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Transcript of CAFOD One - September 2014
IN THIS ISSUE: Stewardship in CAFOD
p2 ONE message - Chris Bain’s welcome letter • p3 ONE lesson - Sharing learning in
CAFOD • p4 ONE fact - ICT4D: A shift in development practice • p5 ONE global
campaign - ‘One Climate, One World’ • p6-8 ONE interview - From Nepal to Nairobi:
Stephen Lloyd’s ventures with the charity sector • p9 ONE partner - Sadaka Reut: Arab-
Jewish Youth Partnership • p10 ONE day out - a collection of some of the days out
organised by our colleagues • p11 ONE green building - Romero House: greener than you
think! • p12 ONE gallery - In pictures: Darfur refugees then and now
one Issue 47, September 2014
Our global newsletter for staff and volunteers
Produced by the Internal Communication Team with special thanks to: Chris Bain, Jacquie Heany, Jo Kitterick,
Stephen Lloyd, Panikos Efthimiou, Aidan Timlin, Becca Manning, Marta Krajnik, Sarah Wilson, Jennifer McCarthy,
Bryon Jackson, Beck Wallace, Matthew Sanderson, Marleen Hartkoorn, Sarah Croft and Campaigns, Nana Anto-
Awuakye and our World News Unit, the organisers of our Staff Days Out, Georgia Burford, Al Lewis. For internal
use only. Next edition: December 2014.
Page 2 Issue 47, September 2014
Dear colleagues,
W elcome to CAFOD One’s second edition for 2014.
The next few months are going to be a challenging but exciting time for CAFOD
as we launch our campaign on Climate Change “One Climate, One World”. Over the next few years our efforts will be focused on securing commitment from political leaders that they will act on climate change, and will increase sustainable energy access for the
world’s poorest people.
As you know the period of reflection and feedback on the Strategic Review has drawn to an end. Many thanks to each one and every one of you for making time to express your ideas. The breadth and depth of your contribution is invaluable. Your insight will help to
guide the future direction and focus for our work as we continue to deliver the four aims of Just One World.
The Corporate Leadership team is analysing your contributions, discussing the trends and drawing out the conclusions. This will be presented and discussed with our Board of
Trustees at the Board Weekend between 10 and 12 October. I will update you on the outcome of the discussions and the next steps as soon as possible after the meeting.
Talking to colleagues involved in gathering your Strategic Review feedback, it is clear that you feel passionately about the importance of living out our value of Stewardship, both at
an organisational level and in day to day operations. And so as a follow up, this edition of CAFOD One explores some of the current practices we have in place to manage the
resources that have been entrusted to us. Through the good stewardship of all our resources we will better reflect our values, rooted in
our Catholic identity and more effectively mobilise communities to pray, act, give and commit to the transformational change required to overcome poverty and injustice in the
world.
Sincerely,
one message
Chris Bain, Director
On 13 October, Chris will be sleeping out at Wembley
Stadium. He will highlight the issue of poverty at home
and raise funds for the Cardinal Hume Centre's work
tackling poverty and homelessness. Last year over 1,700
people came to the Centre looking for help, advice and
support as times become tougher for them and their
families.
Please click here to sponsor this act of solidarity.
Page 3 Issue 47, September 2014
lesson one
Sharing is caring… building capacity beyond training CAFOD invests significantly in the development of its staff, targeting learning gaps
identified at both an individual and organisational level. Over the past six months, our Learning and Development Team has approved over 60 requests to attend conferences,
courses and workshops. Similarly, individual teams have invested their resources on sharing knowledge with colleagues globally.
R ooted in our Catholic identity and as part of our stewardship commitments, CAFOD staff are actively encouraging colleagues to use these learning
investments in the service of CAFOD’s vision, where learning is shared for the common good.
Beck Wallace, Lead
Analyst Extractive Industries and
Corruption.
Attended: ‘Rapid
Remedies for Writing’
course.
Delivering clear and
succinct written work is
a crucial skill for policy
analysts like Beck. She
attended this one day
course and replicated
the session with
colleagues in the Policy
Team.
Georgia Burford,
HIV Strategy Manager.
