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Interaction with government

LESSON

Lesson Learned: Judicial Reform: empowering magistrate-civil society collaboration for Guinea’s new democratic future

The project was efficiently managed and the budget was appropriately allocated. The grantee proved to be highly committed to delivery of results: 80 per cent of the budget was allocated to project activities, with a minimum amount on overheads.
Project Partner
The BEFORE Project in Guinea
Project Description
The project aimed to contribute to the judiciary reform process in Guinea through establishing a new social contract on justice linking CSOs, magistrates and auxiliaries of justice. Strategically, the project was based on two outcome components, to support increased capacity for advocacy, monitoring and judicial oversight, and enhanced capacity for dialogue and collaboration between civil society and the judiciary on ways to improve the judicial system in order for it to become more responsive to the needs of civil society. This strategic approach appropriate for the limited scope of the project; its key points of strength were the acknowledgement that training was a first step before the setting up a platform for dialogue and the inclusion of a mini-grant scheme. The project was ambitious but realistic. However, the methodology did not include a mechanism to replicate project experiences beyond the target areas of Conakry and Kankan - the most important judicial districts in Guinea - once the project ended.
Evaluation Date
August 2014
Country
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Judicial Reform: empowering magistrate-civil society collaboration for Guinea’s new democratic future

The project team were able to adapt to unforeseeable events and to minimize their impact on the project activities. Throughout 2013 Guinea experienced political and social turbulence including mass protests against the elections and ethnic tensions. These events had an impact on the activities planned for the second year of the project with many events needing to be rescheduled. However, this did not impact the overall project efficiency.
Project Partner
The BEFORE Project in Guinea
Project Description
The project aimed to contribute to the judiciary reform process in Guinea through establishing a new social contract on justice linking CSOs, magistrates and auxiliaries of justice. Strategically, the project was based on two outcome components, to support increased capacity for advocacy, monitoring and judicial oversight, and enhanced capacity for dialogue and collaboration between civil society and the judiciary on ways to improve the judicial system in order for it to become more responsive to the needs of civil society. This strategic approach appropriate for the limited scope of the project; its key points of strength were the acknowledgement that training was a first step before the setting up a platform for dialogue and the inclusion of a mini-grant scheme. The project was ambitious but realistic. However, the methodology did not include a mechanism to replicate project experiences beyond the target areas of Conakry and Kankan - the most important judicial districts in Guinea - once the project ended.
Evaluation Date
August 2014
Country
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Grassroots Gender Accountability in Uganda

All Village Budget Clubs and caucuses of women councillors from the districts of Gulu, Kibaale and Kibuku, continue to use the monitoring approach to jointly identify and address gender-specific local service needs. There are individual cases, in which Village Budget Clubs (VBC) have shared their knowledge with neighbouring counties, whose representatives visited to observe VBC members during the conduct of service monitoring assignments.
Project Partner
Forum for Women in Democracy
Project Description
The project worked to help women district councillors acquire knowledge and to push the equality agenda with policy makers. The project’s advocacy activities led to improved gender-sensitive service delivery, as the local government budgeted for enhanced services for women and girls. In September 2016, two years after the end of the project, the Government announced that gender sensitive indicators will be used to ensure that all sectors adhere to gender equality in decision making and service delivery in the country.. Visibly empowered district and sub-county councillors expressed with pride their new influence on the gender-sensitive application of laws, policies and local budgets. Former women MP trainees proudly cooperated across party lines on priority issues of the Ugandan women in parliamentary committees. The approach of putting in place a monitoring system that was run by Village Budget Clubs (VBCs) and district councillors alike was appropriate. The project’s training methodology ensured the transfer of necessary skills such as gender-sensitive analysis, budgeting, caucusing, lobbying and advocacy.
Evaluation Date
April 2014
Country
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Grassroots Gender Accountability in Uganda

