Lifting People Out Of Poverty Project
LiPOP PROJECT
($50 Million For 5 Years)
The Rescue for Christ Foundation International will partner with the governments to achieve the SDGs. The Rescue for Christ Foundation International will support local development initiatives that enhance community participation and involvement (rights based approach) in planning and implementing in wealth creation, the strengthening of community institutions and access to affordable and basic services like health, education, food and income, housing and energy thereby contributing to poverty reduction and social and economic growth.
Strategy
The main objectives of the Rescue for Christ Foundation International include the following:
- Establishment, strengthening and empowerment of transparent and accountable local community institutions
- Rural wealth and employment creation
- Facilitate the provision of affordable social services including health, education, access to food, shelter, rural communication, transport facilities, and emergency response and disaster preparedness.
- Enhancement of human productivity
- Fostering a culture of peace and security.
Objectives
The Rescue for Christ Foundation International will adopt three basic strategies. This include i) pro-poor investment for human capital development and utilization ii) strengthening of accountable and transparent rural institution that guarantees the rights and dignity of local communities iii) awareness raising and community empowerment to access social services (health, education, shelter, quality food, transport and communication) in their communities.
The programme will be community led and people-centred; incorporating participatory, community empowerment, result oriented and right-based approaches in programme formulation and implementation. In the current context, the culture of dialogue and fostering leadership maturity all seem very crucial in the maintaining the fragile peaceful situation in the country.
Rescue for Christ Foundation International will thus explore strategies to promote especially political dialogue and the spirit of national interest and social entrepreneurial spirit. It will explore the possibilities to establish and operate a programme/institute of multi-party democracy (IMD/Sierra Leone) to support consensus building and political leadership development training.
Core/main activities
The Rescue for Christ Foundation International will focus on five core issues (areas of intervention). This will include
- i) Agriculture/farming targeting inputs distribution, horticultural/vegetable production, small-scale agro-processing, marketing and business development support;
- ii) Rural livelihood support services including the provision of low-cost housing, functional literacy/skills development, health, education, community infrastructural rehabilitation and reconstruction, transport, communication and emergency response and disaster preparedness;
- iii) Community empowerment and capacity enhancement of rural institutions to participate in development programme planning and implementation;
- iv) Human capital productivity improvement focusing on out-of-school youths and young graduates to embark on job creation especially in the service sectors; and
- v) Organizational capacity development.
Implementation Plan/schedule
The Rescue for Christ Foundation International is proposed for an initial three year period. During this time frame, the competencies will be defined in rural wealth creation strategies, embark right-based advocacy and lobby for service provision, the creation of and strengthening of transparent and accountable and democratic rural institutions.
In particular, a unique competency of the agency will be improvement of human competencies to suit the increasing need for skilled (social) entrepreneurs. Preliminarily, the formative period will focus on establishing relevant strategic contacts with government ministries, local and international NGOs and other pertinent private sector operators. It will also entail establishment of a semi-autonomous organisation managed by a small professional team that is guided by the requisite management tools and systems.
Expected Results
Contrary to the common trends of supply-driven and service provision strategy adopted by majority of NGOs in post-war Sierra Leone, Rescue for Christ Foundation International will focus on institution building, community empowerment to embark on rural wealth creation and to advocate the rights for communities to live in dignity and peace. Initial results of the Rescue for Christ Foundation International will thus entail:
- Established strategic linkages with adequate resources and the ‘political’ space to function efficiently as a local NGO; with demonstrated core competencies in the sectors of it’s interventions
- Established a functioning democratic rural institutions that can actively demand and access basic services including health, education, housing, communication, transport and energy
- Established policies and institutional framework that guarantees the development of human competencies to enhance rural wealth/job creation especially for the youths
- Established project/institute to support multi-party political decision-making and leadership development.
