CS-SUNN has set-up coordination and accountability mechanisms to strengthen civil society, member organizations and some of her state chapters in Nigeria. A two-day workshop held in Abuja brought together 36 participants including CS-SUNN State Chapter coordinators to brainstorm, share/learn from experiences and receive presentations aimed at building stronger collective efforts, accountability, learning and sharing as well as organizational development.
The workshop was aimed at:
-strengthening coordination efforts among CS-SUNN state chapters across Nigeria.
-strengthening accountability and sustainability mechanisms across the chapters and
-increasing commitments to adopt best practices on Civil Society action to scale up nutrition
CS-SUNN Chairman, Ekene Ifedilichukwu Innocent, while making a presentation on coalition strengthening, charged Coordinators of CS-SUNN state chapters and participants to identify structures that work, recruit and engage active organizations, diversify funding and focus on achieving outcomes of the various programmes they are implementing. According to him, poor understanding of coalition objectives, conflict of interest, inadequate capacity, political interference, inadequate funding, and lack of transparency and accountability will hinder the coalition members and state chapters from achieving tangible results.
On how CS-SUNN can strengthen Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) among civil society and state chapters, CS-SUNN Senior M&E officer, Jayne Arinze re-emphasized the importance of timely submission of reports.
In her closing remark, The CS-SUNN Executive Secretary, Beatrice Eluaka, commended all the state coordinators for their contributions in the past and advised on what they will continue to do to make CS-SUNN’s vision a reality. She stated that the National body of the alliance is committed to providing technical support and funding to support the state chapters in executing programmes and interventions that will improve nutrition across their various states and Nigeria at large.
Some of the key resolutions reached at the workshop are:
1) CS-SUNN State Chapters to submit quarterly reports and or minutes of meetings of the chapters and that of the EXCOS.
2) The need to operationalize and run with the approved constitution at state level.
3) Institutional strengthening of state chapters which would allow sharing CS-SUNN policies and strategies with State Coordinators.
The participating chapters were also tasked on developing policy briefs on nutrition issue areas, engaging the media and harnessing the social media to aid nutrition advocacy.