TRANSPARENCY International-Rwanda was voted best organisation to come up with initiatives that promote good governance in the country.
TRANSPARENCY International-Rwanda was voted best organisation to come up with initiatives that promote good governance in the country.It emerged best among 13 non-profit organisations in a competition that was organised by the Rwanda Governance Board (RGB).All competing organisations were last year given financial support of up to Rwf 8 million each by RGB to come up with programmes of their choice that they thought could promote good governance. According to the Transparency Rwanda chairperson, Immaculee Ingabire, they chose to set up suggestion boxes at all sector offices where the population could channel complaints about poor service delivery from local leaders. "We realised that people were not willing to openly provide information especially about services offered by local leaders,” said Ingabire. She explained that the mechanism has provided a lot of information regarding people’s` perception of local leaders` service delivery."It’s on this basis that we started advocacy considering a wide range of issues from the population to make sure that good governance is extended to all Rwandans,” she said.Other organisations that were recognised were COPORWA, which supports vulnerable groups generate income through pottery and Isango Star, a local radio station.Speaking during the awarding ceremony, the CEO of RGB, Prof. Anastase Shyaka, said ranking of the organisations was based on three basic aspects;It involved impact assessment of the programme in terms of benefiting the community, capacity to sensitise or create public awareness about programmes in line with public service delivery, and reaching out to a large population."Based on the just concluded exercise, if we build the capacity of Civil Society Organisations, they are capable of effectively contributing to national development,” said Shyaka.He added that his institution would involve more organisations in the next exercise given the availability funds.