Related to building trust and ACT governance, including strategic collaboration as part of the wider ecumenical movement and learning with other forums
Uganda Forum has excelled as one of the most exemplary and progressive forums in Africa and globally. These are some of the good practices we have undertaken:
We have managed to recruit a forum joint staff whose title is the Advocacy Officer. This position is jointly financed by forum members who pool resources together to meet the human resource needs of the staff including technical advocacy work. The joint staff has ably coordinated and implemented advocacy initiatives of the forum.
Related to humanitarian, development and advocacy work of ACT Alliance
The Forum has been able to develop an advocacy strategy with 4 thematic areas and out it, developed project proposals, and we successfully won an external grant amount to 2,445,208 DKK approx 400,000USD for a 3-year climate change advocacy project. Through this project, we have been able to lobby the government of Uganda to prioritize and scale climate change finance through budgetary allocations and access to international funds. This was mainly implemented by religious leaders, a constituency that we felt had the moral call to duty as stewards of mother earth.
We went ahead to include Muslim and Catholic faith leaders in the project in order to uphold the values of inclusivity, tolerance and diversity in our approach to serve humanity. The Forum also developed and financed its own 2-year project on Good governance and active citizen participation in electoral democracy. The project aimed at enhancing active and peaceful citizen participation in electoral democratic processes. This strengthened civic responsibility among Ugandan citizens anchoring majorly on religious leaders, church structures and institutions. This was the first advocacy project that the forum piloted in an effort to actually jointly finance and to work together.
ACT Appeals: The Forum has continued to jointly implement ACT Appeal in response to the refugee crisis in South and Northwest Uganda) for Congolese and South Sudan influx. As the biggest host of refugees in Africa with over 1.5Milion refugees, many ACT Alliance members are involved in humanitarian work to ensure the immediate needs of all refugees are met. The ACT Appeals are jointly developed as a forum, some members contribute finances and implemented by both international and national members of the forum in order to build their capacities Exchange learning and forum collaborations: Uganda Forum has also initiated regional visits by sending faith leaders and staff of ACT members to visit other Forums in Africa, for example, Malawi and Kenya Forums were visited in previous years. We equally hosted other Forums in Africa including forums from Kenya, Tanzania, and South Sudan who have come to learn from our best practices. As a leading forum, we guided other forums with our approaches and supported them to grow.
The forum has continued to present itself as one of the most exceptional forum globally. The leadership of the forum is rotationally every 6 months and led by a different member. Members met every month on the last Thursdays and this is on everyone’s calendar permanently, this meeting is graced by only heads and senior management staff with decision-making powers.
