ADEL treads new ground

ADEL treads new ground:

ADEL-Sofala in Mozambique has embraced the new programmatic approach in the partnership with SustainableEnergy and is changing their way of working. ADEL has many years of experience working directly with communities on economic development, environmental protection and promotion of technologies, but they are now in the process of changing their emphasis.

ADEL has three specific projects today where lobbying and advocacy are the main components. Rodolfo Assane, coordinator in ADEL, explains: “Different from promoting technologies, the new approach is making it possible to find specific obstacles in the development process, and with those findings, not only ADEL is working to bring up the solutions, but all are collaborating with us. That didn’t happen before on the scale we witness now.” ADEL experiences positive responses on the new approach from universities, other NGOs and government entities.

The biggest of the new advocacy projects involves Local Natural Resource Committees where ADEL assists government entities and communities so that government plans will better reflect the realities of the communities and that the communities are better informed of these plans and better equipped to monitor their implementation. “We are working much closer to government entities now, and we are achieving confidence within them to involve communities in the monitoring of community plans”, Rodolfo says.