mentoring

The project aimed to build the capacity and skills of community actors such as farmers' organizations, youth organizations and women's organizations to defend and uphold their rights. The grantee aimed to capitalize on the experience and realities of these groups and to stimulate their effective and responsible participation in the mobilization for the respect of fundamental human rights in the country. It also wanted the project to address the low level of knowledge of community actors, vulnerable groups and local authorities on human rights as well as State authorities' obligations in respect of human rights. Legal education on the chain of protection of human rights in Haiti, the mobilization of local actors on this thematic and the establishment of legal clinics were the main elements of the project implementation strategy. The evaluation focused on assessing the results of the activities trying to identify changes that could be reasonably attributed to them. While the overall aims of the project were relevant, the project largely failed to achieve the intended results. The negative consequence in not doing enough monitoring was that activities and impacts cannot be measured. The project was neither effective nor efficient as facilitators/animators were unable to create or reinforce networks of human rights observers in the targeted communities and human rights violations failed to be systematically documented. Observation reports were based on too few and poorly documented cases and legal aid was not provided as intended. The few trainings and meetings that brought together locally elected authorities, justice system representatives and members of grassroots organizations did facilitate exchanges that are still ongoing after the projects’ closure and continue to contribute to legal education and social dialogue.

Within the broader context of advancing good governance at local level, the project objective was to enhance the involvement of civil society in local governance through: local assembly monitoring; policy analysis and policy dialogues with public officials; and advocacy campaigns. The grantee sought to promote two-way communications between local officials and citizens in 14 selected municipalities and to support the strengthening of the capacities of locally-based CSOs to monitor the performance of municipal assemblies and municipal government in order to improve accountability. The emphasis of the project on transparency and accountability in municipal government while also reinforcing the position and capacities of civil society at local level was entirely appropriate. The project took place in a difficult context. Yet, despite having to deal with public passivity and indifference about politics, along with a political establishment under little direct pressure to change, it did succeed in highlighting the importance of democratic processes and in engaging citizens in the public sphere. It also made some progress in pressing local government institutions to think differently about their responsibilities.

The project focused on the creation of Youth Local Councils (YLC) in six villages in the West Bank – two in the north, two in the central area and two further south. All the young people in these villages were mobilized to register to vote in the YLC elections and underwent training in citizenship, democracy and electoral processes. Families, municipal councils, local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and community members were involved in the campaign meetings or in overseeing the elections. The YLCs then received further training in the skills they would need in order to ‘govern’ effectively: negotiation, leadership, conducting meetings, fundraising, strategic planning and community action. They consulted with their youth constituents, the municipal council and community members, to devise a plan of action to contribute to their communities’ needs, and subsequently undertook a wide range of cultural and social activities, ranging from computer classes for other young people to the painting and renovation of school buildings.

The project aimed to support six existing street papers in African cities as well as to establish a new paper in Lagos. The overall development goal was to support people selling newspapers to earn a living and at the same time fulfil a broader social need for independent information on social issues The project involved: sharing of stories among the participating papers, through a regional coordination unit in Zambia; training for vendors and journalists, through a regional training coordinator and with support from outside journalists; a feasibility study and establishment of the Lagos paper; and advocacy to the broader public through the regional news service.. The International Network of Street Papers Foundation – the umbrella group managing the coordination among papers – was in a position effectively to support the project by obtaining funding and by taking on project coordination and supervision tasks. These factors ensured the overall relevance of the project. The project’s achievements, in the face of complex logistical challenges, demonstrated that groups of committed, skilled civil society activists can achieve significant results, as the sections below will highlight. However, the project’s relevance was diminished by a number of design flaws. There was an imbalance between the objectives of the project – which concerned the development of media freedom and independent news, as well as empowerment of the poor – and the project activities, which were directed towards capacity building of the papers themselves and towards training.

