Nana Asantewaa Afadzinu, Executive Director, WASCI
A conference has been held to bring Civil Society Organizations and charities up to speed with modern technological tools and products to help them improve their work and also keep up with a fast-paced global environment.
The event, which was held last Thursday at the British Council In Accra, was organized by West Africa Civil Society Institute, (WASCI) with support from TECHSOUP-Africa and MICROSOFT corporation.
According to Ms. Asentewaa Afadzinu, Executive Director of WASCI, the conference was organized for civil societies and NGOs to learn about ways to use technology to efficiently and effectively meet their goals and increase their impact on society.
“This is a programme put together to help nonprofits engage new technologies to address challenges and operate effectively to increase and measure their impact on society” she said.
She added that changing global trends coupled with diminishing resources for nonprofits in recent times, made it more important for them to engage best practice in running their organizations.
Ms. Afadzinu announced that her outfit was working together with TECHSOUP and MICROSOFT to donate these products to nonprofits at discounted prices, by way of helping augment their efforts towards societal development.
She called on CSOs and NGOS in the country to employ technologies that help them make the most of their limited resources.
Participants were drawn from various Civil Society Organizations and charities across Ghana, and were taken through some hours of presentations and discussion sessions.
Some of the products and tools presented included: Microsoft’s Azure, Power BI and office 365, all of which are management tools said to be reputedly effective tools peculiarly designed for nonprofit organizations.
Some participants, who were interviewed at the end of the conference, expressed their elation, saying the session was beneficial to them, having exposed them to useful, cost-effective technologies for enhancing their operations.
Louise Renaud, a French social worker, who participated in the conference, told this reporter how useful she found the session. Ms. Renaud, who represented ‘, Maata-N-Tudu, an organization that provides microcredit and specialized human rights initiatives for women in northern Ghana, said her organization most needed such softwares to improve their work.
“I attended this event in search of tools to improve our organization’s work, and I found the session very useful, as I have been informed about tools and products that I otherwise did not know about”, she noted
Surveys suggest that nonprofits the world over, are facing a time of extraordinary change. This is not just about fitting in to a rapidly changing international environment or the impact of global trends, but also in the way they work and are structured, as well as their relationship with partner NGOs and funders overseas.