Although written in English, Village Budget Club members found the budget monitoring and service tracking manual easy to use, because (i) English-speaking training facilitators were recruited from within the local community to address possible language and literacy issues; and (ii) at trainee stage, monitors teamed up in pairs comprising of one English speaker, thus enabling easy reference to the manual as and when needed
Project Partner
Forum for Women in Democracy
Project Description
The project worked to help women district councillors acquire knowledge and to push the equality agenda with policy makers. The project’s advocacy activities led to improved gender-sensitive service delivery, as the local government budgeted for enhanced services for women and girls. In September 2016, two years after the end of the project, the Government announced that gender sensitive indicators will be used to ensure that all sectors adhere to gender equality in decision making and service delivery in the country.. Visibly empowered district and sub-county councillors expressed with pride their new influence on the gender-sensitive application of laws, policies and local budgets. Former women MP trainees proudly cooperated across party lines on priority issues of the Ugandan women in parliamentary committees. The approach of putting in place a monitoring system that was run by Village Budget Clubs (VBCs) and district councillors alike was appropriate. The project’s training methodology ensured the transfer of necessary skills such as gender-sensitive analysis, budgeting, caucusing, lobbying and advocacy.
Evaluation Date
April 2014
Country
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Grassroots Gender Accountability in Uganda

The fact that budgeting is usually based on annual cycles always comes to play when new service needs are discovered. Village Budget Clubs in at least 3 of the 4 target districts as a result of their local service monitoring activity had launched initiatives to fund identified service needs privately, should they face limited availability or flexibility of public financing.
Project Partner
Forum for Women in Democracy
Project Description
The project worked to help women district councillors acquire knowledge and to push the equality agenda with policy makers. The project’s advocacy activities led to improved gender-sensitive service delivery, as the local government budgeted for enhanced services for women and girls. In September 2016, two years after the end of the project, the Government announced that gender sensitive indicators will be used to ensure that all sectors adhere to gender equality in decision making and service delivery in the country.. Visibly empowered district and sub-county councillors expressed with pride their new influence on the gender-sensitive application of laws, policies and local budgets. Former women MP trainees proudly cooperated across party lines on priority issues of the Ugandan women in parliamentary committees. The approach of putting in place a monitoring system that was run by Village Budget Clubs (VBCs) and district councillors alike was appropriate. The project’s training methodology ensured the transfer of necessary skills such as gender-sensitive analysis, budgeting, caucusing, lobbying and advocacy.
Evaluation Date
April 2014
Country
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Grassroots Gender Accountability in Uganda

Visibly empowered district and sub-county councillors expressed with pride their new influence on the gender-sensitive application of laws, policies and local budgets. Former women MP trainees proudly cooperated across party lines on priority issues of Ugandan women in parliamentary committees. The project’s most remarkable achievement wasthe newly introduced legal requirement that future drafts of the country’s annual budget need to be certified as gender sensitive prior to parliamentary approval.
Project Partner
Forum for Women in Democracy
Project Description
The project worked to help women district councillors acquire knowledge and to push the equality agenda with policy makers. The project’s advocacy activities led to improved gender-sensitive service delivery, as the local government budgeted for enhanced services for women and girls. In September 2016, two years after the end of the project, the Government announced that gender sensitive indicators will be used to ensure that all sectors adhere to gender equality in decision making and service delivery in the country.. Visibly empowered district and sub-county councillors expressed with pride their new influence on the gender-sensitive application of laws, policies and local budgets. Former women MP trainees proudly cooperated across party lines on priority issues of the Ugandan women in parliamentary committees. The approach of putting in place a monitoring system that was run by Village Budget Clubs (VBCs) and district councillors alike was appropriate. The project’s training methodology ensured the transfer of necessary skills such as gender-sensitive analysis, budgeting, caucusing, lobbying and advocacy.
Evaluation Date
April 2014
Country
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Grassroots Gender Accountability in Uganda

