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LESSON

Lesson Learned: Strengthening Gender-Responsive Local Government in Nepal

Citizen led accountability (CLA) monitoring is a particularly useful initiative to promote gender responsive local governance. However, institutionalizing it requires extensive capacity building of local communities to enable them to continue it independently. In the present case, while the project piloted a Citizens Report Card successfully by acquiring a consultant, the knowledge and skills transfer to the community for developing it independently and regularly would have made it locally driven and owned, as well as sustainable.

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.

Evaluation Date
December 2024
Country
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 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.

Evaluation Date
December 2024
Country
LESSON

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

Effective institutionalization of a technology driven initiative in government departments requires an assessment of their capacity and readiness. Technical and capacity support may be provided to ensure smooth transfer and successful adoption of technology. In the present project, an App developed to report human rights incidents and violations was handed off without prior assessment to a public office unprepared for ensuring its maintenance and use.

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.
Evaluation Date
March 2024
Theme
Country
LESSON

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

For training to resonate and be most impactful, they need to be delivered in a setting and format that appeals to participants. Ensuring that they are conducted in the language participants are most familiar with and in an interactive and engaging format can aid with comprehension and ultimately impact.
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.
Evaluation Date
July 2023
Country
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 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.
Evaluation Date
July 2023
Country
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Tracking Campaign Promises in Albania

One of the main problems of this project was that its design robustness could have been reinforced by a more detailed and comprehensive needs assessment in smaller vs. bigger municipalities in order to avoid obsolescence in some big municipalities. Consequently, inappropriate and generalised needs assessments that lead to a “one size fits all” approach can negatively affect the impact’s likelihood.

Project Partner
Regional Development Agency Korce
Project Description
The project will help Albanian people to track promises made by politicians by providing Albanian citizens, CSOs and Media with tools to fact-check the implementation of their promises on-the-ground. Through a “truth-o-meter” web/app platform and through data checking and reporting, the project will hold 201 public officials/politicians in Albania accountable for their promises with the final aim to strengthen democracy and rule of law in Albania. Through simplified versions of municipal budgets made accessible as “citizens’ budgets”, citizens will be able to evaluate and take decisions affecting the future of those politicians that are in charge of taking decisions at local or national level.
Evaluation Date
January 2023
Country
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Tracking Campaign Promises in Albania

Given the high relevance and importance of the “truth-o-meter”, the design should have paid more attention (and allocate the necessary resources) to the promotion and communication of the tool and the results. There could have been public conferences and/or round tables with all concerned MPs, CSOs, communities, and media to discuss findings and generate public debates. Therefore, promoting innovative tools to a wide range of stakeholders is as important as their development, otherwise the impact of such tools remains limited and untapped.

Project Partner
Regional Development Agency Korce
Project Description
The project will help Albanian people to track promises made by politicians by providing Albanian citizens, CSOs and Media with tools to fact-check the implementation of their promises on-the-ground. Through a “truth-o-meter” web/app platform and through data checking and reporting, the project will hold 201 public officials/politicians in Albania accountable for their promises with the final aim to strengthen democracy and rule of law in Albania. Through simplified versions of municipal budgets made accessible as “citizens’ budgets”, citizens will be able to evaluate and take decisions affecting the future of those politicians that are in charge of taking decisions at local or national level.
Evaluation Date
January 2023
Country
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Improving Maya Women's Access to Justice in Rural Guatemala

Survivors of gender-based violence need integrated support services throughout the process to seek justice. This often involves land titles, housing, childcare, income generation, and psychosocial support services. Established relationships with organizations that can offer these services will help women to access integrated support that they need.
Project Partner
Women's Justice Initiative
Project Description
This project seeks to improve access to justice for some 2,900 indigenous women living in rural areas of Tecpan, Guatemala through free legal support, accompaniment of survivors, and strengthening local governance and municipal response to violence against women and girls. In addition, the project aims to increase the capacities of 175 key public actors including community leaders, service providers, and police at the local, municipal, and departmental level to provide quality services to indigenous survivors and promote human rights.
Evaluation Date
March 2022
Country
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Empowering Communities Threatened with Displacement in Thailand

Community leaders, organizations and networks are in need of additional resources between project cycles to sustain program outputs and outcomes. UNDEF grantees need to plan ahead, identifying and considering in their strategic planning ways to support the key nodes in regional networks through resources, capacity building, and network expansion.
Project Partner
Chumchonthai Foundation
Project Description
Economic growth has benefited many citizens but has in some cases resulted in being a threat to cultural existence, livelihoods, and land/citizenship rights of communities. This project aims to promote the social, political and economic inclusion of marginalized communities in the Andaman region of Thailand, through capacity development, advocacy and community campaigning to eliminate discriminatory laws, policies, and practices. It seeks to help members of marginalized communities to gain legal identities and acquire the political and legal know-how, and organizational skills needed to assert their rights and in participating in decision-making processes. Moreover, it will support media and public-advocacy campaigns designed to increase local authorities’ knowledge of and compliance with laws and policies, recognizing the rights of marginalized people and communities.
Evaluation Date
December 2020
Country
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Strengthening Civil Society and Developing Independent Media in Africa

One important element of impact is related to the role of street papers as social enterprises. By supporting the network of papers, the project effectively supported one of the few African social enterprise networks currently in existence. This is significant in that social enterprises are likely to become a key tool in future, as government and civil society develop new strategies to tackle poverty.
Project Partner
International Network of Street Papers Foundation
Project Description
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.
Evaluation Date
March 2013
Theme
Country