Donors' Move Takes Its Toll On Red Cross

FREDERICK KEBADIRETSE
Staff Writer | Monday May 10, 2010 00:00

Briefing the media last week on recent developments and future plans in Gaborone, BRCS Programmes Director, Titus Makosha, said their international partners have only committed to help Botswana until this year. 'They have consistently been clear on the position of graduating from Botswana because it is a middle-income country,' Makosha said. He, however, expressed optimism that local resource mobilisation and development of sustainable projects should be the way to go, and any international funding should come as a bonus.

He said the decision by the international donors therefore, calls for deliberate strategies for partnerships with the private sector, locally based intergovernmental agencies as well as government agencies. The other challenge he outlined was the society's inability to retain staff and volunteers given BRCS's inability to adequately compete for the human resources in the market.

 On some positive achievements, Makosha noted that the BRCS have achieved much in the past year in terms of training volunteers on areas of vulnerability capacity assessment and in basic first aid. He said they were also able to respond to all disasters last year including the winter rains, which made many people in some parts of the country vulnerable to the cold weather that ensued. Last year, the society also launched the Zambezi River Basin Initiative (ZRBI) that was aimed at giving early warning for early action to vulnerable people liaving along the Zambezi river basin in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region.

For the society's future plans, Makosha said they have identified branch development as their key programme this year. 'We want to empower our branches to have the capacity to respond to disasters on the ground. We want to always be the first on the site of the disaster,' he said. He said they also want to improve on their information dissemination initiatives in order to get people to understand fully the values and principles of the society as well as associate with it. He said marketing and communications have become their key area of concern with an objective to improve on visibility and integrity, particularly focusing on media relations. Towards the end of last year, BRCS took the media on a tour to the northern part of the country to familiarise them with its projects in the region.

Still at the same event last week, the society announced the funds they have been able to raise from people and various organisations as aid for the victims of the Haiti earthquake at the beginning of the year. A total of P185, 201 has been raised since the society started the campaign in February.  Among the donors are the Assemblies of God Church of Botswana, which donated P10, 000 and the Botswana Public Employees Union (BOPEU), which also pledged the same amount and clothing items worth P18, 000. The BRCS expect to have handed over the donations to the victims by next month as they are still expecting more donors to come forward and help.

Meanwhile, the Red Cross Day commemoration that was to be celebrated on Saturday (May 7th) was postponed to this Saturday. This year's celebrations will be held in Kang under the theme, 'Urbanisation'.