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LESSON

Lesson Learned: Strengthening Gender-Responsive Local Government in Nepal

Livelihood support interventions can prove to be effective entry points in political empowerment initiatives, especially in the case of extremely marginalized and impoverished communities and should be considered as a strategic approach in project design. The present project experience clearly builds the case for linking economic and livelihood interventions to political empowerment evidenced through the successful establishment and continuation of the Musahar women led Cooperatives.

Project Name
Strengthening Gender-Responsive Local Government in Nepal
Project Partner
South Asia Partnership Nepal
Project Description

The project aims to empower Musahar women and strengthen their representation in local decision-making procedures for promoting gender-responsive local governance in two rural municipalities and two town municipalities. It will work through three main approaches:empowerment of Musahar women to claim their rights, accountability of local government authorities, and strengthening multi-stakeholder partnerships for gender-responsive local governance.

Report
evaluation_udf-19-859-nep_final.pdf
Evaluation Date
December 2024
Theme
Women's empowerment
Country
Nepal
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Enhancing Women’s Political Participation in Eswatini

Transparent and proactive communication between the grant recipient and the funder is essential to foster effective collaboration and mitigate operational inefficiencies. In this case, WLSA faced a shortage of funds and human resources, which hindered their ability to fulfil all project team responsibilities. This led to delays and inconsistencies within the narrative reports, which were never clarified by WLSA.

Project Name
Enhancing Women’s Political Participation in Eswatini
Project Partner
Women and Law in Southern Africa - Eswatini
Project Description

The project seeks to enhance the gender responsiveness of policies and practices in the electoral process in Eswatini by assisting stakeholders to develop gender responsive guidelines and educating citizens on the importance of women’s political participation, while empowering the female electorate with leadership skills, campaign and mobilization strategies. The project seeks to impart a long-term effect by enabling community-based paralegals to conduct gender equality sensitization talks at community level. Project activities will incorporate actions in response to the Covid-19 crisis, as it impacts women, including gender-based violence as well as social and economic pressures.

Report
udf-18-793-swa_evaluation_report.pdf
Evaluation Date
August 2024
Theme
Women's empowerment
Electoral Processes
Country
Swaziland
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Safeguarding the Rights of Transgender & Intersex Communities in Pakistan

Meaningful and transformative change to safeguard rights of transgender community is possible through legislative action. Creating adequate legal frameworks and making justice work for transgender community requires rigorous policy advocacy and extensive engagement with policy and law makers. In this case, while the grantee took a number of initiatives including legal and policy review as well as development of a draft law on Transgender Rights, it met with limited success to generate ownership to steer the legal reform process due to limited engagement with parliamentarians and policy makers.

Project Name
Safeguarding the Rights of Transgender & Intersex Communities in Pakistan
Project Partner
Formation Awareness & Community Empowerment Society
Project Description
The project objective is to work for the protection and promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms of LGBTI persons, particularly transgender and intersex, in Lahore and Faisalabad districts. Expected outcomes include support for 5000 LGTQI/transgender persons; enhanced capacity of 50 civil society and human rights organizations; increased public awareness of LGBTI rights; registration of transgender and intersex persons for computerized national identity cards; improved policy framework and legal provision on the rights of transgender and intersex person.
Report
UDF-19-860_PAK_final.pdf
Evaluation Date
March 2024
Theme
Rule of law
Country
Pakistan
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Strengthening Democracy Through LGBT Political Participation in South Africa

Engagement with, and mapping of, prospective national institutional stakeholders in advance of a project taking place is critical to ensuring that the activities proposed align with their interests and priorities and are feasible in the timeframes proposed.
Project Name
Strengthening Democracy Through LGBT Political Participation in South Africa
Project Partner
Triangle Project
Project Description
The project aims to strengthen South Africa's democracy through increasing equal participation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex people and promoting understanding among political parties and the Independent Electoral Commission around the importance of diverse representation. This will be achieved through the training of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex leaders in civic engagement strategy and working with parties and the Commission to adopt policies and procedures to improve their representation, participation, voter registration and turn out.
Report
udf-17-750-saf_evaluation_report_final.pdf
Evaluation Date
August 2023
Theme
Rule of law
Country
South Africa
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Strengthening Grassroots Women’s Groups to Promote and Protect Civic Space in Uganda

Prevailing poverty, a reality for many grassroots women, makes it hard for them to focus on pushing for their rights over economic necessity. In fact, economic empowerment can put people in a position to care more about the former and therefore projects that look to advance rights at this level should seek to incorporate an economic development component as part of the wider project.
Project Name
Strengthening Grassroots Women’s Groups to Promote and Protect Civic Space in Uganda
Project Partner
All in One Womens Association
Project Description
The project goal is to empower 6,000 women by raising awareness of their gender specific rights, promoting women’s political participation, and addressing all forms of injustices that affect women’s wellbeing; strengthen the capacity of 100 unregistered women’s groups to become registered under the NGOs Act 2016; and support 100 registered women’s groups in advocating, promoting and protecting civic space in Uganda. Project activities will incorporate actions in response to the Covid-19 crisis, as it impacts women, including gender-based violence as well as social and economic pressures.
Report
Evaluation-Report-UDF-19-845-UGA_final.pdf
Evaluation Date
July 2023
Theme
Women's empowerment
Country
Uganda
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Strengthening Grassroots Women’s Groups to Promote and Protect Civic Space in Uganda

