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A major initiative has been launched to ensure that the voice of grassroots is heard in the final two years running up to the post-2015 campaign of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).  This has emerged from a wide consultation of Community Service Organisations (CSOs) from the SADC countries held in Sandton during the past two days.
 
The two-day consultative forum was the first critical step towards establishing a common African position on the development agenda beyond 2015.
 
The conference was opened by Ms Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, Director of the Democratic Governance Group of the Bureau for Development Policy and Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, President of African Monitor.

A critical part of the initiative in reaching grassroots will be the formulation and implementation of the massive programme employing social media platforms, as well as traditional communication methods, to reach as many people at grassroots level as possible.

This decision comes against previous wide-spread criticism that there had been limited involvement of developing countries and southern CSOs. Delegates to the conference were insistent that this skewed consultation process should be reversed and committed themselves to the programme.

The conference ended with the formation of a facilitation team including African Monitor, which is part of the Pan Africa steering group on the post-2015 MDG process, the Economic Justice Network and the SADC Council of NGOs, which will spear-head the initiative and form the executive.

National coalitions of CSOs will also be included in the facilitation team and specialist organisations will be brought in as and when needed. Various international agencies such as the UNDP will be asked to provide input.

The facilitation team is tasked to drive the implementation of the agenda across the SADC region, support and facilitate country-level CSO consultations, facilitate engagements with policy makers, collate national narratives, provide technical support, give continuous feedback to group members to enrich the process and content of developing the action plan, and develop a strategy for youth mobilisation and other excluded groups.

Ndungane says that it is nothing short of a tragedy that “in this modern day and age, the voice of ordinary people at the grassroots is still not being heard”.

He said that the voice of the developed world was widely heard, not least because it had the resources “to influence the volume at which the voice was broadcast”. African governments, on the other hand, did not always proactively put structures in place to reach and listen to the voice of the grassroots.

Namhla Mniki-Mangaliso, Director of African Monitor pointed out that African CSOs had an obligation to ensure that the debates and processes around the MDGs continued prior and post the March 2015 deadline.
 
“It is essential that we strengthen CSO activism around the MDG goals to ensure that as many targets are met prior to 2015 and that discussions around post-2015 are as democratic and inclusive as possible”.
 
The facilitation team will host a series of consultations leading up to March 2013 when the collated grassroots perspectives will be presented to the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon to be incorporated in the world-wide post-2015 Development Agenda.
 
For more information on the process, contact African Monitor on 021 713 2802.