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Forum was formed in 1997, to create a 'broad-based' national body for NGOs to come together in their diversity, in pursuit of a collective agenda of engagement with government and other development actors.
It was meant as an inclusive national platform for NGOs to think and strategies on matters of mutual interest and, with increasing interest, especially from districts, it became a membership organization. Despite tumultuous early years when the Forum's registration was delayed because of mistrust from the relevant authorities, we finally got registered with the NGO Board in 2001 and have since grown in strength and membership. From fewer than 50 members in 2001, we counted more than 400 members drawn from NGOs working in Uganda - local, national NGOs/NGO networks and international NGOs - by the end of 2007. With its stated object of 'harnessing civil society's collective potential', the NGO Forum brand name has continued to attract interest from the NGO fraternity (including non members), the government and the donor community.
The NGO Forum became a vital contributor to, and in some cases driver of, several collective efforts to improve its internal and external perception, through initiatives like the NGO Minimum Agenda, the NGO Quality Assurance Certification Mechanism (QuAM)
and other civil society coalitions. We also became an important focal point for collective efforts to influence the policies and practices of government and with this came more demands to venture into policy advocacy, capacity building, policy research, NGO mobilisation and coordination.
The NGO Forum was thus instrumental in the multistakeholder Structural Adjustment Participatory Review Initiative (SAPRI) between 1997 and 1999, it became a front runner in the NGO sector's campaign for a facilitative operating environment, especially between 1999 and 2005 when NGOs sought to influence the 2001 NGO Registration (Amendment) Act. We also played a leading role in coordinating the participation of civil society in the PEAP revision exercise of 2003/04 and other policy processes thereafter.
By 2006, the NGO Forum had thus become an important voice for CSOs in Uganda. With increasing demand for our leadership in policy advocacy and other mainstream NGO programming areas, however, our focus and identity were challenged. With a lean human resource base, some initiatives that Forum steered were slow and not taken to their logical end. We came to be seen as too inward looking and without sufficient focus on the 'bigger picture'. By getting too embroiled in technocratic policy processes, our agenda also became too state-centric and dependent, leading to a perception that the Forum was being progressively co-opted and serving government and donor agenda at the expense of its primary constituency, NGOs and the people they serve.
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David Idoru 20 Apr 2012 Hits:152 Newsflash