WhatsApp can be a key project management tool that delivers support to both cost-effective monitoring of implementation and the building of networks and structures. But this is most effective when combined with occasional in-person meetings or visits, to ensure personal relationships are built offline, before they are maintained, sustained, and developed online.
Project Name
Strengthening Grassroots Women’s Groups to Promote and Protect Civic Space in Uganda
Project Partner
All in One Womens Association
Project Description
The project goal is to empower 6,000 women by raising awareness of their gender specific rights, promoting women’s political participation, and addressing all forms of injustices that affect women’s wellbeing; strengthen the capacity of 100 unregistered women’s groups to become registered under the NGOs Act 2016; and support 100 registered women’s groups in advocating, promoting and protecting civic space in Uganda. Project activities will incorporate actions in response to the Covid-19 crisis, as it impacts women, including gender-based violence as well as social and economic pressures.
Report
Evaluation-Report-UDF-19-845-UGA_final.pdf
Evaluation Date
July 2023
Theme
Women's empowerment
Country
Uganda
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Citizens: empowering local communities, improving local governance

The case of the grantee Zimam demonstrated that even though the organisation did not have a significant track record, the quality of the project proposal submitted by the grantee’s finance team could demonstrate their capability to manage funds. Indeed, UNDEF showed audacity and open-mindedness in agreeing to fund this young organisation.
Project Name
Citizens: empowering local communities, improving local governance
Project Partner
Zimam for Creativity and Development
Project Description
Zimam’s Leadership Incubator wants to inspire young leaders and give them the confidence and training to inspire their communities. The program offers policy and problem-solving workshops, engagement and meetings with business, political, and social leaders, and opportunities for youth to implement their own initiatives aimed at social transformation. In doing so, we can empower young people to realize their potential as confident and capable change-makers who can lead their communities. Project activities also incorporate actions in response to the Covid-19 crisis as it impacts youth.
Report
palestine_udf-18-807-pal.pdf
Evaluation Date
March 2023
Theme
Youth engagement
Interaction with government
Country
Palestine
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Creating an Inclusive Policy and Legal System, Protecting Elderly People’s Fundamental Rights in Indonesia

The grantee organization LBH Apik and its local chapters are well-established grassroots organizations with internal systems and procedures in place. Building good rapport with local stakeholders was one of the key strengths of LBH Apik and a good strategy to secure commitment and can be continued in future programmes.

Project Name
Creating an Inclusive Policy and Legal System, Protecting Elderly People’s Fundamental Rights in Indonesia
Project Partner
Indonesian Legal Aid Association for Women
Project Description
The aim of this project is to improve protection mechanisms and policies regarding basic rights and public services to the elderly. Three local partners, each located in one of the three targeted provinces will help complete the project. The project will collect data to close the evidence gap, raise public awareness, and enhance capacity building of the elderly and paralegals as they advocate to improve elderly programs and legal and public services at village and community levels. The project will include a strong gender focus by prioritizing women as paralegals and recipients of legal services.
Report
UDF17_766_Final-Eval-Report.pdf
Evaluation Date
January 2023
Theme
Rule of law
Electoral Processes
Country
Indonesia
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Transparency and Public Accountability in Education in Brazil

A project where approximately 90% of human resources are volunteers, entails risks of lack of motivation and commitment. This should be included in the project risk assessment and it must be defined as measures to mitigate these risks.
Project Name
Transparency and Public Accountability in Education in Brazil
Project Partner
Transparencia Brasil
Project Description
The project works to improve access to education in Brazil, by tackling mismanagement in construction of schools; empowering civil society groups to pressure local and federal government official for more accountability; building a network of local monitoring organizations; gathering robust information on problems in several phases of construction and delivery, presented in semi-annual reports to Federal Government and media; holding a final conference on lessons learned and how to redesign policies for effective monitoring and control with the help of local civil society organizations.
Report
brazil_-_udf-681-bra_-_evaluation_report.pdf
Evaluation Date
June 2020
Theme
Interaction with government
Country
Brazil
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Water and sanitation for all: for a strong and heard civil society in West Africa

The project achieved genuine added value, despite the risks inherent to activities thinly spread across eight countries. Project management was good, the grantee’s management team was committed and effective, as demonstrated by the level of satisfaction with management expressed by participating platforms’ representatives.
Project Name
Water and sanitation for all: for a strong and heard civil society in West Africa
Project Partner
Secrétariat Permanent des Organisations Non Gouvernementales
Project Description
The general objective of the project was to reinforce the voice and influence of civil society in West and Central Africa to improve access to water, hygiene and sanitation (WASH). While the project addressed clearly defined needs for reinforcing capacity of WASH platforms and the platforms’ presence in consultation processes, its design did not sufficiently emphasize the needs for organizational capacity building, gender concerns in the consultation processes, and exchanges of information among participating platforms on issues of lobbying strategy. Achievements were adequate, especially in view of the vast geographical area covered by the project and the fact that the budgets devolved to each country were relatively limited. In terms of direct impact the project contributed to making attitudes within civil society organizations evolve towards a greater understanding of WASH access as a human right.
Report
UDF-RAF-12-485-ER-1.pdf
Evaluation Date
April 2016
Theme
Interaction with government
Country
Togo