Strengthening local impact in realization of SDG in Afghanistan
With the support of CAID, the Afghan Women’s Educational Center arranged a workshop titled “Strengthening local impact in realization of Sustainable Development Goals in Afghanistan” on 14 February 2019. The workshop was attended by seven program managers (including three women) of seven NGO’s from various backgrounds and provinces including, Afghan government as member of the UN family has aligned to Global Sustainable Goals. Afghanistan has divided the 17 goals into 8-socio-economic sectors which includes Security Sector, Education Sector, Health Sector, Governance Sector, Infrastructure Sector, Social Protection Sector, Agriculture and Rural Dev. Sector and Economic Sector to simplify planning and implementation process for the respective line ministries and agencies. According to Afghanistan SDG report1Afghan government considers civil society as vital partner to full fill the these international commitment.
One of the important request of nationalization is localization at the provincial level and community level where role of civil society is essential. As SDG is new area, AWEC is one of CAID partner has took lead in mutual learning and coordination which is key essence of SDG goals as launched a workshop in Kabul and have invited ministry of MoEc and ACBAR (ngo coordinating body) to participate. ACBAR networking member Mr.Jawid joined, despite of warm and enthusiastic response from minister of Economy the minister rep was not able to join as government staff were off due sodden national mourning holiday due to former president’s death.
The workshop started with a detailed presentation by the consultant about Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and Afghanistan SDG’s. The attendees were also exposed to learn about the current standing of Afghanistan-SDGs nationalization, alignment and implementation. The consultant also focused on the importance and impact of how and why the NGO should formulate its strategic plan according to the A-SDG(s).
The consultant approach was to engage the program managers in a robust discussion about the SDGs and it turned out very fruitful. All managers shared their personnel perspective about Afghanistan SDGs and stressed that more of such workshops shall be held. The program managers stated that shall they plan to conduct any event pertinent to the SDG will the consultant and AWEC leadership attend?
Furthermore, a video was played about Afghanistan SDG’s to further visually engage the participant and share their reflections.To expand and practice their knowledge about SDG’s the participants worked on individual exercise titled ‘Program alignment of NGO with ASDG’ which in fact proved as a very useful tool to pragmatically practice what they learned.Prior to the commencement of the workshop a pre-test was taken and once the workshop was over a post-test was also taken to assess how much the participant gained from the workshop.
