On the 23rd and 24th July, 2024, Ms Kharty and Ms Gabriella who are Technical staff from the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Feedback Complaint and Response Mechanism (FCRM) Department, conducted a two-day popularization session in partnership with Caritas Freetown’s staff in the Youth in Politics and Peace Building Project.
Four (4) project communities; 2 in the Western Rural and another 2 in the Western Urban Area Districts.
The purpose of the popularisation of the FCRM was to ensure that the FCRM short code, 535, which is available on all Mobile Networks, would be widely promoted and utilized by the project participants and partners.
The initiative aimed to enhance the overall quality of Caritas Freetown’s projects and also address the concerns and feedback from project participants on a timely and effective manner.
The session targeted a total of four communities: Lakka and Kossoh Town in the Western Area Rural , as well as Brookfields and Kissy Communities in the Western Area Urban.
The session in each of the communities were attended by 40 participants, reaching out to a total of 125 (22 male 101 of female) in attendance, including Persons With Disabilities (2 PWDs), who were educated on the purpose and use of the FCRM shortcode.
The Safeguarding session, facilitated by CRS ‘s Technical Staff, Ms. Kharty and Gabriella provided an invaluable opportunity to empower the project participants and stakeholders with knowledge about and importance of setting up the FCRM system.
Such initiative is meant to improve project quality and address project participants’ concerns or complaints more effectively; ultimately leading to a highly positive impact on the communities/groups that we serve.
The FCRM short code, 535, is a critical tool for our project participants and partners to directly provide feedbacks, concerns, or complaints directly to the CRS data portal.
Lastly, it was stated the the transparent and accessible mechanism will ensure that the voices of the project participants or community members are heard and addressed on time, strengthening accountability and moreover, prompt response to complaints be it sensitive or non-sensitive.
On the whole, the popularisation of the FCRM in those communities was successful.
