⇒ Our work and core competency ⇐

1. We Develop civic education materials /or quality information and make them accessible to our beneficiaries and stakeholders.

  •  We summarize and translate for instance the transitional constitution, Local Government Act and other relevant legislations and distribute to public information centres,
  •  We also develop easy read materials, understandable for illiterate people, on topics concerning democracy, good governance and human rights and make these materials accessible to grass root communities during our dialogues, (interface) meetings, debates and lectures.

2. We Strengthen CSO’s Forums

  • We support the monthly Civil Society Organizations Forum meetings since 2012 in Yei. It’s a forum that brings together over 20 Civil Society groups of different capacities to discuss issues, share experience and learning and proactively engage in community work. In the coming years we aspire to strengthen the existing network via training on human rights monitoring, documentation and reporting; advocacy, networking and alliance building; and information management and sharing system.

3. We Organize participatory activities

We have a number of activities that benefit the community and the government. These include the following;

1. Dialogues/debates

A relevant topic will be chosen by the community or schools as the topic of the debate and discussed in relation to the constitution, governance and accountability. The objective is to engage participants in having a discussion, sharing viewpoints and opinions to the issues in question either by having opposing parties or by having a panel. An actionable position paper is thereafter developed and shared widely with all stakeholders.

2. Interface meetings

CEDED creates forums that brings on board local government duty bearers including members of parliament and the local community on board to interact freely amongst themselves on a specific issue or topic. This is aimed at enhancing transparency and accountability.

3. Conferences

CEDED organizes Constitutional review conferences, peace conferences and many other conferences on critical issues. This is to give local communities the platform to deliberate on key issues of concern. Resource persons with vast experience are usually invited to take part in the conference and equally respond to questions that will be raised by the participants.

4. Democracy Bus

Democracy Bus is a combination of different creative and innovative methodologies of giving out basic information on democracy, good governance and human rights. The main aim of the Democracy Bus is to create a participatory, innovative, inclusive, informative, entertaining and engaging event through which people are encouraged to reflect on and discuss the importance of promotion and respect of human rights, democracy and good governance, as well as taking responsibility as democratic citizens.

The democracy bus started touring in 2010 focusing on educating voters for the first ever democratic elections. It has proven the credibility and ability of CEDED in mobilizing the community to undertake the role of building and participating in the democratic processes taking place in South Sudan.

The bus tours for 3 weeks. Civic educators are identified from local communities and receive training. The educators visits different Payams and Bomas and sensitize communities on issues like the content of the transitional constitution and participatory governance and accountability. Different participatory methodologies are used: forum theatre, debate cards, information stands.

5. Planning sessions/Payam development plans,

The Local Government Act supports participation of citizens in planning processes. This is a way to promote ownership of plans and influencing of decision making at the lower levels. However, planning has remained a function of the executive with little or no involvement of the councillors who are community representatives. CEDED aims to make sure that community priorities are included in the development plans, annual plans and budgets of the County by organizing planning sessions and engaging community members at Payam level. This way they can identify their own priorities and translate them into the Payam development plan and the annual plan and budget which are used as reference documents for development

4.      We conduct open Cluster Meetings 

We get involved in cluster meetings for different purposes which include

⇒    Celebrate Democracy Day

The United Nations declared September 15th as the International Democracy Day and it is celebrated all over the world. CEDED takes the lead in organizing these celebrations since 2010 in Yei River county. In such celebrations governance issues are gathered a plenary session is devoted to these issues. Engagement between legislatures or members of the executive body and community members is promoted. Also on this day CEDED advocates

⇒    Conduct exchange visits.

The exchange visits are part of our events we undertake. It involves a group of community representatives or leaders with huge influence selected to take part in learning outside the constituency of those selected representatives.  The exchange visits intends to enable exchange of ideas, knowledge, experience and best practices. This exchange visits have benefited the women leaders and councilors in our areas of operations.