Resounding turn-up for training

The second quarter citizen journalism training roared into life with record turn-out as more and more women begin to understand the nature of our work and see the essence of exercising their communication rights.

Our two previous training sessions had 17 and 19 participants respectively. This time the number has shot up to 28, surpassing our capacity of 16 participants per session by almost half. The sudden increase in participants has had a strain on the limited resources available for the training.

Thanks to the commitment of members of staff who have sacrificed to work overtime, all the participants have managed to take the first step into the journey of generating their own user friendly content, own and control the media and express their legitimate viewpoints in a language they understand and in formats they can use. This training will enable participants not only to seek, receive and impart, but to listen and being heard, understand, learn, create and respond.

The training borrows from the 2003 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Declaration of Principles which calls for the building of a people-centred, inclusive and development oriented Information Society where everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge, enabling individuals, communities and people to achieve their full potential in promoting their sustainable development and improving their quality of life premised on the purposes and principles of the United Nations and respecting fully and upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

For 21 days, participants in the training will embark on an epic journey and encounter new technologies. They will open their new email accounts, a first time experience for a majority of the women. They will also learn how to tell their own stories and how to post these stories on a blog. The participants will produce a community newsletter that contains stories about them by them.

As we take these women and girls on their journey, there has been a flurry of requests by other women, girls and men who want to take part in the training. The third quarter training is almost fully booked and new dates for the fourth quarter training will be availed before the end of the second quarter.

 

CCCD launches new brand

The Creative Centre for communication and Development (CCCD) has assumed a new face after unveiling a new logo and launching a new website.

The new look logo has already received widespread thumps-up from our beneficiaries who say the logo reflects the nature of our work and is easy to comprehend. The logo features the organisation’s abbreviation; CCCD and two people with heads together to represent CCCD working closely with the community for a common developmental goal. The colour contrast represents our cultural tolerance and diversity. The gold colour shows our warmth, power, love, value, hope and strength. The black represents the awakening of the sleeping giants in the community.

The new website, www.cccdzim.org features in-depth information about our history, our work, projects implemented and images. The website is the window into the plans, hopes, and achievements of the Creative Centre for Communication and Development and a pointer to the journey we have travelled to be where we are today.

Through these developments, CCCD wishes to be more visible so as to reach the local and global community. The impacts of these developments have been instant. We were all excited that soon after launching our Facebook account, we got a message from Sahni Neelam who is based in India. She was interested by our work and requested information on how she can contribute to the development of the organization.

We will continue to embrace new technologies and use them effectively to change the lives of women and girls that we work with.

CCCD winds up a highly successful campaign

It has been 12 month roller-coaster voyage. We emerged from our humble domain with gusto and established ourselves as one of the pillars of support to hundreds of women and girls in Bulawayo North district.   

As the curtain finally comes down on the institutional capacity development support project that was funded by the African Women Development Fund (AWDF) in June 2012, we stand with our heads held high and proud of our achievements.

It all started with a simple email from the AWDF that we received in one of the congested internet cafés in downtown Bulawayo city in June 2012. The email carried the good tidings that AWDF had approved a USD20.000 request from CCCD for institutional development. Since then, we have been growing from one level to another and in the process establishing ourselves as one of the fastest growing community based organizations in the Bulawayo Metropolitan province.

The grant enabled us to secure office space at one of the most strategic positions in our area of operation. Soon after securing the office space, we embarked on a mission to put in place the necessary infrastructure relevant for the exercise that we wanted to fulfill. We also secured a state of the art communication system that has made internet cafés a thing of the past. We have proper office desks, chairs and computers that are coveted by colleagues who visit us.

The funding also enabled us to institute mission-driven staff development, strengthen governance measures, institute appropriate organisational management systems and strengthen gender and Information and Communication Technologies advocacy. The recent re-branding exercise that saw the organization assuming a new corporate logo and launching a website is an icing to the cake. Our presence on the World Wide Web also saw us launching a Facebook account which already has more than 80 likes.

As the curtain comes down on the project, CCCD is now firmly positioned and her impact felt. We are geared to move from our roots in Bulawayo North district to touch the lives of women and girls in the greater Bulawayo Metropolitan province and beyond.

We are proud of our association with the African Women Development Fund and we thank them for their investment in the work that we do.