regional

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.

This pilot project aims to promote good governance and sustainable local development, through democratic participation and dialogue among non-governmental organizations and public authorities in Bordj Boi Arreridj, Algeria. Campaigns will be implemented across four Wiliyah’s on communication, sensitization, training, and animation-consultation with production tools for decision-making support, to enhance citizen participation and action that meets the needs of Algerian civil society.

The project aims to contribute to strategies regarding the sustainable management of natural water resources in the Ararat Valley through enhancement of women’s groups that supply oversight and equity in community water and sanitation resources. Three groups will be interlinked in their actions to facilitate discussion on tariff compensation; monitor the participation of oversight activities on irrigation; and implement four pilot projects at the community level. Pilot projects will identify community-based participatory approaches to decision-making involving women to improve access and management of water resources.

The project aims to foster civic participation of young people in Ukraine by training them to become responsible and pro-active citizens. The central activity of the project is a non-formal civic education training program in four stages that will train teenagers to become "Junior Agents of Change" in four pilot cities. Trained Junior Agents of Change will implement development projects aiming for the transformation of their social environment and the development of their communities.

The project’s objective was to support the involvement of youth in public policy debates. The project activities included training and organizational support for local civil society projects. It aimed to help civil society organisations and youth to identify problems and propose solutions to decision makers, develop effective leadership and advocacy skills to articulate their positions. It also hoped to establish a sustainable regional network of policy advocates to share information, best practices and lessons learned. Weaknesses in the grantee’s initial problem analysis and a lack of hands-on support undermined the project’s effectiveness. Training on leadership and advocacy skills could have been delivered by experienced civil society members instead of professional educators. It would have also been appropriate to include and seek involvement from political decision-makers to ultimately obtain support for the project’s objective and outcomes.

The global objective of the project was to promote inclusive democracy as a key component for the country to emerge from political crisis and to set the ground for stable governance. It targeted two groups; the participants in formal politics which included women candidates and elected representatives, institutions and political parties and more general, the wider public. Specifically, the project aimed to increase the priority of gender issues and the number of women representatives in policy-making. It also aimed to raise awareness and acceptance women participating as candidates and voters in public and political affairs. The grantee’s intervention strategy relied on using existing Malagasy women’s associations and networks in order to push for the fulfilment of commitments made under international and regional instruments ratified by Madagascar, in particular a Protocol of the Southern African Development Community which had a parity goal of 50 per cent in elected positions. In a context marked by recurrent political crises, the project contributed in a relevant way to address the socio-political burdens that prevent women from participating as citizens and decision-makers.

At the time the project began, the process of ratifying the African Charter on Democracy, Elections, and Governance, adopted by the African Union in January 2007, was moribund and there was no international project activity to invigorate it. The objective of the project was to strengthen civil society actors to build a constituency for the signing and ratification of the Charter. At the time the project was proposed, 15 ratifications were needed to bring the Charter into force, two countries (Ethiopia and Mauritania) had ratified the Charter and twenty-five had signed it, thus indicating their intention to ratify. Assessing the impact of the project was not easy. The intended direct beneficiaries were members of the African democracy community, whose network and ability to advocate for the Charter were strengthened. It is not possible, based on the timetable of ratifications and project activities, to convincingly demonstrate that the project greatly accelerated the coming into force of the Charter. Only three countries in which activities were implemented actually ratified the Charter. The project objective was not ratification itself but rather strengthening the advocacy community and facilitating ratification yet achieving ratification in target countries was an implicit objective of the project Ultimately, the sustainability of the project activity will also be a function of political will. The project was born of policy elites, implemented by policy elites, delivered results of direct relevance only to policy elites, yet promises substantial benefits to all the people of Africa, who will benefit from democracy.

The project objective overall was on empowering women in eight Pacific Islands. Initially the project was to concentrate on Fiji, but after a number of specific challenges including floods, political instability and the termination of elected councilors in Fiji and the country’s suspension from the Commonwealth, the project had to be redesigned. The focus shifted from elected representatives at municipal level to women working at management and service-delivery levels in local government. The project also moved to become more regional, involving women in local government across the Pacific Islands. The project included gender awareness training, Training of Trainers (ToT) for women working in local government, the creation of a Women in Local Government network and website, multimedia outreach to the community to promote understanding of local government and the crucial role women play in service delivery, and a research and publication component. Although redesign was forced onto project holders by the political climate, it turned out that the local government approach and the regional nature of the project were its major strengths.

The project’s goal was to increase the capacity of NGOs in Moldova and Ukraine to network among themselves to enhance their advocacy skills and to improve the functioning of existing mechanisms for engagement between civil society and governments. The project resulted in a range of concrete initiatives, both at the local level and at the level of improved NGO representation in national policy making. Concrete impacts ranged from promoting the participation of blind voters to making amendments to the new law on associations in Ukraine and the human rights action plan in Moldova.

The project aimed to strengthen electoral processes by focusing on election monitoring by independent civil society organizations. The project established a regional expert group on elections monitoring, carried out training sessions and provided election monitoring services. In Tunisia, the group established – the Arab Working Group on Elections Monitoring - carried out a limited number of trainings in the four countries, and engaged in elections monitoring in Tunisia. Because of some political challenges, not all of the activities planned in Bahrain, Sudan, and Jordan, were undertaken. In general, training and monitoring focused more on the quantity than the quality of monitoring, a strategy that can be defended but may pose problems for longer terms sustainability.