Life Skills and Peer Education for Chadian Youth

The Blue Cross team in Chad is so excited about the development of the life skills lessons in the classroom that peer educators have begun to develop an after-school component in the form of “life skills clubs." The club model implemented in the framework of this project works like this: Clubs are managed by the learners themselves - including the set-up of democratic structures – and each club has elected a board and works in the manner of an associational structure. The experience of “small-scale” democracy and leadership through club management is proving extremely positive for youth, who in addition to essential life skills are now also gaining leadership and management skills! This is a completely innovative and bottom-up initiative of the Blue Cross Chad team! 

In other news...

Promoting Good Governance for Sustainable Development

In late 2014 IFBC received co-financing from its partner network here in Switzerland, Bread for All, to increase the understanding and implementation of good governance practices. We used the funding to develop a 4-day workshop, held in Brazzaville, Congo, bringing together staff and volunteers from 6 French-speaking African Blue Cross organizations including Blue Cross Chad. Among the subject matters discussed were best practices in recruitment, best practices in financial management and corruption and effective anti-corruption mechanisms.

The team at Blue Cross Chad has now been tasked with organizing a localized training together with an external consultant to assess their own organization’s practices in all relevant fields (organizational structure, financial management, HR, procurement, admin) and where required, to make improvements based on the assessment outcome.

Many of us take these subject matters for granted and assume that they are inherent in management of development projects however for small grass-roots NGOs, it takes time to develop and nurture governance structures to ensure that our projects are run responsibly and deliver the highest possible impact. We commend our team at Blue Cross Chad for their hard work and dedication and look forward to great things in 2015!