The NGO Coalition of Liberia on Thursday, August 23, 2018 inducted new core of officers to stair the affairs of the office for the next 2 years.
The induction ceremony took place at the offices of Volunteer Partnership Agreement (VPA) SU, Conference Hall located between 16th& 15th streets, Sinkor.
Head of VPA Support Unit Abraham Guillen performed the induction ceremony on behalf of the European Union Delegation. Those inducted include Samuel K. D. Kwennah (Chairman), Dominic Johns (Co-Chairman), Amos Kanneh (Secretary), C. Abayomi Cole III (National Facilitator) and Yudeh F. Blamoh (Interim Finance Officer).
Performing the induction ceremony, Abraham Guillen admonished the new leadership to work together in moving the Coalition forward. “The NGO Coalition must works together in demonstrating that is representing the voice of the aggregate”, Guillen emphasized.
The head of VPA Support Unit told the new officer that his experience in other regions is that, one single organization cannot make a difference, but the aggregate of all their peers with similar objective is what that keep them strong.
According to him, the NGO Coalition has moved forward into learning how to incorporate new members and has established itself into defining its role, adding, defining a road is not easy for an NGO Coalition because each member organizations is having different opportunity and different mission.
“The NGO Coalition is supposed to represent the strength of all its member organizations. And that is one of the values the NGO coalition brings”, he said.
He called on the new management team to help make the new government understand what civil society is and what it can do best to enhance progress in the management of the country’s natural resources.
Mr. Guillen said the NGO Collation is not an empty house, buta house full of everyonethat needs the participation of every member organization.
He urged them to define the role of the Coalition from individual member’s organizations, stressing that,this is important because NGO Coalition is supposed to add value and guidance to the rest.
You are supposed to convene and agree on common issues with common voice and bring to the attention of not only the government but the international community, issues affecting the natural resource sector of Liberia”, Abraham Guillen noted.
Speaking on behalf of the new leadership, the head of the new management team Mr. Samuel K. D. Kwennah promised to uphold the confidence reposed in them by their colleagues, and will work to foster the agenda of the organization in a transparency manner.
He assured their colleagues that the new leadership will not betray them, but will continue to work assiduously hard to build a stronger NCL during their tenure. Mr. Kwennah paid tribute to the founding fathers of the NGO Coalition for their farsightedness in establishing a group that seeks to campaign for the inclusion of natural resource and human rights on the agenda of the Accra Peace Agreement (CPA).
This campaign, he said succeeded in ensuring that CPA incorporated the natural resource and human rights issues as a major agenda with the view of ensuring that legal reforms were carried out to protect the rights of citizens and guarantee proper management of the sector in the interest of all Liberians.
“Looking back over the last 15 years, a lot has been done to achieve both individually and collectively by members of the NCL”, the NCL Chairman recounted.
The soft talking executive of the NGO Coalition record the imposition of UN Security Council Sanctions on the exportation of all Liberian timbers in 2003 pending a comprehensive reform of Liberia’s forest sector as one of the major milestone achievements for the NCL.