As I sit in CASA’s (Church’s Auxiliary for Social Action) Mumbai office to write this blog, nearly 50,000 farmers -women, men and some of their daughters as young as 1 year old have assembled in Mumbai, marching 180km in scorching heat to demand that the government pay heed to the escalating disastrous situation in rural India due to the agrarian crisis there. The 62nd Commission on Status of Women, which continues in New York this week, with its priority theme as “Challenges and Opportunities in achieving gender equality and empowerment of rural women and girls” is very apt and echoes similar sentiments to the farmers marching on Mumbai.

Let me also bring to you the report UN published on International Women’s Day (March 8 2018) highlighting the vulnerability of women, and how climate change impacts women more than men. 80% of people displaced by climate are women. As primary care givers and providers of food they have to collect fuel and water, even during droughts and floods, which makes them more vulnerable and having to work harder.

The ACT Alliance works at the grassroots with vulnerable groups affected by disasters, involved in sustainable development, and in advocacy.  ACT members are currently participating in the 62nd CSW, working to help increase the opportunities to convert the challenges of girls, women, and LGBTQ people to lead and take control in their own lives.

At COP23, the international climate conference held In 2017 in Bonn, the Gender Action Plan was approved, acknowledging that women are disproportionately affected by climate change. The plan highlights the need for capacity building, participation in decision making and leadership positions in climate meetings, along with many other provisions.

The needs of women and girls in humanitarian situations are enormous.  Lake Chad in central Africa has lost 90% of its water, leaving nomadic indigenous groups at risk. In Haiti, women who were displaced by flooding’s sanitary requirements received little attention. More women get killed in catastrophic situations than men for many reasons including their attire—women wearing saree during the 2004 tsunami were slowed down by their clothes. Women with more socio-economic power are less affected by such situations. For the best gender sensitive responses we need more women in the negotiating bodies of humanitarian organizations.
Let’s provide opportunity and make the rural women lead their life as well as the world to a green, just and peaceful existence.

Last word: Can you imagine the thoughtfulness of the farmers as they walked their last leg of the March into Mumbai in the middle of the night so they didn’t inconvenience the Mumbai school children who were taking their final Board exam on 12th March.

How thoughtful are we to other’s needs? This is a first step in making a green just and peaceful world.

_______________

Dr Joycia Thorat, Co-chair of Advisory Group on Advocacy, ACT Alliance and Project Officer & policy desk in charge, Church’s  Auxiliary for Social Action (CASA), India

The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is an opportunity highlight some of the important work in the UN Peasants Declaration, which will have significant impact on the rights and lives of rural women and girls.  This Declaration will also impact the upcoming Conference of Parties (COP24), the international climate change conference taking place in Krakow, Poland this December.  Land use and seed diversity are key to develop solutions for responding to climate-induced impact. Land and seed rights are a cornerstone of rural women’s and peasants’ rights.

 “We are peasant women.  We are many. We are the Guardians of fertile land and reproductive seeds. We are ‘farmacologists’. We protect medicinal plants and generate local knowledge.”

Several ACT members are also founding members of the Global Network for the Right to Food and Nutrition, which for ten years has gathered stories and raised the voices of peasants, fisherfolk, pastoralists, landless people, consumers, urban people living in poverty, agricultural and food workers, women, youth, and indigenous peoples –  that recognize the need to act jointly for the realization of the right to adequate food and nutrition.  The Network’s voice has helped to shape the new draft of the UN Peasant Declaration.

The revised draft UN Peasants Declaration of 12 February 2018 recognises that access to land, water, seeds and other natural resources is increasingly at risk for rural people.  The Declaration calls for support to agricultural practices of indigenous people and rural communities that are in harmony with nature, with Mother Earth . These practices include respecting the biological and natural ability of ecosystems to adapt and regenerate through natural processes and cycles.

The Declaration stresses that peasant and other rural women play a significant role in their economies, including through their work in the non-monetized sectors of the economy, but are often denied tenure and ownership of land and productive resources.  To redress this injustice, their right to access courts, to seek immediate redress, and to be protected from violence, abuse and exploitation must be respected, fulfilled, and promoted.

Knowledge generated by peasant women provides insights into the complex matrix of nature. Microbiological research is now able to visualise the extent to which we are what we eat; discovering that soils are an integrated system that nourishes communities and keep them healthy. Traditional peasant women have known of the health benefits of phytonutrients and protective bacteria for a long time; they are ‘farmacologists’, a term coined by Daphne Miller from University of California, San Francisco.