The project aimed to promote the involvement and participation of women in electoral processes and democratic governance. Following the decision of all but one of the opposition parties not to participate in the National Assembly elections, the grantee expanded the project to the local government elections. Project activities included focus groups about women’s rights to encourage active representation of women in the community decision-making processes. Open forums and regional radio programmes generated knowledge and vibrant discussion among the wider public. A capacity building scheme combined training, mentorship, and experience sharing. The project effectively questioned entrenched cultural norms and pervasive religious beliefs. However, in spite of the project’s advocacy activities and the provision of training and mentoring number female candidates in the local government elections was lower than during the previous 2006-2008 cycle.

The project aimed to raise women’s awareness of their rights as citizens, while also increasing the participation and representation of women in political life. To this end, the project aimed to increase the capacity of selected women’s NGOs in all seven regions of the country. The grantee developed a training-of-trainers’ (ToT) manual and a training guide; organized and delivered a ToT course in 14 centres, two in each region of the country; and encouraged the 350 graduates of the ToT program to each deliver training courses themselves, utilizing the manual and training guide. Deep gender disparities continued to exist in Turkish social and economic life, and many women were quite unaware of their rights as citizens. The project was directly relevant to this problem, as it sought to enhance the capacity of women activists, who were engaged with improving the lives of other women, by enhancing their knowledge of the concepts of gender equality, of women’s rights as citizens, and of practical measures which might be taken to enable women to defend themselves against injustice.

The project aimed strengthened the capacity of the Somali media to implement principles and practices of democracy and respect for human rights by providing professional training to Somali journalists across the country, focusing on ethics and good journalistic practices, and holding workshops on good governance and human rights. The use of training sessions and workshops was appropriate to address the issue of journalists’ skills development. Creation of a media centre was also useful in helping journalists to do their work. However, the project's planned activities were not sufficient to address all its objectives. The number of participating journalists was on target, as was the ratio of women participants (30%). This is a very significant achievement, considering the prevalence of armed violence and high levels of political instability in many parts of Somalia during the project period. Significantly, the project benefited about half of Somalia’s journalists. On the other hand, the failure to address other stakeholders - government, editors, and publishers - reduced the likelihood of positive changes. However, the very fact that the project took place has to be seen as an achievement in its own right.

The project aimed to build capacity of local media in Sierra Leone to facilitate a national dialogue among civil society, government and citizens. It targeted primary beneficiaries that included: journalists from radio and print media who were awarded fellowships and trained in investigative journalism through production and publishing human right stories; NGO grantees; and local communities targeted through forums and workshops to increase public knowledge on the role of the media in human rights protection and promotion. The project responded to a need for improved democratic dialogue, and correctly identified the need for enhanced democratic debate as a precondition for entrenching democratic values and policies in post-war Sierra Leone. It also correctly identified the media as a key player, both as a space to “host” that debate and as a provider of substantive information. However the project's relevance was reduced by its failure formally to engage with editors/publishers and with relevant high-level institutional actors. The project document lacked a complete analysis of the stakeholders, their respective needs and the various messages that should be addressed to them. Nevertheless, the project contributed to establishing a critical mass of journalists aware of human rights reporting and of the challenges of balanced political reporting.

The project sought to support and empower grassroots Roma organizations in six countries in Central and Southern Europe to advocate for laws, policies and practices to combat racial discrimination, and to promote the application of international human rights standards concerning housing in national legislation. Working with Roma youth activists to lobby policy makers the grantee hoped to strengthen working relationships. A separate project component aimed to raise awareness among the Roma population of using legal means to challenge rights abuses. By focusing on the themes of anti-discrimination laws and housing and shelter rights, the project emphasized particular spheres where action was urgently required. Targeting Roma youth and young activists, the project sought to address in a practical way the weakness of Roma civil society organizations in undertaking advocacy on behalf of their own people. The litigation component finally was to demonstrate to the Roma people the viability of taking legal action as a means through which the state might be held accountable for its failure to uphold their rights.