Attended: World HIV
Conference 2014.
After presenting the
work that we and our
partners are doing to
address issues relating
to HIV and AIDS,
Georgia shared her
learning with
colleagues in Romero
House and recorded a
video to share with
our colleagues in
national offices.
Matthew
Sanderson, Young Adults'
Coordinator. Attended: Strategy
and Business planning.
After attending this
course by the
Directory of Social
Change, Matthew
shared his learning by
running a briefing
session with the
Project Services Team.
His notes have also
been circulated.
Marleen Hartkoorn,
ID Programme Systems
Development Officer. Organises: ICT4D
meetings.
Interest around ICT4D
is growing, and donors
are increasingly keen to
fund these proposals.
Marleen coordinates
this group with
colleagues joining in
person or via Skype
from our national
offices. More here.
Get in touch with these colleagues if you are interested in receiving notes, materials or meeting with them.
Page 4 Issue 47, September 2014
fact one
W ith the introduction of ICT
(Information and
Communication Technology)
such as mobile phones and the
internet in the developing world, citizens are
engaging directly with their governments and
holding them accountable.
ICT has broken down barriers between the
international community and remote rural
communities. This communication has also
improved the way interventions are designed
and implemented. Complaints mechanisms
are becoming more interactive and are
increasing the speed at which NGOs can
respond to communities’ needs, especially
within humanitarian responses.
Donors are able to communicate and interact
with citizens in developing countries directly
by setting up online platforms that
beneficiaries can access. Ordinary citizens
can post their ideas of what their needs are
and how interventions can solve these
problems. This marks a huge shift in
development practice by removing the filter
that until now was in place and held by
‘middle men’ such as organised groups like
CSOs, NGOs, INGOs, etc.
Even though these groups can post and
compete in these calls for proposals, a more
grassroots approach has arisen that includes
individuals such as creative entrepreneurs
and social activists from around the globe.
There is an appetite for this type of funding
and this way of proposal-writing will become
more popular in future.
Hopefully it will be more sustainable since
citizens will become increasingly empowered
in order to improve social, economic, and
political structures within their own countries.
Creating less dependence on foreign aid and
more responsibility on national governments
and their respective duty bears is a step in
the right direction.
“The more citizens become
informed and gain access to
information, the more
demand and pressure they
are able to make on their
local and national duty
bearers.”
Marta Krajnik
Programme Development
and Funding Officer
Making All Voices Count (MAVC) CAFOD was
successful in securing £100,000 in funding for
an innovative programme in Kenya and
Uganda. The programme begun in June 2014
and is using ICT to empower local advocacy
groups to monitor resource allocation.
ICT4D: A shift in development
practice
Page 5 Issue 47, September 2014
global campaign one
One Climate, One World
“Creation is a gift; it is a wonderful gift that God
has given us, so that we care for it and we use it
for the benefit of all, always with great respect
and gratitude” - Pope Francis
This month CAFOD is launching a major campaign called One
Climate, One World.
E verywhere CAFOD works, in every country and
community, we hear the same thing: the changing
weather is making life harder. And it’s making it
harder for people who are already desperately
vulnerable, and have nothing left to start again when the
floods wash away their home, or the rain doesn’t come and
the crops fail. The situation on the ground is so serious that
climate change is now the number one threat to reducing
poverty that exists today.
That is why, over the next few years we want to secure commitment from political leaders
that they will act to tackle climate change. Our campaign will start by calling on all UK
party leaders to protect the most vulnerable people from dangerous climate change and to
improve access to sustainable energy.
Take our action today: cafod.org.uk/oneclimate
9 September 2014 Launch of
One Climate, One World
21 September 2014
Global day of action on climate change
More information
23 September 2014 Two day summit
of world leaders in New York to galvanise
action on climate change.
7 November 2014 CAFOD’s Pope Paul
VI lecture in London, on the theme of
climate change and poverty. Look out for
more information on how to attend and
volunteer.
February 2015 Expected Papal
Encyclical on the environment and care
for creation.
May 2015 The UK General Election
December 2015 UN Climate Change
Conference
Dates for your diary
Page 6 Issue 47, September 2014
Do you think much has changed in the last
20 years?