For the first time, a UN Declaration provides a comprehensive list all of rural women’s and girls’ rights and the importance of their contribution to life for all in times of climate change.  These include:

• The Right to seeds (Article 19), which calls for the protection of women’s traditional knowledge relevant to plant genetic resources for food and agriculture. It affirms the right to save, use, exchange and sell their farm-saved seed or propagating materials. It calls for the respect of women’s rights to rely on their own seeds or on other locally available seeds of their choice, and to decide on the crops and species that they wish to grow. And it calls for research into ‘orphan crops’.
• The Right to biological diversity (Article 20), which establishes the right of women peasants and rural communities to use and develop biological diversity and associated knowledge; and the right to traditional agrarian and pastoral and agroecological systems upon which their subsistence and the renewal of biodiversity depends, and the rights to the preservation of the ecosystems in which those processes take place.
• The Right to physical and mental health (Article 23), which includes the right of women peasants to use and protect their traditional medicines and to maintain their health practices, including access to and conservation of their plants, animals and minerals for medical use.

It is important to recognize this Declaration and the legitimacy of peasant women and girls as rights holders around the world as the Commission on the Status of Women continues to discuss the empowerment of rural women and girls. For we know since the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action that access to and control of productive and reproductive resources is a precondition for enhancing gender equality. It will also have a positive effect on preventing violence against women and girls and be key to their wellbeing and the full realisation of human rights.

_____________

Karin Ulmer is Senior Policy Officer with ACT Alliance EU (previously APRODEV), specialising in EU trade policies and global food security. The current focus is on human rights and trade, land and seed issues, agricultural policy and research. Based in Brussels. Educational background in cognitive, social and human science. German nationality.”

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.

ACT Forum Uganda pictures

Related to building trust and ACT governance, including strategic collaboration as part of the wider ecumenical movement and learning with other forums

The interested WCC members in the country are being assisted in its application to become a member of ACT whenever possible.

Active engagement in regional and global initiatives, with a clear division of roles and how to support: World Humanitarian Summit, Ecumenical Strategic Forum on Ecumenical Diakonia, CoPs – Climate Change and CBPS; Child Safeguarding Training, Roll out of the humanitarian mechanism. The ACT Forum also nominates their representatives to different regional and global meetings and activities. All out-of-the-country activities are properly echoed with other Forum members by the nominated representative through various means such as reporting & workshop, while other concerns were addressed in regular Forum meetings.

Invited both regional representatives to the Philippines to establish relationships and strengthen coordination with the regional office (2016), where the regional representatives presented the updates regarding the restructuring of the ACT Alliance, and other regional focus. The Forum convenor attended the Asia-Pacific Forum meeting (2017), and ACT Forum members contributed to the global sharing on Ecumenical Diakonia and how it is concretized in the Philippines (2017). Over all, there is a culture of supporting each other; complementing rather than competing; openness and transparency; appreciating what each one brings to the table.

ACT Forum piloted a Core Humanitarian Standards Training-Workshop (2016) opened to WCC members and other local faith-based humanitarian groups to influence quality and accountability in the FBOs’ humanitarian work. The ACT Forum has a pool of trainers who facilitated the 2-day event. Aside from this joint venture, the Forum shares each capacity building activities with other ACT Forum members such as ACT Security Training, CBPS, CHS & SPHERE Standards, Complaints Response Mechanism, and others. (Capacity development)

Understanding the faith-based dimension of humanitarian work in the country from the keynote speeches of the Protestants (NCCP) and Catholics (Catholic Bishop’s Conference in the Philippines) shared during our pre- and post-WHS for a together with WCC members, and other FBOs in the country. In all its undertaking, the Forum brings the spirit of putting people at the center as the heart of its humanitarian work.

Practise/ Policy (innovative, replicable): Building trust by purposively deepening understanding of Faith-based Emergency Response and Ecumenical Diakonia amongst ACT and FBOs

Results:

• ACT recognized for initiating conversations and coordination amongst FBOs (Visibility)
  • Pre-WHS Conference (Putting People at the Center: Role of FBOs in Humanitarian Action)
  • Post-WHS Conference (Changing People’s Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need)
  • FBOs meeting with the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (The Philippine Government’s DRRM Council)
• Formation of Philippine FBO Forum (FBO PH) that brings together the 3 largest national Christian networks
  • Joint learning sessions that enhanced understanding of faith-based dimension of humanitarian work; partnership established at the national level together with other non-Christian religion
  • Coordination of FBO’s response in Marawi siege
  • Engagement of FBO PH with United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, push for more representatives of national networks in Humanitarian Country Team; reaching out to United Nations Development Program
• Contributes to ACT WHS commitment

Annexes:

About_Transforming faith into action

About_FBOs working together for Marawi

About_ACT Annual Mtg with FBOs

“A young, rural girl will most likely be caring for her siblings by the time she is four or five,” said Lopa Banerjee of UN Women. “She will be helping to get firewood and water.  She will end up in an early marriage, have children while she is young, with complications to the births.  She will have no choice over the number of children she has.  She will likely experience violence.  She will not have the option to find decent work.”