Investigative journalism was intended to critically review shortcomings discovered by VBCs throughout the project’s target districts; TV and radio shows were meant to overcome the lack of interfaces between the local population and duty bearers and to serve as a strategy for increased accountability. Furthermore, NGOs are still inviting the grantee’s Kibaale field officer to radio shows to share the approach and achievements of the monitoring work with a wider audience. One particular radio station has even offered free airtime. There is hence relevant impact towards transparent, gender-responsive local service provision in the form of vivid online readership discussion and comments in relation to the project’s investigative journalism outputs.
Project Partner
Forum for Women in Democracy
Project Description
The project worked to help women district councillors acquire knowledge and to push the equality agenda with policy makers. The project’s advocacy activities led to improved gender-sensitive service delivery, as the local government budgeted for enhanced services for women and girls. In September 2016, two years after the end of the project, the Government announced that gender sensitive indicators will be used to ensure that all sectors adhere to gender equality in decision making and service delivery in the country.. Visibly empowered district and sub-county councillors expressed with pride their new influence on the gender-sensitive application of laws, policies and local budgets. Former women MP trainees proudly cooperated across party lines on priority issues of the Ugandan women in parliamentary committees. The approach of putting in place a monitoring system that was run by Village Budget Clubs (VBCs) and district councillors alike was appropriate. The project’s training methodology ensured the transfer of necessary skills such as gender-sensitive analysis, budgeting, caucusing, lobbying and advocacy.
Evaluation Date
April 2014
Country
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Grassroots Gender Accountability in Uganda

Due to a lack of pertinent target indicator data the grantee fails to establish the extent to which district budget resources allocated to gender-specific projects have been increased. The grantee also failed to present data to demonstrate how media involvement increased grassroots’ ability to challenge the current state of local service budgeting and delivery.
Project Partner
Forum for Women in Democracy
Project Description
The project worked to help women district councillors acquire knowledge and to push the equality agenda with policy makers. The project’s advocacy activities led to improved gender-sensitive service delivery, as the local government budgeted for enhanced services for women and girls. In September 2016, two years after the end of the project, the Government announced that gender sensitive indicators will be used to ensure that all sectors adhere to gender equality in decision making and service delivery in the country.. Visibly empowered district and sub-county councillors expressed with pride their new influence on the gender-sensitive application of laws, policies and local budgets. Former women MP trainees proudly cooperated across party lines on priority issues of the Ugandan women in parliamentary committees. The approach of putting in place a monitoring system that was run by Village Budget Clubs (VBCs) and district councillors alike was appropriate. The project’s training methodology ensured the transfer of necessary skills such as gender-sensitive analysis, budgeting, caucusing, lobbying and advocacy.
Evaluation Date
April 2014
Country
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Addressing Ghana’s Governance Deficits through Constitutional Reform

The Project Advisory Committee in Ghana played an active and constructive role and made a difference in strengthening the final design of activities.
Project Partner
Ghana Center for Democratic Development
Project Description
The project aimed to obtain measurable improvements in Ghana’s constitutional and governance mechanisms by providing technical input and advocacy platforms for civil society actors to research and build a constituency for constitutional and legal reform in key governance areas. The project related closely to the grantee’s mission, i.e. the promotion of democracy, good governance and the development of a liberal economic environment. The grantee’s intervention was relevant in its focus on efforts to take practical action to address priorities in democratic development, and in ensuring that the priority concerns of Ghanaian civil society, as well as the interests of ordinary citizens - through a national public opinion survey that the grantee organized - were heard. The strategy adopted by the project was judged to be appropriate and its reports to the Constitutional Review Commission and the proposals which they contained were seen as highly relevant to its deliberations.
Evaluation Date
July 2013
Country
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Addressing Ghana’s Governance Deficits through Constitutional Reform

By building a platform providing credible research to inform the advocacy efforts of a broad-based coalition of civil society organizations in Ghana, the grantee had a significant impact on the constitutional review process.
Project Partner
Ghana Center for Democratic Development
Project Description
The project aimed to obtain measurable improvements in Ghana’s constitutional and governance mechanisms by providing technical input and advocacy platforms for civil society actors to research and build a constituency for constitutional and legal reform in key governance areas. The project related closely to the grantee’s mission, i.e. the promotion of democracy, good governance and the development of a liberal economic environment. The grantee’s intervention was relevant in its focus on efforts to take practical action to address priorities in democratic development, and in ensuring that the priority concerns of Ghanaian civil society, as well as the interests of ordinary citizens - through a national public opinion survey that the grantee organized - were heard. The strategy adopted by the project was judged to be appropriate and its reports to the Constitutional Review Commission and the proposals which they contained were seen as highly relevant to its deliberations.
Evaluation Date
July 2013
Country