I think it’s changed a great deal. We’ve developed
our own agenda and we work in a programmatic
way. We are much more active and have much
more professional expertise.
And what about partnership— what do you
think has changed in terms of the capacity
and capability of our partners?
I think many of our partners have developed a lot
more expertise themselves and have got many
more ways of working.
Also, there’s been a kind of professionalization of
the whole sector. When I first started working in
this area, which is when I was young –
How young?
Well, I went as a VSO volunteer when I was in my
early twenties to West Africa.
What did you do there as a volunteer?
I worked in a college, teaching accounting and
management issues and taxation, for about two
years.
I think at that stage the sector was very different.
There was a lot more reliance on volunteers, and
paid staff were paid much less then, I would say.
I worked for Save the Children in Nepal in the
1970s and a lot of the managers there were ex-
services people who were on services pensions
and I guess could afford to work for low salaries
and felt they were “doing their bit”.
Can you tell me a bit about the setup of the
Kenya office?
Yes. In about 1997 it was decided that we should
try opening offices in the regions where we had
major involvement. The decision was made to
open an office in Nairobi for East Africa and in
Harare for Southern Africa. Because these were
interview one
From Nepal to Nairobi
Stephen Lloyd shares with us his ventures with the
charity sector and his vision of stewardship
Our Head of Financial Assurance monitors
and protects us from any risks we might
face. But during his 22 years with
CAFOD, he has seen many different areas
of the organisation.
In 1992, Stephen joined CAFOD to lead an Africa team quite different to the one we know
now—just seven people based in London. With a huge amount of overseas experience with
VSO, Save the Children and Oxfam, Stephen was entrusted with the setup of our Nairobi
office in 1998. He spent six years in Nairobi and has since taken on the role of Head of
Financial Assurance.
Page 7 Issue 47, September 2014
new ventures and a kind of outreach from CAFOD
in London, it was decided that preference would
be given to internal candidates to run the offices.
I threw my hat into the ring because I’d recently
worked in an Oxfam office overseas, and so had
some experience running such offices.
So when you got the job what happened next
and what were the challenges of setting up?
We’d negotiated a room in the Trócaire office and
so initially, it was me and my boxes and laptop, in
a room.
Oh, you were on your own? So there you
were in this room, with your boxes, alone.
How long did that go on?
Two or three months. And, you know, I needed
somebody to work with. Firstly, I needed to get
out and meet the partners. I needed to get on the
road. And it seemed important to have
somebody keeping the office running. I couldn’t
formally employ anybody because I was there on
a tourist visa and we had no legal status, so it had
to be a sort of unofficial temping. Somebody
recommended Lilian.
Oh, so Lilian was involved from the start?
She was the first person, and she’s been involved
ever since - Lilian is our current HR and Admin
Manager in Nairobi-
Can we come back to stewardship - are there
any lessons that you’ve learned over the
years that you would offer to people working
in this sector about how we look after money
and use it wisely?
That’s a very good question isn’t it? I mean, in the
old days when I started working for charities, the
big question from people donating money was
always, how much is going to be spent on
administration? How much is going to the ultimate
beneficiaries and how much is paying your
salaries? And a lot of people still have that
question. However, the stewardship we think
about nowadays is a much wider concept than
how much we’re spending on administration.
So how would you encapsulate that?
I think that we are looking at the way that we
steward all the resources that we have. So when
people support us and give money, they are also
endowing us with their wishes to help, their
commitment to justice - we are the instrument for
that. It isn’t just a simple measurement of value
for money that we’re talking about.
And we also have a lot of staff and other people
who provide our human resources and we need to
steward that resource and treat them properly.
Also we need to steward our partnerships with our
partners overseas – they are essential to our
work. Both we and our partners are really a
channel for transferring both financial and other
kinds of resources, from one set of people who
are providing them, to another who need them.
We have to do it effectively and efficiently, but we
also have to absorb as little as we can on the way.
I suppose that my tendency has been to try to
keep costs as low as possible, perhaps
unrealistically so in some cases; for instance the
first Nairobi office car was bought at the Sunday
second hand car market at the stadium!