“These problems are magnified if she is a refugee, disabled, Indigenous, a widow, or of a different sexual or gender orientation.”

This presentation kicked off a lively event attended by over 300 people which examined the slogan of the Sustainable Development Goals to “Leave No One Behind” through a gender lens.  ACT Alliance was one of the hosts of the event, which was led by UN Women.  Leaving No One Behind for Planet 50/50 by 2030: every rural woman and girl everywhere shared the voices of women and girls, as well as LGBTQI people as they discussed their experience of being left behind due to disability, age, location, marital status, gender expression, or more.

Gladys Nairuba, from ACT member DanChurchAid’s Uganda office, spoke during the event about the role of faith-based organisations in gender justice.  “ACT Alliance across the world is working for the rights of women…  It is injustice that is keeping women behind.  Faith actors can’t be quiet.  As ACT Alliance, all the members are boldly speaking out against injustice.”

“Faith leaders are saying we should not put out our voice because it is convenient,” she continued. “We should speak irrespective of who is affected. We do not have a choice.  We have to speak out.  Injustice in any place is injustice everywhere.”

In many countries around the world, religions have significant power.  In Uganda, 95% of the population is affiliated with religion.  Faith groups have a powerful role as conveners in their context, bringing people together to talk about issues related to gender.  “We are talking about change.  We are talking about valuing women.  That is where it starts from.  People are in churches and mosques.  If we put messages out where people are, then we will not miss the mark,” Nairuba concluded.

After hearing from a wide variety of voices from around the world, participants discussed what policy standards could be created to ensure that the SDG achievement “Leave no one behind” can be realized for women and girls around the world, especially those living in rural contexts.  Ideas ranged from the collection of disaggregated data to ensuring the participation of rural women in government and other structures to the importance of male involvement, accountability and responsibility in gender justice.  These ideas will be shared by UN Women for more input after CSW.

Dr. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director of UN Women said, “The impact of gender discrimination starts from when someone is conceived and they are a girl…  You are asking for our policy to be gender aware and to address all of these intersecting life stages that women and girls go through.”  She spoke of gender-based violence, economic disadvantage facing women, early marriage, and more challenges facing women and girls, and the need to address these challenges.

Gladys Nairuba reflected after the event that “The Leave No One Behind event and active participation of faith actors is in a way reaffirming the critical role of faith in addressing gender targeted injustice. And the platform provided for faith actors to share what we do, own up and challenge ourselves to fast track the change. What I kept hearing is the social constructs and how they perpetuate gender violations. And some of these are built by culture and faith which are as diverse as the participants that were in the room.

“On the other side it’s knowing that the event was demonstrating that not even the faith actors should be left behind.”

Related to building trust and ACT governance, including strategic collaboration as part of the wider ecumenical movement and learning with other forums

Through the prayer vigil, the APF members have helped to build awareness about the issues plaguing Palestinian society in Gaza and the West Bank. By identifying key humanitarian issues and focusing on one of them each month as part of the prayer vigil organized by the APF, the APF has succeeded in reaching people who otherwise would have little knowledge of or interest in the impact of the Israeli occupation and the humanitarian activities of churches and church-related organizations.

The prayer vigil connects the faith-based character of the APF to its commitment to international law and its efforts to promote and protect human rights. The Israeli occupation has existed and its oppressive tactics have grown in severity over many decades. In response, the APF needs to find ways to keep Palestinian rights in the forefront of international opinion, even when the media turns to other crises and donors grow fatigued due in large part to the length and relentlessness of the Israeli occupation and the lack of a viable peace process.

The prayer vigil communicates the hope of the APF members as people of faith, while at the same time communicating the depth and urgency of the needs of the Palestinian people. It is also important for the APF’s external visibility, but also in relation to its credibility with the local churches and communities with which it is engaged. The prayer vigil has actively engaged each of the APF members and it has often prompted important debates within the APF about the needs and priorities of the APF.

