USAID-Legit Conducts Capacity Building Workshop For Local Authorities

Gbarnga, Bong County – As part of its efforts to build the capacity of CSOs, CBOs, Local Authorities and other Stakeholders to contribute to the provision of efficient services, USAID-LEGIT conducts a two-day training of trainers’ workshop in Gbarnga City, Bong County.

The Training of Trainers workshop which commenced in Gbarnga, Bong County recently at Passion Hotel Conference Hall brought together participants from the Governance Commission, Ministry of Youth and Sports, Gender, Children and Social Protection, CSOs, CBOs, other Stakeholders and representatives from Bong, Nimba, and Grand Gedeh Counties and the Cities of Gbarnga, Zwedru and Gompa.

During the Official ceremony, the Gbarnga city Mayor, Hon. Viola R. Cooper welcomed the participants to the city of Gbarnga and also encouraged them to take advantage of the opportunity provided to them by USAID-LEGIT in order to put into practice issues of Social Inclusion in services delivery.

In other remarks, Mr. K. Dadda Pay-Bayee, a representative from the Bong County Superintendent’s Office also expressed his appreciation to USAID-LEGIT for affording them such an opportunity to gain knowledge on Gender awareness and Social Inclusion.

He also conveyed the Superintendent’s regret for not being able to attend the opening ceremony of the two day program due to circumstances beyond her control.

For his part the USAID LEGIT Monitoring Evaluation and Learning Manager Mr. George Tee Forpoh provided an overview of the LEGIT Project. During his deliberation, he said LEGIT seeks to strengthen the government policy on decentralization by promoting the tenets of transparency, effectiveness and accountability of government resources at the sub national level. 

He further expressed that the LEGIT project has four components; to work with Ministry of Internal Affairs and Governance Commission to help strengthen the government decentralization program, to strengthen the county governments in order to enhance their capacity in local governance, to strengthen city authorities in providing quality services for city residents and lastly to work with civil society and community based organizations in demanding quality services from city and county authorities through the utilization of social audit tools. 

 Lastly Mr. Forpoh ended by saying that LEGIT operates in three counties and cities namely Bong County- Gbarnga city, Nimba County- Gompa City and Grand Gedeh-Zwedru City. He also stressed that this training specifically focuses on components three and four of the USAID-LEGIT project in Liberia. 

During the first day of the training, facilitator Jenna Luche-Thayer orientated participants to the training environment. The first presentation of the training focused on an introduction to Social Inclusion & Gender Awareness & Appreciative Inquiry, while the last presentation concentrated on the Introduction of Decentralization providing case studies.

The essence of the training is to familiarize participants with the methods and approaches for social inclusion and gender mainstreaming and also to impart in the participants the necessary skills and practical aspects on social inclusion relative to the implementation of social inclusion & Gender mainstreaming.

The two-day capacity training of trainers for CSOs, CBOs, the counties and cities and LEGIT stakeholders will end on May 26, 2017.