networking

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.

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.

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.

The project’s overall development goal was to “increase the civic and democratic participation of young people in the Arab region”. The specific objective was to “empower young leaders in the Arab region to play a bigger role in civic and democratic life”. The project sought to empower young leaders in five countries in the Arab region - Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates. The project approach was based on the observation that while youth played a key role in the Arab uprisings; they continued to find themselves with limited empowerment or support to take control of their lives and futures. While the intervention rationale is broadly accurate, the project document did not include substantive contextual background for each targeted country and the project design lacked context analysis for each country. There also did not seem to be any involvement from project stakeholders and beneficiaries in the formulation and design of the project. Given the lack of contextual understanding, the project’s intervention rationale and the process for implementation also lacked essential elements to make the project relevant to the needs of the beneficiaries at the local and national levels.  

The project aimed to enhance meaningful and equal participation of women in democratic governance by addressing the issues of gender-based exclusion, violence and discriminatory practices. The project established National Democracy Watch Groups (NDWGs) and Local Watch Groups (LWGs). These groups were intended to promote knowledge sharing. The project organized a series of local, national and regional meetings and included a component focusing on sensitizing the media to challenge gender stereotypes. The project succeeded in reaching a significant number of people across the three countries in through the watch groups as well as through radio debates and the stories developed by journalists trained as part of the project. The project exceeded its aims. Senior members of government (both national and local), democratic institutions such as electoral commissions and senior figures in the NGO and media worlds participated in the various meetings and/or groups, embedding the information provided and the debate into key areas of governance and civil society.

The project aimed to create conditions for more active civic engagement among poor rural citizens. It also aimed to strengthen the capacities of local government to be more accountable and effective in rural provinces in Bangladesh. Project activities were undertaken pre- and post-elections. In line with Bangladesh’s National Rural Development Policy and the constitutional mandate, the project made a deliberate effort to reach out to socially disadvantaged communities. The project’s baseline survey confirmed that the target area's rural population was hardly involved in local decision-making processes and that little was known about the roles and responsibilities of their locally elected representatives, the Union Parishad (UP) members. Capacity building and communication activities prompted UPs to activate public consultation mechanisms such as standing committees and topical community meetings. Poor citizens were brought into direct contact with their UP members. The project greatly facilitated access to and use of local resources and services corresponding to the needs of the rural poor and the marginalized.

Aiming to improve the living conditions of vulnerable populations in marginalized areas and to put self-promotion processes in motion, the project’s goal was to enable these beneficiaries to take charge of their own affairs and to know and demand their rights. The grantee created permanent community centres and promoted community development through specific micro projects to mobilize and train teams of volunteers, and to strengthen the community centres’ capacity to organize and dialogue with local decision-making bodies. The beneficiaries greatly appreciated the project’s assistance on the ground. The volunteers’ continuous presence heightened the populations’ motivation and engagement. Several factors contributed to the project’s effectiveness: country action plans suited to local realities; the formation of well-trained teams of volunteers; the strong mobilization and participation of settlers in the activities; the financing of projects proposed by the target populations to improve their living conditions; and the quality of the local support provided by the teams of volunteers.

The project was designed to engage young people from marginalized populations in four regions of Thailand, to empower them to voice their needs, access their rights, participate in political processes, and improve their lives and communities. The grantee set out to create new leaders among young people to lead actions in the disenfranchised communities. While the project supported the implementing partners financially and to a lesser extent with expertise, it did not demonstrate significant added-value in the area of democratic development. The trainees were by and large already engaged in development work in their communities and, once the project ended, the partners and the young people continued as before. The project designers would have been more aware of this, and potentially had a chance to rethink the relevance of the design, if they had reviewed existing and earlier practice in this area, and had considered in more depth the way NGOs in the regions work and from where they get their funding. The project fell into the trap of becoming, essentially, a short-term provider of funds.