Political actors and technical personnel engagement

This helps to orient and introduce the project idea to the relevant officials working with the district/administrators directly or indirectly involved in the project. This was meant to avoid any future audit queries, conflicts arising from implementation of activities. These involved local councilors, local council or village chairmen, district political leaders, environmental police, internal security organizations, district administration officials, district technical staff from different departments(finance, procurement, natural resources, community development, engineering etc). This included other private stakeholders doing more or less similar projects, lodge owners etc. The engagement involved an organized project launch activity or ground breaking ceremony to educate them on the project anticipated activities, locations/areas, budget, beneficiaries, potential risks and the anticipated outcome, plus seeking their input and support for the success of the project. This also involved field visits to access the situation on ground before implementation.

  • Knowledge of the scope of the project, political boundaries and administration, scope of work of all the political and technical actors and their relevance in the implementation of the projects.
  • Mode of communication and ability to reach them - official written communication inviting the leaders and officials to the event.
  • Budgeted funds in the project to facilitate day allowance /transport refund/field visits.
  • Some of the local council leaders, are farmers and it was discovered that they are undertaking activities in the wetland and they were quick to embrace the prospected project activities and showed the will to offer personal advice.
  • This demonstrated the best practice for overall conceptualisation of the project idea by the stakeholders involved.
  • In this event, overall community members of anticipated beneficiaries were not invited. This was done on a different occasion, though it would have been time and resource saving to have them on this one too to help them prepare for the sensitization and education workshops ahead.