ACT Forum Annual Report 2016

Related to humanitarian, development and advocacy work of ACT Alliance

The ACT Nepal Forum has been a testimony to the strength of the collective. Starting from the immediate aftermath of the devastating Nepal earthquake, the forum galvanized into a firm platform of coordination, commitment and collective sharing geared towards providing high quality relief, psychosocial support and care to the affected communities as well remain a constant proponent on accountability, inclusion and meaningful participation for the wider humanitarian community.

ACT Nepal has assisted almost 2 million individuals (400,000 Households) covering progressively actions on Food Aid, Shelter (Temporary, Transitional & Permanent), Water Sanitation and Hygiene (Hygiene kits, Toilets, Water Supply Schemes) Psychosocial support (Care, Counselling), Education (Schools reconstruction), Livelihoods (Seeds, Agri equipment’s & Trainings), Inclusive Protection (Feedback & Accountability) and Resilience. ACT Alliance is considered second to UN in terms of strength, resource leveraging, visibility, geographical coverage and communications.

A series of interesting achievements reaffirm the faith of coming together and working together:

1. Common ACT Base: a place to exchange ideas, have food and work
2. Sharing un-earmarked funds: a very transparent, well documented and inclusive process of allocating funds to neglected sectors
3. ‘One’ sitrep reporting: covering all response actions of ACT appeal as well as non-ACT appeal funded actions displaying a larger canvas of ACT operations in country,
4. ACT model village: a shining example of unifying activities and working as a collective
5. Continual engagement: every day morning Forum meetings (first 3 months) followed by monthly meetings helping maintain continuity in thoughts and actions.
6. Welcoming new members: CA, DKH, Amity Foundation added to with open arms
7. ACT Representation: members focused on respective clusters to enhance reach & implement responses simultaneously
8. Common Appeal: NPL 151, 161 &171
9. Terrai flood responses: common assessment and appeal action for response
10. Joint Monitoring Visits: successful conduct of the JMV and appeal evaluation1
11. Staff sharing: a common security focal for 9 ACT Agencies
12. High profile visits: ACT general secretary and Dutch minister
13. Digital Data Gathering: mobile based apps AKVO (ICCO), MAGPI (DCA), KoBo (CAID)
14. Preparedness: updated EPRP, Common Contingency Stocks – assessment formats (JRNA)
15. Accountability: CHS Audit, ACT certification & Nepali translation with trainings
16. Learning Event & local capacity building: 24 trainings for mutual learning sharing
17. Website: a unified information platform made for ACT Nepal
18. Inter Faith Dialogues: exploratory Works on Disaster Response planning
19. Policy Advocacy: speedy reconstruction clearances and NGO guidelines

The ACT Nepal Forum has been a safe and open space for sharing, learning and debating on key issues of country and member’s operations. The actions are continually characterized by a common visibility approach, common messaging on key response actions and collective agreements of focus areas and complementarity in reach amongst ACT members. These actions have worked very well with all of us able to focus on our core strengths and keep the ACT flag flying high and making others take note of the collective.

Documents:

Annex 1- Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan

Annex 2- Joint Monitoring Visit

Annex 3- General Secretary Visit

Annex 4 – Lessons Learn-ACT response to gorkha EQ

Annex 5- Media Coverage- ACT response

Annex 6 -ACT_FINAL EVALUATION NPL151

Annex 7-Final Narrative Report NPL 151

Annex 8- Capacity Building Program

Annex 9- Capacity building -training reports

Annex 10- Case Stories- ACT response

Annex 11 – Interim report iii NPL 161

Structure and leadership

The ACT Zimbabwe Forum has grown exponentially and now has 4 active local members excluding one on suspension and seven international members. The Forum encourages Guests in a bid to encourage them to become full members. To promote joint learning growth and programming, the ACT Zimbabwe Forum has 3 Communities of Practice which are thematically based drawing from Zimbabwe ‘s realities and the ACT Global policy.

All the Members of the Forum belong to one or more of these Communities of Practice, and implementation of joint activities is done through these thematic groups led by a chosen lead Member and Chair. To foster closer cooperation, the Lead is an international Forum Member while the Chair is a local Member. These CoPs are the vehicle for members joint programme implementation and participation, a way of getting new members through programmes and also to get the participation of non-ACT implementing organisations who enrich programmes.

