Global Center for Civic Education (GCCE) is a grass root Civil Society Organization (CSO) that was founded in 2013 by a group of marginalized communities from Northern Kenya. It aims at empowering vulnerable groups and ethnic communities to realize their governance and development rights. Its head office is in Wajir Town –Wajir County, and has currently established a new branch in Garissa County, in the Republic of Kenya.
As an organization, GCCE was first formed as a Community Based Organization to advocate for socio-economic rights of the marginalized groups and communities in former Wajir East and South Districts. With time, GCCE expanded its geographical coverage; with a special focus on the Northern part of Kenya and now covers the counties of Wajir, Garissa and Tana River. GCCE has since been legally registered as a Non-Governmental Organization.
Vision
A sustained socio-economic and political empowerment of the vulnerable communities with established vibrant and tolerant Kenyan democracy, where people understand their rights and responsibilities and participate actively in all spheres of life.
Mission
To initiate and support programmes working towards promoting the principles of democracy, human rights and good governance based on best policy practice and in line with Sustainable Development Goals
Core Values:
o Professionalism.
o Transparency and accountability.
o Integrity.
o Social transformation and justice.
o Team work.
o Gender equality.
o Solidarity.
o Transformative leadership.
Strategic objectives
To boost the capacity of citizen groups to demand for their rights.
To facilitate emergence of inclusive and responsive services delivery culture among national and county governments in Kenya.
To contribute towards the realization of the effective decentralization of power under devolved government in Kenya.
To build GCCE’s internal capacities.
The Mandate of GCCE is to empower vulnerable groups through training, advocacy, networking and linkages in areas of human and constitutional rights, cultural heritage and equitable distribution of resources.
Beneficiaries of GCCE include disadvantaged ethnic minorities such as women, youth, children, displaced persons and the poor in general.
In terms of governance, GCCE has two major structures namely the Management Board (MB), which makes policies and sets operation systems for the organization. The members of this board (who are 9 in number (5 men, 4 women) are elected from among the community members served by GCCE. Below the MB is the Secretariat which has the Management Team (MT) and various cadres of staff.The Secretariat is charged with the implementation of the policies and programmes, and the running of the organization on a day to day basis.
The organization implements its mandates though well calculated collaboration with other like-minded organizations and hence GCCE is a voting member of CIVICUS, the World Alliance for civic participation, an international alliance of members and partners which constitutes an influential network organizations at local, national, regional and international level, and spans the spectrum of civil society, and the Social Audit Learning Platform (SALG) a network of CSO’s promoting social accountability and management of decentralized funds in Kenya.
Key Focus Areas:
In the current strategic plans (2017-2021), the organization will focus its financial and technical resources in four thematic areas namely;
Governance Programme whose objective is to promote devolution public participation, and issue-based decision-making processes in the devolved system of government.
Human Rights and Access to Justice Programme whose objective is to facilitate vulnerable and marginalized groups and communities to access justice and secure their rights through provisions in the Constitutions.
Partnership, Networking and Knowledge Management programme which is aimed at promoting synergy and leverage with other sector actors in delivering the organization’s mandate.
Organizational Development Programme whose focus is to build the internal capacity of the organization to adopt and apply Result Based Management in her work and adhere to the government laid down regulations.
The core problem that GCCE is trying to address in our society is the low capacity of the marginalized and vulnerable groups to engage with and participate in the decision making processes around the constitutional reform agenda and the development process in general.
The Constitution of Kenya 2010 provides for a devolved system of governance. However, devolution like other forms of decentralization does not automatically lead to improved governance and economic performance. For instance, devolution may lead to the capture of local governments by the political elites, especially if devolution rules and systems are not well designed, and hence allow the local politicians to use the local resources to consolidate their support and hold onto political power through patronage.
By moving all decisions further out from the national limelight, devolution risks permitting greater levels of corruption and mismanagement of resources. This is prevalent where community members lack awareness as to their roles and capacity to claim their rights. The risk of corruption is higher in the absence of mechanisms to enable the community to effectively monitor and evaluate the usage of the devolved funds that go hand in hand with devolution. This is exactly the situation that the people of Wajir, Tana River and Garissa Counties are likely to find themselves in if nothing is done to empower them on the already established county governments.
The root causes of the low capacity for engagement among the marginalized and vulnerable groups include lack of political goodwill from the elites who control the power for societal decision making. There has been historical injustices and exclusion of minority communities by successive governments from colonial times to date. The communities themselves are faced with lack of awareness on the constitution, legal and developmental frameworks hence are unable to claim their rights. There is generally poor governance practice among state and non state organizations. The policies for rural development such as the CDF Act, are not pro-poor and hence not supportive to the emancipation of the marginalized and vulnerable. This is further complicated by the fairly entrenched public apathy to injustices.
Some of the side effects of this low capacity of the marginalized and vulnerable communities to participate in decision making and claiming their rights have been; negative ethnicity, spiraling poverty, corruption and wastage of public resources; inequitable development, high prevalence of human rights abuses, impunity and lawlessness.
