The Community Land Project Program (CLPP) of the Sustainable Development Institute (SDI) has conducted a day-long capacity-building training for 32 local authorities, traditional leaders (paramount chiefs, clan chiefs, and general town chiefs), ICC, women and youth leaders, and animators.
The training took place at the newly furbished NGO Center situated in Yarpah Town, Rivercess County on August 2, 2024. The participants were selected from three communities including Dowein, Kahnweh, and Wheasay communities that have completed the Community Self-identification (CSI) process under Phase II of the three (3) years project supported by International Land and Tenure Facility under the titled: “Keeping the Promise.”
Participants were introduced to the methodology and steps for the development of community bylaws using the Liberia Land Authority (LLA) community bylaws development template. The team also trained the participants in community-friendly processes that guided them in the collection of individual town traditional rules and laws.
Participants gained knowledge in the formation of the Community Land Development and Management Committee (CLDMC). The CLDMC is a body that will be set up to manage the day-to-day activities of customary land as enshrined in the 2018 Land Rights Act of Liberia. The team went through a mock exercise of community development meeting with the participants. A one-month work plan was developed to guide the animators and local leaders to organize community meetings to develop the first draft of the bylaws. Articles 35 &36 of the 2018 Land Rights Act provide guidelines and steps that communities can follow to organize, govern, and manage their customary land in a collective form and manner. At the close of the training, the animators and community traditionally developed a work plan. The plan was to be used by the individual community to formulate the first draft bylaw.
The SDI Finance Manager and the Project Finance Officer did a joint presentation on best and easy-to-understand financial request preparation and reporting. The dual also trained the particularly, the animators and mobilizers in accountability and transparency. Forms for preparing field requests and reports were distributed to the animators and mobilizers. The animators and mobilizers are leading community-level activity implementation of the project across the communities.
SDI’s team that visited the communities said “The workshop provided a valuable platform for knowledge sharing, networking, and capacity building. We look forward to seeing the impact of this training on the participant's work in the future.”
Following the training, the SDI team held a day work session with the local authority including past and current township commissioners and youth leaders of Yarpah to put in place a management plan for the newly constructed SDI NGO Center. It can be recorded that over some years ago, the people of the township donated a parcel of land to SDI for the construction of a facility that can be used for the benefit of both the community and SDI and other civil society and organizations working in the region.
In closing the three days’ activities, the SDI team comprising both program and finance paid a site visit to one of the communities (Doewien) to have an experience about the community makeup and also provide on-the-ground support to animators and mobilizers in the facilitation of their town level awareness meeting.
The visit provided the finance colleagues an opportunity to have an understanding of the meeting. The team also used the visit to initiate discussions about boundary negotiation and memorandum of understanding signing between neighboring communities including the introduction of the governance process, on the bylaw’s creation template writing of the town