Coordinate

Clear communication with project stakeholders is essential to foster effective collaboration and mitigate potential misunderstandings or disputes. This should include a clear description of their roles and responsibilities, benefits, and timelines. In this project, discrepancies in the beneficiary selection and external consultant management would have been improved if all the stakeholders had received and signed specific Terms of Reference (ToR) outlining their duties, responsibilities, compensation, expected deliverables, and timeline.

The challenges posed by an unexpected event, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, underscored the importance of fostering strong connections with project stakeholders, adaptability, and proactive engagement. In this case, faced with a lockdown and the inability to conduct planned activities, the project successfully maintained its course, sustained stakeholder engagement, and capitalized on unforeseen opportunities to achieve enhanced outcomes.

The inclusion of political parties in the development and planning of activities during the project design phase could have further enriched the initiative's relevance and ensured a broader and more inclusive platform for youth participation in Mozambique's democratic development processes. In this project, specific activities aimed at encouraging youth involvement in political parties resulted in eighty-nine percent of the project beneficiaries registering with political parties. However, the potential for even greater youth involvement in political activities could have been realized by involving political party representatives in the design of tailored activities to promote active participation and enhance engagement in party-related initiatives.

The project experience revealed that regular follow-up with project partners to monitor key activities, such as beneficiary selection, ensures accountability and maintains alignment with project goals and objectives. In this case, the project focal points across the provinces undertook the task of beneficiary selection without the consistent guidance and follow-up from the grantee. This led to the adoption of diverse selection criteria, some of which inadvertently contributed to higher participant turnover rates.

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.

Connected, aware and empowered CSOs and Human Rights Defenders can become a strong catalyst for change at the grassroots level in order to promote local action aimed at promoting transgender persons’ rights. In this case, the engagement provided them a chance to liaise and establish a link with government officials and departments which continued beyond the project.

Efficient communication between project and finance management staff, and between grantees and implementing partners, is key to ensuring the delivery of projects in challenging conditions, such as during a global pandemic or when significant staff changes take place, especially when adaptive programming is required.

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.

Building cross-party networks of LGBTQI+ activists can ensure that key issues are retained on the agenda and more substantively engaged across the political spectrum.

Supplementing training through follow-up coaching and mentoring and by creating platforms for ongoing dialogue and engagement can build and sustain networks that are driven by shared understandings on key human rights and LGBTQI+ issues across the political spectrum.