Do you think it’s important to bear this in
mind when working in the area that we do?
Yes, and I think it’s recognising that we’re not in a
static world where there are people who are poor
and there are people who are rich and ‘that’s how
it is’. We’re in a world which is dynamic, in which
money and resources are extracted by some
people and other people are impoverished. And
“The stewardship we think about nowadays is a much wider
concept than how much we’re spending on administration (…)
when people support us and give money are also endowing us
with their wishes to help, their commitment to justice - we are
the instrument for that. It isn’t just a simple measurement for
money that we’re talking about.”
Page 8 Issue 47, September 2014
unless you actually fight against the process,
you’re not going to get anywhere. If you just say,
‘oh this is how the world is’, which a lot of people
do, ‘and the poor are the poor and that’s how
they are.’ There is a process of being made poor
which goes on and depends on a whole lot of
things about politics and who’s doing what.
And is that how you would describe the work
you have done in your life – fighting against
that process?
Yes, I would say that even in the simplest forms
of transferring resources from one group to
another, that aspect is there. I think in a more
wide sense what we’re trying to do is to say: this
is unjust. And that you can’t just say people are
poor because they’re born poor or because they’re
feckless. They are in a dynamic process which
each day means they get poorer or richer for one
reason or another, and it depends on all the way
their government works, the attitudes of other
people, the extent of exploitation, the way the
international systems work… and so we need to
fight against processes of impoverishment where
we identify them.
Can I ask you one final question about
stewardship? If I was now a 20 year old
coming into the charity sector, what advice
would you give me, in terms of stewardship
of money in the modern world?
I’d say there’s an awful lot of pressure to spend
money on all kinds of sorts of quality control and
assurance things. There’s a whole lot of pressure
to build up expertise within the organisation and it
all absorbs money. It’s necessary these days
because you can’t run charities in the way that we
used to, in a kind of amateurish way.
But you do need to be quite clear that you’ve got
a good justification for taking the money out of
the pot that the donor has given you. Whether it’s
an individual donor who’s given you their £10 or
it’s a pot from the British government for a
project. I think we need to be quite rigorous and
really ask how much of this money do we need to
use ourselves.
What do you think about our latest move as
an organisation to be a lot more volunteer
focused?
I think it’s great but it is also about balance. I do
think it’s very good to involve volunteers as much
as possible, but you shouldn’t look at volunteers
as a cheap labour force. Volunteers need to
valued and well managed so that they get the
satisfaction they are after. Some people like to
engage in voluntary work for a while after they
retire, and there are young people who can’t get
paid work, but need experience.
I have been told that you practice yoga.
What else do you do to relax?
I like country walking. I like the combination of
the physical side, the natural environment you’re
moving through and having a group of people
together.
The nature interests you?
Oh, definitely. I’m very interested in the natural
world and I do a bit of bird-watching.
Do you think that you will stay involved in
the sector after you retire? We’re all going to
stop working one day! Somebody like you
with all your experience and skills, you
would have a lot to offer the charity sector,
rather than just stuff envelopes.
I think so, but I’m quite good at stuffing
envelopes really. I don’t see myself as a high
powered charity consultant who takes on lots of
treasurerships. I’d
rather go bird
watching!
“The argument for partnership
I think is undeniable because
what we’re talking about is
building up the sustainability
of anything that we do by
helping institutional
development in the countries
where we’re supporting
Do you have an idea for our next interview? Get in touch with the
internal communication team and we can set up a time with our roving
interviewer Panikos.
Page 9 Issue 47, September 2014
partner one
Spotlight on
Sadaka Reut:
Arab-Jewish Youth
Partnership
Maya from Sadaka Reut recently
visited Romero House. She spoke
about growing up in Israel, rela-
tions between Jewish and Pales-
tinian citizens of Israel, and
bringing Jewish and Palestinian
youth together for social change
in a CAFOD-supported project.