The Forum has 4 International Members who do not have a presence in the country but are highly involved through the participation of their non-ACT implementing Partners through the Communities of Practice. These Members financially contribute to the Office of a full-time Coordinator who ensures that information is passed to them and they are part of the decision making for the Forum. The Forum also ensures that Forum meetings are held whenever these Members visit the country to ensure their direct participation whenever possible.

Strategic planning

The Zimbabwe Forum promotes equal participation between local and international members. The Chair of the Forum position is reserved for National Members to ensure and encourage participation and rooting in the country context. Communication in the Forum is open, and there is no hierarchy in making decisions. Decisions are made during the Forum meetings which are held once every two months with those outside the country making their input via email to the Coordinator.

The position of a full-time Coordinator has strengthened communication as the office acts as the liaison among members and ensures that information is passed to all Members and also to ensure that the Forum is kept abreast of what will be happening in the Regional and Global ACT Offices.

The Forum ensures that during joint programming under the communities of practice we invite the participation of other ecumenical organisations. The Our Vote Our Faith Campaign is an excellent example of how the Forum has incited all people of Faith to come and Partner with the Forum in calling for a peaceful election in Zimbabwe while encouraging Christians to exercise their right to vote. The WE have Faith Campaign also brought together various Churches and other Faiths in climate justice advocacy. The Forum has strengthened the ecumenical voice in Zimbabwe, and after the November political developments, the Church led efforts to organise civil society in advocacy.

The Forum is also involved in the Faith Leaders Environmental Advocacy Training which targets Faith leaders inside and outside the Forum to create environmental champions.

Related to humanitarian, development and advocacy work of ACT Alliance

Typhoon Haiyan, which was a Level 3 emergency which brought ACT members to respond in the country in November 2013. The ACT Secretariat, Lutheran World Federation, and other ACT members outside the country came in to assist during the relief and recovery phase. An ACT Coordination Center was established, a first in the ACT response, which facilitated the coordination of all the ACT implementing members, headed by the country Forum. The 3-month old Forum took the challenge of managing such a scale of the disaster, which brought many learnings that are shared through a joint publication entitled: ACTING TOGETHER, BUILDING STRONGER, Lessons from the ACT Alliance Response to Typhoon Haiyan, which was widely shared in print and online with the whole ACT Family. The learnings were highlighted in 4 areas: coordination, convergence, localization and quality & accountability. The coordination among the ACT Philippines Forum and other ACT members fostered the ACT Strategic Theme: Join Hands, Full Life and Dignity for All. The Forum has had internal and external evaluations in the course of the response, one of which is the Donor’s Joint Monitoring Visit, which the Forum and the ACT Coordination Center jointly organized. Reflections and learning workshops were also carried out, to ensure that the Forum members are continuously improving its service.

The Forum coordinates every humanitarian response within or outside an ACT Appeal. At least in information sharing, the Forum shares each other’s work to avoid duplication and promote coordination in the common areas it serves.

Aside from the humanitarian response, the ACT Forum carries the advocacy on PUTTING PEOPLE AT THE CENTER, LOCALIZATION, CSO PARTICIPATION & COORDINATED RESPONSES, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT and CLIMATE CHANGE, which are part of the ACT strategic direction and commitment to WHS. In the recent undertakings with ACT, the ACT Forum participated in the signature campaign during the COP21 in Nov 2015. The advocacy on climate change is one of the focus on strategic directions of the Forum.

Related to building trust and ACT governance, including strategic collaboration as part of the wider ecumenical movement and learning with other forums

The Forum has been efficient and effective in collaborating on ACT Appeals: Typhoon Haiyan, Typhoon Haima, Typhoon Nina, and Marawi Conflict – collectively deciding how to utilize resources. There is also a reflection and learning sessions on past responses which were documented and shared to the whole Alliance.

There was a joint analysis on the current context to suitably set the Forum’s direction, in accordance with the ACT global strategic direction. The ecumenical Diakonia is being concretized by our effort to share the work and advocacy of ACT Alliance during the Annual Forum meeting to other WCC members and even other FBOs in the country. Various means are being used to share relevant information such as publishing resource materials, brochures and presentations, and maximizing different FBO activities.

