Thirty participants attended a workshop held at the Mogadishu' Sahafi II hotel on Tuesday and Wednesday 20th and 21st of November 2007. SOCDA organised the gathering in order to highlight the importance of civil society networks.
The two-day event, wasaimed at emphasising the importance of cooperation, especially throughinformation sharing. The facilitators introduced the participants to theexistence of a worldwide movement called Social Watch (SW), a network of civilsociety organisations fighting to achieve gender equity and the eradication ofpoverty and its causes.
Established in 1995,after the UN World Summit for Social Development held in Copenhagen (Denmark),the Social Watch is an international network that strives to ensure theequitable distribution of wealth and the full enjoyment of human rights.
The participants learntabout the structure of Social Watch network, the roles of its CoordinatingCommittee, International Secretariat and General Assembly, and the uniqueposition of the over 60 national coalitions worldwide.
The workshop participantsin Mogadishu were interested to learn that it in order to establish a SW chapterin Somalia the appropriate tools for policy and advocacy should first be put inplace.
The participants ofSOCDA's community networking workshop ended the workshop promising to refer theinformation and knowledge received to their institutions. Many vowed to convincetheir executive bodies to join the emerging SW chapter in Somalia.
