James Gondwe
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'James Gondwe is a member of different networks where he shares innovative ideas, knowledge, information, discussions with different experts and professionals in a specific context and learn from. He believes that innovation is the pillar of sustainable development forward progress. He is a creative and business-savvy Development and Project Management professional with over 5 years of progressive experience across a broad range of development functions. He has proven ability to combine vision, creativity and strong project management acumen with well-developed leadership qualities to support growth of Non profit Organizations.
He specializes in programme and research design, implementation, management, monitoring and evaluation with bias to child and Youth Development. Experienced in institutional and organizational development, strategic plans development, capacity building including mentoring, coaching and training using internationally agreed packages and principals.
He is the founder of Centre for Youth and Development and currently leads it as its Executive Director. CYD that focuses on sustainable social developments, that endeavor to create resilient, indigenous and a competitive environment that inculcates entrepreneurial values among Children and Young people for positive development in Malawi.
James's areas of Expertise include; Strategic Planning, Project Management, Project design and development, Communications, Start up and growth, Monitoring and Evaluation, Team Building and Leadership, Events Management, Public Speaking and Presentations, Child and Youth Development, Rights Based Approach, Sustainable Livelihood initiatives
James joins the Reinventing Democracy as a core participant. He participated in the Nairobi Co-laboratory where he presented two challenges with corresponding solutions affecting democracy.
Challenge1: Lack of citizen's monitoring and reporting tool for projects and service delivery by Government
Developing Countries continues to feel the effects of successive regimes in which presidents and elected representatives have centralised power and distributed patronage in ways that influence the allocation of public resources towards service delivery and projects. Patchy decentralisation means key functions are still overseen centrally and resources are allocated according to patronage patterns rather than need or implementation capacity. As a result, service delivery and implementation of projects remains highly constrained. Service delivery and implementation of projects by the Government is implemented at the mercy of leaders with no proper mechanism for citizen to demand, monitor, report and voice out. This has led to poor service delivery, persistent corruption and a drain of public resources.
Proposed solution to challenge 1: Development of an application for monitoring and reporting service delivery and implementation of projects by Government
The proposed product is designed as a mechanism to strengthen citizens’ demand and voice in relation to service providers, other state duty-bearers in the provision of services and implementation of projects by Government. The overall vision of change is the ability to track implementation of projects and service delivery hence ensuring quality project implementation and improved service delivery.
The proposed application would be both web and mobile based but also intergrated with an SMS system and social media for citizens to provide feedback on the quality of services and implementation of projects in a particular sector, as part of a wider process of engagement with relevant stakeholders. All data and information entered on the application will be open source and can be accessed at anytime by anyone.
The application provides an opportunity for citizen to enter information in real time but it can be more successfull when intergrated with offline efforts like community awareness meetings, community feedback meetings and interface meetings between citizens, service providers and relevant duty bearers.
In the long term, the application is expected to contribute towards; > Strengthening citizen's voice > Improving information flows between service providers, duty bearers and citizens > Greater top-down perfomance pressure > Improved service delivery > Quality project implementation > Collective action by citizens to provide service delivery inputs
with his idea of using technology to improve citizen's engagement in monitoring and reporting service delivery and implementation of projects by the Government of Malawi and using technology integrated with structured dialogues to improve young people's participation and engagement in governance.
Shadow Participants