Related to ACT Alliance recognition and visibility

The individual Forum members, Lutheran World Relief & Christian Aid, are regularly in contact with the UN OCHA in the country through the Philippines INGO Network (PINGON), and the meetings with national organizations where the National Council of Churches in the Philippines is one of the 8 organizations being consulted by the agency. (Advocacy)

Reaching out to the wider faith-based community is one of the best practices of the Forum: the Forum initiated holding the pre-and post-WHS fora, where the ACT Alliance’s and the ACT Philippine Forum members’ papers and commitments were shared, offering a space where faith-based humanitarian organizations gathered and reflect its role together, and talked about how the WHS commitments will be actualized locally. Followed by a dialogue with the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, the Philippine government’s DRRM arm, where the recognition on the role played by FBOs during disasters are highlighted and better coordination with the FBOs were explored. These gatherings resulted in a clamor to organize the FBOs in the country to share resources, good practices, and collaborate in possible areas of service. During the strategic planning, the Forum, despite of not having steady funds to implement activities, decided to continue this goal because of its huge potential in improving the way we do humanitarian service.

With its localization agenda, the Forum decided to support the national FBOs, with NCCP as its representative. The formation of the Philippine Faith-Based Organization Forum (FBO PH) consisting of the 3 major Christian Councils (Catholics, Protestants & Evangelicals) and its constituencies in the country on November 2017, will not be made possible without the ACT Philippines Forum’s initiative. It is during those reflective sessions which borne the realization and need for FBOs to come and work together in the areas of humanitarian and development and advocate with the most vulnerable communities in the country.

Practise/ Policy (innovative, replicable): Shared humanitarian advocacy agenda on Localization

Results:

• Prioritization of local partners and regional ecumenical councils (composed of NCC member churches) in emergency response and humanitarian capacity building;
• Active coordination amongst members from monitoring, planning, implementation and evaluation during Joint ACT Appeal Emergency Response (Marawi Conflict, Super Typhoon Haiyan, Super Typhoon Haima);
• Mainstreams community-based and survivor-led initiatives in emergency response and preparedness;
• Engagement of ACT Forum Members in humanitarian advocacy (Balik-Lokal), capacity building of regional and local member churches/partners, local shared roster (Transforming Surge Capacity);
• Joint learning knowledge product on Haiyan Response (Visibility);
• Contributes to ACT WHS commitment

Related to building trust and ACT governance, including strategic collaboration as part of the wider ecumenical movement and learning with other forums

ACT South Sudan Forum (ASSF) is a shared platform comprising ACT voting members and Guests who are engaged with operations in the country. The Forum was established in January 2010 as part of Global ACT Alliance meant to effectively encourage members to work together to explore opportunities for collaboration in humanitarian, development and advocacy work.

Our forum is one of the biggest, vibrant, cohesive and dynamic forums in the East African region actively engaged in humanitarian response, development, advocacy, capacity development, ecumenical relations, partnership with national organizations, visibility and communication

Our forum is “ACT”, we believe in “Full Life and Dignity for All” and we serve through the three pillars- (Humanitarian, Development & Advocacy) to address systemic poverty, support survivors of disasters, wars and conflicts, train rural communities in sustainable agricultural techniques, helps people adapt to environmental sustainability, and influencing government and other key decision makers to safeguard citizens’ human rights.

Related to humanitarian, development and advocacy work of ACT Alliance

Objectives:

• Increase the effectiveness and impact on the three pillars of ACT Alliance work in the areas of humanitarian response, development and advocacy for individuals and communities, through improved coordination and collaboration of ACT members at all levels.
• Build trust through the establishment of a strong platform that encourages increased dialogue and collaboration among ACT members towards a common vision and through strengthening linkages with other established networks, including ecumenical partners.
• Enhance ACT Alliance recognition as a global faith-based actor within the country through promoting the value and visibility of humanitarian, development and advocacy work being undertaken by ACT Forum members.

Functions

1. Humanitarian Response: Our ACT forum members do support communities and people affected by crisis in South Sudan through organized and coordinated joint ACT Appeals.
2. Development: Our ACT forum members are engaged in joint contextual analysis and sharing programmatic priorities. The forum members collaboratively identify and implement joint development activities.
3. Capacity Development: Our ACT forum members are constantly striving to develop the capacity of forum members through local initiatives and practices, shared learning and resources, and through working methods that enhance the full participation of our members, including fostering relations with ACT Regional Secretariat.
4. Ecumenical Relations: Our ACT forum members are engaged with other members of the ecumenical family present (Caritas, South Sudan Council of Churches, Local Churches, Faith-Based Organizations) who are active in their area of operation, to initiate discussions and exchange knowledge and experience.
5. Advocacy: Our ACT forum identifies advocacy priorities and opportunities and take part in supporting advocacy initiatives at national, sub-regional, regional and global levels, with ACT members as well as with other stakeholders. (e.g. the South Sudan Council of Churches-Action Plan for Peace Initiative)

More information HERE