I write with some sadness. After 13 consecutive academies and conferences, we are compelled to take a year’s break. There is no money for CPRsouth in 2019.
IDRC continues to value our work; but changed priorities (no longer is “future leaders” a thing) means that they did not allocate funding for us this year. Given my time constraints, I could only try for a single funder who would pick up the core funding including travel. We tried Facebook but were not successful. Pirongrong worked to raise local contributions and ESCAP was on board (both these may be reactivated for 2020). But no core funding for travel in place, we decided to shift our focus to 2020.
We used the money that remained from Maputo (because of the rather significant contribution from Facebook and good financial management) to develop material that we will use to campaign for funding by IDRC or another entity for activities in 2020. These include stories of young CPRsouth alumni who have used their membership in our community to become effective policy-influencers in their countries/regions. We will soon have a series of short videos along these lines as well.
IDRC, who has supported us through over a decade, expect that the window may reopen in 2020. But if we care about this enterprise, we must diversify our funding. The raw material is in the attached technical report and annexes as well as in the videos and narratives of those who have been through the program. Let us use this break to put CPRsouth on a stable path, ideally with Asian and African sources playing an increasingly significant role.
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