AFRICAN COMMUNITIES FOR CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION PROJECT
Solutions Partnering.org, true to its name, is partnering with Unity
Scholars (lead agency), and others, in an initiative to promote deliberate
creativity and assist the 53 Nations of the African Continent.
The Project "African Communities for Creativity and Innovation" is
designed to mobilize the intelligence and energy of the African people to solve
the mounting problems facing the continent and to manage and direct their own
development.
The five-year grassroots capacity-building project is designed as a support
to "The
New Partnership for Africa's Development" (NEPAD); and the objective is
to provide 550 African social innovators and creativity leaders with the tools
and resources to mobilize the creativity and ingenuity of the general population
of the African people to promote their continent's development.
The four-part, 5-year project is designed to:
1) Identify a corps of publicly acknowledged social innovators and potential
creativity leaders - 2 per year from each of the 53 African Countries, (10
in 5 years) plus 20 regional program directors.
2) Assist and train these African social innovators and creativity leaders
to identify, train and develop more social innovators and creativity leaders
in
their respective countries.
3) Network the African social innovators and creativity leaders with their
continental and global counterparts to exchange information, experiences and
useful development
ideas.
4) Provide technical assistance and support to African social innovators and
creativity leaders wishing to organize local "Communities for Creativity
and Innovation" in their respective countries.
African Communities for Creativity and Innovation, the end-result of this project,
will be community-based, community-organized and community-directed voluntary
associations dedicated to (1) indigenous enterprise facilitation, (2) participatory
decision-making, and (3) problem-solving, solutions-finding, capacity-building,
and workable new initiatives in support of The New Partnership for Africa's
Development.
The Communities' principal objectives are to (a) mobilize local talents and
available local and external resources to address practical problems facing
a locality,
area, or group of people: (b) avail local residents of successful new initiatives
from other places: and (c) enable people living in poverty to create wealth
for themselves and for others around them: and (d) provide local residents
with the
tools to participate in the decision-making process - enabling various groups
to dialogue with one another, and the general population to dialogue with their
political leaders.
This project reflects the importance that NEPAD attaches to African ownership
of their own development - "anchoring the redevelopment of the continent
(Africa) on the resources and resourcefulness of the African people."
The goal therefore, is to strengthen the capacity of the African people to
manage and lead their own development, as well as to generate the level of
grassroots
support necessary to maintain the continental development initiative called
for by the African Union (AU)
The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), an initiative of the
53-nation African Union, has been endorsed by the United Nations, by the U.S.
State Department,
and by the G-8 Conference of Heads of State and Governments of the major industrialized
democracies, and Representatives of the European Union.
Our lead agency, Unity Scholars, a 501C3 tax exempt organization, and its collaborators,
have been part of several significant initiatives in Africa.
Dr. Efiong Etuk, a Unity Scholar and the principal author and founding Director
of this Project has been offering highly successful creativity and innovation
workshops for Nigerian public officers for over a decade. Dr. Etuk's internationally
acclaimed book, "The Nigerian Public Service: In search of Creative Excellence" (Spectrum
Books, 1992) has been adopted as an official government document in Nigeria
and may have been a catalyst for Nigeria's recently declared National Creativity
Day.
Dr. Etuk's latest book, "Great Insights on Human Creativity: Transforming
the Way We Live, Work, Educate, Lead, and Relate" is being hailed as the
most inspiring and encyclopedic work on the power and potential of human creativity
ever written.
The expected long-term outcome of this project is the creation of a network
of African social innovators and "African Communities for Creativity and Innovation",
finding and sharing innovative solutions to Africa's development problems,
spearheading and driving the continental renaissance that is envisioned by
the African Union
and The New Partnership for Africa's Development. (NEPAD).
For more info contact Project Coordinator Norman Bakos at nbakos@SolutionsPartnering.Org or
phone/fax 716-892-1629
