Lambassa ICA Benin - ICA International

Lambassa ICA Benin

Membership Status: Statutory member

Activity	Description
Water and sanitation	ICA Benin has started with advocacy for water access to communities in the region of Donga. As member of End Water Poverty, ICA Benin does mobilize civil society organizations to celebrate the World Water Day, every 22 March since 2008. On June of the same year, our organization had represented Benin’s CSOs to African CSOs meeting held in Charm El Cheick (Egypt) prior to African Union Summit, which was focused on water and sanitation. ICA Benin has prepared and participated to feasibility studies for a national project on the human right to water and sanitation in Benin in 2009. These studies were initiated by the Holland’s ministry of Foreign Affairs and implemented by two international NGOs: COHRE (Switzerland) and Both ENDS (Holland). From 2013 to 2014, ICA Benin has implemented two projects focused on water and sanitation in the region of Donga: the first was entitled: “CSOs sensitization on the human right to water and sanitation” and the second:”Capacity Building for Safe Water Consumers’ Associations” for all the four districts of Donga. These projects have been funded by Both ENDS. In 2013, ICA Benin had initiated a national network of NGOs working on water and sanitation to promote human right to water and sanitation. This network is already active and on last December, End Water Poverty had accepted to support a national workshop for its members. From February to November 2014, our organization was selected with two others to contribute to nationwide feasibility studies for decentralized cooperation on water and sanitation for local governments (districts) of Benin. This project was supported by the Town of Geneva and UNDP. In order to contribute to cholera’s reduction in the town of Djougou, we have initiated a sensitization event on November 2014, with the support of ministry of health and the local government of Djougou.
Youth Initiatives	We do care for children through schools: safe water, hands washing campaigns, nutritional initiatives, child trafficking fighting and sexual abuse. a)- Mobilization against HIV AIDS Participating in a national NGOs coalition on the leading of PLAN Benin, our organization was granted the coordination of the region of Donga. Our mission consisted of teachers and youth volunteers training in HIV AIDS fighting within schools. Among the topics were preventions initiatives, care for positive persons, struggle against the marginalization of positive persons and sexual violence in schools. This project involved at least 2300 students within the four districts of Donga b) Births limitation initiatives In Benin, births are not controlled. So, every person is free to get the number of children he wishes. In rural areas and slums of big towns, it is possible to discover families with more than fifteen children. This situation increases poverty and doesn’t enable these children to benefit of their rights like school attending and wellbeing. c) Community’s mobilization for children sending to school In the regions of Donga and Atacora, children trafficking are an dangerous phenomenon. Children are living schools and went to big towns of Benin or Nigeria, hoping to become rich. This situation is organized by some people who propose money and gifts to their parents. Thus they take away small boys and girls. Finally these children come back with empty hands and as they are already great, it’s not possible for them to return to school. In order to contribute to this situation reducing ICA Benin has organized several sensitizations within five villages of Donga on August and September 2014. We have involved teachers, community members, law makers and traditional leaders.
Trees planting campaign	From 2008 to 2010 our organization has participated to UNEP global campaign for trees planting in Benin. Primary schools and based communities has been mobilized for this initiative and at least 320.000 trees planted.
Agriculture	Our organization became member of Huairou Commission in 2009 and since this date, we still participating to all the events initiated by this network towards women in the World. We have participated to several workshops organized by this network in Africa: 2009 in Ghana and Lesotho; 2010 in Zambia; 2011 in Tanzania and Kenya; 2012 in Nigeria. All these workshops are organized through a regional network called «Women Land Link Africa WLLA”. On the ground, at least height cooperatives have been created in order to help women groups involved in these initiatives to get financial power to buy lands, secure them and then use them for their living conditions improvement. Also, training sessions have been organized to help women to claim their rights to land access and decisions ‘makers for awareness purpose.