Members of the National Steering Committee of the Central African Regional Programme for the Environment, CARPE, Small Grants Programme on Friday April 29 met in Yaounde to begin the process of selecting eventual winners of this year’s grants for conservation activities. Up for examination were 12 projects that had earlier been shortlisted from the more than 40 that applied earlier in the year.

According to Dr Kenneth Angu Angu, CARPE Regional Coordinator for Central Africa, the objectives of the grants are to build the capacity of civil society organisations, advance the cause of conservation by linking it to local development or sustainable livelihoods, and involving partner organisations in the selection process to avoid duplication in funding. “We are generally satisfied with the quality of project proposals received from civil society organisations in the past years,” said CARPE Cameroon Coordinator, Antoine Eyebe. He revealed that some recent project suggestions on revenue allocation to host communities from community hunting zones and forests have been adopted by the Ministry of Forest and Wildlife.

The national steering committee was expected to further narrow the shortlist from 12 to five before forwarding to the CARPE Regional Steering Committee that will make the final choice of three or four winning projects for the country. According to Antoine Eyebe, each selected national project would receive a maximum funding of 30,000 USD (about FCFA 13.3 million). He explained that since inception in 1998, the programme has been spending 500,000 USD (about FCFA 222.6 billion) each year in funding projects in nine countries in the Congo Basin.

The Small Grants Programme seeks to strengthen civil society for sustainable forest conservation in Central Africa. It is funded by the United States Agency for International Development, USAID. Focus is on capacity building, natural resource management policy, natural resource management governance, building on and sharing of lessons learned and gender equity promotion. Others are landscape issues related to policy and building of constituency for sustainable management, and bush meat management in terms of policy and regulation to set forth advocacy. Eligible to apply are non-profit organisations with some legal recognition such as local non-governmental organisations, community-based organisations, local associations, non-governmental research centres, independent researchers, university students, and women and minority groups.