NGO council to host inaugural stakeholder forum
Spira Tlhankane | Friday October 9, 2015 16:54
The forum will be held under the theme ‘strengthening strategic partnerships for development’.
Briefing the media yesterday, council chairperson Bookie Kethusegile said the purpose of the upcoming forum was to discuss issues of national interest raised by the NGO community in the past two years.
“Some of these include legislative and policy conflicts experienced by the NGO sector in implementing their mandate and strengthen the consultative processes between government and the NGO sector especially in formulating National Development Plans,” she said.
Kethusegile said the forum “would give the NGOs to an opportunity to share their achievements and challenges with stakeholders”. She said the decision to host the forum came after they attended an Open Government Partnership initiative conference in Tanzania.
“It was an eye-opener in the area of government and civil society.
Our organisations need to be engaged in setting monitoring and evaluation of national priorities,” she added.
Kethusegile said NGO council would from now on engage the relevant stakeholders with a possibility of being part of such an initiative.
Also, the chairperson noted, the forum would help NGOs council to move forward. “We launched the council in April 2013 and two years down the line we want to stimulate domestic philanthropic impulses and ultimately generate significant private contributions for socio-economic development,” she said.
She explained that the council was established to advise the government with respect to policy development and implementation.
“We want to ensure harmonisation of the NGO policy with other policies to avoid potential duplication or conflict,” she said.