By Bosco Bush
Community Empowerment for Progress Organization (CEPO) conducted a three-day election awareness training for civil society organizations (CSOs) in Yei River County.
According to CEPO, the training is to equip CSO members with the knowledge of electoral processes as the country prepares for the anticipated December 2024 elections.
Khamis Cosmas, the team leader for the training told No. 1 Citizen Newspaper that the training covered various electoral procedures including at a global perspective, and the type of elections that South Sudan would adopt.
“We looked at electoral procedures that the CSOs need to undergo through, and what procedures can they know in terms of elections. We also looked at the systems and types of elections globally, and what type of elections are we going for?”
“The intention is that we are carrying out awareness for the CSOs to farther their knowledge on how citizens should be participatory when it comes to elections,” Khamis stated.
Previously NEC has already announced 22 December 2024, as the polling date, Khamis believes it’s crucial for CEPO to carry out civic awareness training for the CSO members in Yei to enable them to use their network within Yei to update the citizens about the upcoming elections in South Sudan.
He revealed that, so far it’s the fourth training CEPO carried out after conducting similar ones in Rumbek, Aweil and Yambio towns.
Also, they are looking forward to extending the training to some parts of the country to equip members of the CSOs with enough knowledge about elections.
Khamis added that CEPO will also provide some financial support within the project to the Civil Society Organizations to extend the knowledge to the citizens through further training and radio talk shows.
“Within the project, we are going to have a mini project that can be given to these particular CSOs so that they can extend the knowledge that they receive from us for further training and radio talk-shows to make the citizens aware of elections,” he added.