Charles Kaduwa

Charles did his  Masters in Development Studies in Baraton University,Kenya and  is a development practitioner, sociologist by training and a person committed to social work equity. He  worked as a Program Manager for close to 15 years guiding interventions at the community level, working to raise resources needed, implementing programs, monitoring and evaluating and now training. In trainings, he has engaged with development workers from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia Sudan and Somalia, mainly through trainings he has conducted on project management, proposal writing/fundraising, monitoring and evaluation.

His thoughts on resource mobilization
Development organizations are in the business of identifying community and or social challenges that affect people (problem), developing interventions/responses to counter those challenges (project design), cost those responses (budget) and effectively intervene (implementation). These responses therefore require specific inputs (resources) for them to be carried out (activities), thus the perennial need for organizations to continuously be on the resource mobilization work.

Conventionally, development programs have used proposal writing as the mainstay of their fundraising work, developing and submitting proposals to prospective agencies that would provide the resources (funds) they need. Consequently, there have been efforts to improve on this strategy through proposal writing workshops. In my view, proposal writing is just one of the strategies organizations will use to tap into resources they need. Conversely, funds are just one of the many resources we need to run our programs. We cannot therefore do better for ourselves and our organizations by just looking into proposal writing as our only way. Indeed, there are several other avenues and strategies we could effectively utilize in pursuit of resources our programs need.

When we look at the complexity of inputs our programs require to deliver on the set objectives, we realize that we may not do justice to this scenario by just looking at proposal writing skills. Ideally, programs and their managers require skills on resource mobilization. Resource mobilization is a wide area that looks at what resources exist in our respective communities/country/Globe, internal and external factors that enhance or inhibit our chances of getting the resources and the strategies for tapping into them. A workshop on resource mobilization will therefore be more ideal in enabling organizations to strategically position themselves for progress and sustainability.