Africa-Press – Tanzania. A TOTAL of 130 local civil society organisations (CSOs) will benefit from 7bn/- funding from the Foundation for Civil Society (FCS) to undertake projects in supporting the country’s implementation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The foundation’s funding to the organisations comes after it received grants from the Danish Embassy in Tanzania that on Wednesday granted 1.6bn/- additional funds for the purpose. The additional funds bring the total of the Danish Embassy’s financing to the FCS to approximately 4.4bn/- for the year 2021.
Funds received will enable the FCS to continue delivering grants and capacity building services to civil society organisations across the country to implement projects across Mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar. According to FCS’s Executive Director Francis Kiwanga, the grants are aimed at making local government authorities (LGAs) to become more responsive and improve their delivery of education, health, water and agriculture-related services.
The funding will also help them in fighting gender-based violence and enhancing the inclusion of women, youth and people with disabilities; improving disabled people and young people’s access to funds and other resources to engage in economic activities; increasing women’s access to land rights; and supporting initiatives working towards peace building and conflict management.
The agreement for the additional grants from the Embassy was signed on Wednesday in Dar es Salaam between the Danish Ambassador to Tanzania, Ms Mette Nørgaard Dissing-Spandet and Mr Kiwanga. The Ambassador DissingSpandet said that the funding is part of Denmark’s commitment to promote good governance and human rights in Tanzania, values that are critical in enabling socio-economic transformation and improving lives.
“The partnership with FCS will complement efforts to enable citizens to become key driving forces to positively influence democratic governance in Tanzania and improve the quality of their own lives,’’ said Ambassador DissingSpandet.
She also said that, the grant will support FCS in building a vibrant civil society as the sector is a key to achieving Tanzania’s development agenda, democracy and poverty reduction.
“A vibrant civil society ensures that millions of poor people, including women, youth and people living with disabilities, get a voice and play a central role in furthering their political, social, and economic rights,” she added.
Mr Kiwanga explained that in 2020, the FCS interventions were implemented widely across the country. The projects reached out to more than 350,000 people. With the given additional funding, the FCS is expected to deepen the impact of its work.
Speaking about some achievements, he said, in the past five years the foundation has managed to reach more than 5 million people countrywide in efforts to empower them towards democratic and inclusive governance. For instance, its social accountability projects have enabled citizens to monitor 945 public projects worth about 312bn/-.
“Our livelihoods programs have resulted into the release by municipals of 406m/- and 6.34bn/- loans to support the livelihoods of people with disabilities (PWDs) and youth respectively,” he said.
Furthermore the Foundation enabled the reporting of about 8,887 cases of gender based violence (GBV) and thus facilitated the delivery of justice to thousands of women and girls in the country.
