What we do
Community Initiative Development Association
CIDA has community driven total water, sanitation and hygiene approaches which targets all the community members and household members to participate in promotion of good WASH practices. This includes tailor made menstrual hygiene for adolescent girls, safe water handling practices throughout the safe water chain, waste management at homes and public places like restaurants, market places, churches and other public gathering places.
The WASH program is quite encompassing and it has both hard ware and soft are components.
Our primary focus is to keep children in need of school till they gain an employable skill. However, we also promote non formal education for needy children, youth, women and people with disabilities through skilling using the apprenticeship approach where program beneficiaries are linked to artisans within their communities to acquire knowledge skills which can improve their livelihood.
The principal of CIDA programing unit is a household. We work to empower households to be able to support the basic needs. We do this through working with communities to identify sustainable livelihood initiatives. However, we also respond to needs of households in destitution and in emergency setting with quick in-kind items like food, shelter, among others. Households are transitioned to sustainable livelihood programs through VSLA, financial literacy, creation of green jobs, and skilling of youth through apprenticeship programs among others. As a practical measure for retention of children in schools, we also support school feeding programs.
Our core strategy on S/NFI is focus to meet the basic life-saving ES/NFI needs of affected populations due to conflict, violence or natural disasters within South Sudan. As part of an emergency response, such approaches take place in any location at short notice. The target is to reach individuals and population who are deemed the most vulnerable using both the cluster’s and CIDA’s vulnerability criteria. CIDA target newly displaced persons, protracted displaced persons, returnees and vulnerable host communities. Within these groups, the most vulnerable will be defined as those sharing limited resources, over-burdened households (especially those contributing to COVID-19 transmission), people with disability, female-headed households, pregnant and lactating females. CIDA places Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP) and protection mainstreaming at the core of all programming to ensure meaningful access to services and to protect the safety and dignity of beneficiaries.
The organization focuses in strengthening the health care system. The system strengthening approach is guided by action /implementation research on the six building blocks/pillars of the health care system as defined by WHO. The technical and unique strategies we employ include but not limited to capacity building, mentorships, computer assisted models which are responsive to the real needs of key players in provision of health services to the population. Our capacity building approaches use non interruptive techniques like use of the low dose but high frequency models for training health care workers at service points without affecting the patient/client flow and waiting time before getting the most needed health services.
CIDA also focuses her health and nutrition programing by strengthening community systems which is led by the community to innovate cost effective preventive measures using locally available resources. We strengthen collaboration between traditional health practitioners like Traditional birth attendants, cultural leaders and the biomedical health care system through referral and cross referral for management of common ailments affecting the community.
CIDA contributes towards enhancing peaceful coexistence and social cohesion among communities through establishment of peace, reconciliation and trauma healing initiatives. CIDA is also devoted in development and dissemination of peace messages to the community at the grassroots level. Through dialogue, workshop, social and media flatworms. CIDA works through community, Youth, Women, Media and Religions leaders and any other structures exists in the areas of intervention.