The WACA Senegal project recently organized a series of activities to raise awareness and revitalize the local communities in the Dakar department, in particular the local commissions in charge of managing complaints and the departmental committee in charge of Gender-Based Violence (GBV). These activities aimed at strengthening the information sharing and permanent exchange mechanism between the WACA project and the local communities covering the project's intervention areas in the Dakar department.

Similarly, it was a matter of revising the initial participatory action plan drawn up in 2020, building an updated program of activities for each of the commissions, exchanging on the possibilities of networking local complaints management commissions throughout the Dakar region, sharing the content of WACA Senegal's 2023 social communication strategy and collecting relevant opinions and suggestions to be integrated into its implementation.

The implementation of the Mechanism of Complaints Management  (MGP) and GBV committees is in line with the environmental and social safeguard operational policies of the World Bank, the main donor of the WACA project. This initiative allows beneficiaries, particularly affected people and civil society actors, to have access to an effective mechanism for recourse and diligent and confidential management of their concerns.

At the end of the various meetings, which were rich in exchanges, the actors emphasized that the approach taken by WACA Senegal strengthens the dialogue with all the actors of the project's MGP. This constitutes a factor of enrichment of the process of operational intervention of the project work in Dakar and the ownership by local communities of interventions to protect against the effects of coastal erosion.

Furthermore, the proposal to form a network of all the commissions and committees established in the department of Dakar was unanimously welcomed. It will allow an efficient collaboration between the different commissions, a quick dissemination of information and an optimal coordination of coastal protection activities in the Dakar region.

A good example of the WACA project's commitment to the participation and inclusion of local communities in coastal protection in West Africa that this awareness activity illustrates.  

Author: Baye Salla Mar, WACA Senegal Project Communication Specialist