the feedback, complaints and response mechanism which had never existed before.”

Thanks to the ALLRight project, the conference is taking measures to revamp its procurement system.

“The conference had no harmonized procurement system. Every service managed its purchases,” says Gildas Edou, procurement manager of the unit. “We have updated the existing supply chain procedure and created a database of service providers. We intend to acquire procurement software to digitalize the process.”

Training

“One thing which I greatly appreciate very much with CRS is the capacity-building measures,” says Archbishop Andrew Nkea, president of the bishops’ conference. With the ALLRight project, CRS reinforces capacity-strengthening on topics like project management, project design, monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning, resource mobilization, donor engagement and communication.

“During the monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning training, I learned strategies to better communicate project results with stakeholders,” says Yannick Kamwa, a monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning manager for another project being implemented by the bishop’s conference. “I also learned how to design and implement the monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning structure of a project in a coherent manner.”

“The training on monitoring and evaluation was crucial for me,” says Bertha Malla, head of service for the Cameroon Association for Interreligious Dialogue.  “I learned best practices for project reporting which helped me to improve reporting within my service. I am working to set up a feedback and complaints mechanism for the association.” 

Centralized financial management system

Thanks to the ALLRight project, the bishop’s conference is continually improving financial management to ensure transparency and accountability. The conference now uses a centralized financial management system to facilitate audits and other financial transactions.

 “With the new financial management software, we can produce monthly and yearly financial statements,” says Isaac, financial and operations coordinator of the Projects unit. “There are procedures to track all financial transactions, and management now has clear visibility of the conference’s financial situation.”

 

The ALLRight project is financed by the CRS ALLRight fund. The project was launched in May 2022 to support the bishops’ conference to improve its organizational systems, increase its resource mobilization and influence capacity and develop strong monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning systems. Cameroon, Mali and Niger are the first three African countries in which CRS has launched the ALLRight project.

 

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