Watch the lunchtime talk here. Maya Regev from Sadaka Reut,
and Jennifer McCarthy, our Middle
East Programme Officer
CAFOD has begun working with a new partner in Israel called Sadaka Reut. Sadaka Reut was founded
in 1983 by a group of Jewish and Palestinian Israeli university students who shared the vision of a
better future for both communities. They believe that bi-national partnership, solidarity, and a joint
struggle is the only way to secure real change and build a more just and egalitarian society.
We are supporting Sadaka Reut’s Community in Action project, which is a volunteering and leadership
development project targeting Jewish and Arab young adults from the mixed community of Jaffa and
surrounding neighbourhoods in and around Tel Aviv. The project aims to form and equip a small
group of young adults aged 18-25 - comprising a balanced mix of Arabs and Jews, women and men -
to be politically aware and have a belief in Palestinian-Jewish partnership, and be able to lead social
initiatives and campaigns.
The participants will undergo enrichment, leadership and campaign training, and will then themselves
work with youth centres to tutor and mentor over 200 disadvantaged youth. The aim is to share their
vision of peace and partnership with the city’s youth, uprooting preconceived perceptions, and to
create a new generation of young activists promoting a shared society based on equality, solidarity,
and justice.
Sadak Reut firmly believe that the only way to confront and overcome the antagonism between
Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel is
by promoting joint partnership models for
change. They work to educate and
empower Palestinian and Jewish youth to
pursue social political change
through bi-national
partnership. They believe that
youth and young adults have
the capacity to influence and
change the future of relations
between Jews and Palestinians
in Israel.
“We try to show them an example
of what we believe is a way, and a
solution to the conflict: bi-
national partnership. Everything
we do at Sadaka Reut, we do
jointly - Jewish and Palestinian.”
“I want to say how important it is for us to know that our partners in other
countries are standing by what we are doing, and voicing what we are trying to
say to others - in our words or in their own words - and standing in solidarity
with us. It means a lot to us.” - Maya Regev
Maya Regev, Learning and Development Coordinator at Sadaka Reut
Page 10 Issue 47, September 2014
day out one
In July, over a period of a week or two, we are invited to
organise a day out with colleagues to come along and explore a
new area, try a new experience but, most importantly, get to know each other in a
relaxed environment. We have here a collection of the some of the days out
organised by our colleagues in London.
Dome to Dome walk - the O2 to
Greenwich Observatory
Chocolate making
Riding to Brighton
Eclectic walk through London
Family day at Hyde Park Punting in Cambridge
We are committed to being good stewards of all the resources
entrusted to us—this includes the natural environment and future
generations. Romero House embodies our ‘live simply’ philosophy
by minimising the impact on the environment in a number of ways
Rain water is harvested from the roof and stored in the basement.
green building one
Check out some of the clever ways Romero House earned its Excellent rating:
The kitchen cabinet
doors are made
from recycled
yoghurt pots and
the counter tops are
made from recycled
coffee cups.
Sixth form student Bethany recently volunteered at Romero
House and reported on her experience at “the most eco-friendly and self-
sustainable building I have ever encountered”.
ON a CAFOD blog, Bethany writes: “To my surprise, nearly everything I used, or
sat on, contributed towards a more self-sustainable building, and therefore an
environmentally friendly world.”
Read more about Bethany’s discoveries in the blog Did you know Romero House is green?
A natural green sedum roof increases biodiversity by encouraging plants
and insects to make it their home.
Solar water heating panels power a water heater.
This hot water is used for washing hands in the toilets and kitchens.
We have two types of
solar panels on our
roof.
Page 11 Issue 47, September 2014
"A combination of eco-friendly and energy efficiency means that
Romero House takes care of the environment and our financial
resources at the same time" Al Lewis, Facilities Manager
Page 12 Issue 47, September 2014
one
CAFOD’s photographs from Darfur featured on the
BBC website
gallery
Our World News Unit secured this photo
feature of people at three camps in central
Darfur in 2007 and again in 2014 to find
out how their lives have changed.
With only a few international aid agencies
still able to operate in Darfur, those that
do, like our partner Norwegian Church Aid,
are trying to support camp
communities to become more self-reliant.
Youth committees have
been set up to engage
younger camp residents -
football is popular with
young men and there is
growing interest in
volleyball among some
young women.
Complete gallery
available here.