Who We Are
ENCISS - Enhancing the interaction and interface between civil society and the state to improve poor people’s lives.
ENCISS works towards increasing the capacity of representative civil society to participate in, influence, contribute to and monitor the Poverty Reduction Strategy and local government policy, planning and implementation; and strengthen the capacity of the Government of Sierra Leone to engage in constructive dialogue with Civil Society within these policy frameworks. The focus of ENCISS is to improve the interface between state and non-state actors.
Conceived by the UK Department for International Development (DfID) and managed by CARE Sierra Leone, the ENCISS programme is a prominent entity that has shown itself to have a valued and vital role in promoting good governance in Sierra Leone. It came into existence in 2005 with the view to creating a link between government and civil society for the reduction of poverty and the fulfilment of people’s rights in Sierra Leone.
The central aim is to identify and provide support to genuine representative civil society organisation (CSO), build partnerships between national/umbrella CSOs and local CSOs (and between state and civil society generally) and increase the capacity of civil society to engage with the poverty reduction strategy, decentralisation and other Government of Sierra Leone (GOSL) programmes.
ENCISS District Operations
ENCISS is presently operating in four districts; Bonthe District, Bombali District, Koinadugu District and Western Area Rural District. ENCISS has fully set up and functional offices set up in each of these locations.
ENCISS activities are mainly carried out at District level.
ENCISS Expansion
As a means to further reach out to more of its constituents, ENCISS has expanded its operations in the Koinadugu District, Sierra Leone’s largest and but vastly inaccessible district in the Northern Province. The expansion is necessitated by the recommendations of an evaluation of ENCISS operations towards the end of the first programme phase in July 2008. As in many other districts in Sierra Leone, Koinadugu has many challenges. The district is one of the poorest in Sierra Leone. It is characterised by poor road network, weak local government and CSO capacity, internecine conflict between nomadic communities and farmers, poor communication facilities including radio coverage and huge level of illiterate communities
Also, ENCISS commissioned a study to do feasibility studies on the possibilities of expanding to the Eastern Province. The report has recommended locating an office in the Kailahun District.
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