Nairobi, November 17, 2020 at the Strathmore Business School (SBS), 40 trainees successfully graduated with a certificate in Public Policy Making Processes (PPMP). First of its kind, the PPMP was designed and delivered by Global Communities’ USAID-funded CLEAR Program in collaboration with Strathmore University Business School.
The capacity-building program was created to support County Executive Committee Members (CECM), Chief Officers, County Cooperative Commissioners as well as County Cooperative Directors and Officers to increase their abilities to work with cooperative stakeholders to set the policy agendas for their counties. This PPMP 2nd cohort’s participants are drawn from county governments of Mombasa, Kilifi, Taita Taveta, Makueni, and Kericho. This follows a successful training and graduation of 55 cooperative leaders drawn from county governments of Narok, Kiambu, Nandi, Homa Bay and Nyeri.
Participants underwent 40 hours of training to enhance capacity in the areas of policy and legislative design, formulation, implementation and monitoring and evaluation; negotiation and advocacy upskilling as well as stakeholder mapping and engagement and agenda setting in the context of gender mainstreaming and cooperative development.
While delivering his keynote address, Makueni Governor, Professor Kivutha Kibwana stated: “Global Communities and Makueni County have a long-standing history of development partnership. The USAID’s CLEAR program is supporting my government in developing a sound cooperative legal framework that will create an enabling environment for cooperative businesses to thrive.” He added, “Through the PPMP training, I am convinced that the 40 cooperative officials graduating today have been equipped with the necessary skills to formulate and implement robust county-specific policies and legislation.”
Mr. Ali Noor, the Principal Secretary for the State Department of Cooperative remarked: “ We appreciate the strategic collaboration with Global Communities on the formulation and implementation of the County level cooperative policies as well as the provision of technical assistance to worker-owned and housing cooperatives in Kenya.”
The USAID/ CLEAR Program’s Chief of Party, Kristin Wilcox Feldman said: “During this critical moment in the global pandemic, uplifting the importance of socially minded businesses could not be more important. The cooperative sector in Kenya needs to respond to the call for an engaged and supportive enabling environment that allows the cooperators to ‘build back better’.” Kristin added, “Global Communities, through the CLEAR program, is proud to have such enthusiastic participation and support from the highest levels of the Kenyan counties. We believe this PPMP program is only the first step in developing future county synergies and a robust and competitive cooperative policy environment.”
The PPMP was developed after the USAID/CLEAR program conducted a baseline in 33 Kenyan counties. They survey sought critical information to better understand the status and levels of policy formulation skills, understanding and appreciation of the county officer role in creating an enabling business environment for cooperatives to thrive.The findings of the survey revealed a significant gap in stakeholder engagement, policy development, and drafting skills. Global Communities therefore went ahead to develop a Policy Legislation Affairs (PLA) strategy that would provide for a wholistic approach. This approach included the formulation and competitive bidding for a public policy making process training institution to partner with to conduct this training.
Dr. George Njenga, Dean, Strathmore Business School noted: “We are happy to partner with Global Communities to co-create and deliver the executive PPMP training which is a game-changer in cooperative policy making process by the county government.”
After this executive training course, Global Communities will be engaging with each of the participating counties to support the drafting and public commentary period of cooperative policies in order to achieve a more inclusive policy reflective of cooperative imperatives. .
For further information, please contact CLEAR’s Communications and PR Specialist, Stephine Ogutu through hellosteveogutu@gmail.com
Email
