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Project: Monitoring and Influencing the Central Budget by Civic Empowerment
Evaluation Date: February 2012
Report: [report link]

Lesson Learned:

Overall, the project demonstrated a commendable ability to adjust and adapt its plans as circumstances changed and new challenges emerged. However, adding new elements to an already multi-facetted project gave it an open-endedness and lack of completeness, particularly in its efforts to support civil society capacity development.

Theme: Interaction with government

Turkey adapt, complexity, design

Project: Promoting Gender-Sensitive Personal Status Laws in Lebanon
Evaluation Date: September 2022
Report: [report link]

Lesson Learned:

There are important elements that influence the effectiveness of the implementation of an advocacy project other than the technical and financial capacity of the funded organisation. They include:
– The clarity of the organisation’s internal strategy and the consistency of its positioning regarding the project’s objective.
– The credibility of the organisation and its members among CSOs and drivers of change relevant to the intervention.
– The social capital of the organization, which enables it to mobilize key stakeholders and allies in the field.
– The capacity of the organisation to analyse the political context, manage risks, and adapt activities to the situation.

Theme: Women's empowerment, Rule of law

Lebanon adapt, advocacy, campaign, change, credibility, effectiveness, gender, objective, project objective, reform, results, risk, social capital, strategy, women

Project: Promoting Gender-Sensitive Personal Status Laws in Lebanon
Evaluation Date: September 2022
Report: [report link]

Lesson Learned:

Advocacy projects in highly complex contexts require rigorous monitoring to (i) strengthen coalitions and ties despite changes to the positions of stakeholders and changing power dynamics; and to (ii) capture and adapt to the different levels of changes that could occur.

Theme: Women's empowerment, Rule of law

Lebanon adapt, advocacy, change, collaborate, Coordinate, gender, monitoring, partner, power, reform, relationships, risk, stakeholder, women

Project: Supporting local democratic governance in the mining regions of northern Upper Guinea
Evaluation Date: September 2016
Report: [report link]

Lesson Learned:

The project methodology took into account the participants’ needs and adapted activities to address them. The project also took place during the Ebola health crisis in Guinea and the grantee was able to adapt to address the crisis, for example by persuading elected officials in the target communities get more involved in the fight against the virus. The project shifted its focus to raise awareness among vulnerable citizens so that they were more engaged in working with the state and development partners to combat the virus.

Theme: Rule of law

Guinea adapt, crisis, participation

Project: Judicial Reform: empowering magistrate-civil society collaboration for Guinea’s new democratic future
Evaluation Date: August 2014
Report: [report link]

Lesson Learned:

The project team were able to adapt to unforeseeable events and to minimize their impact on the project activities. Throughout 2013 Guinea experienced political and social turbulence including mass protests against the elections and ethnic tensions. These events had an impact on the activities planned for the second year of the project with many events needing to be rescheduled. However, this did not impact the overall project efficiency.

Theme: Interaction with government

Guinea adapt, conflict, design

Project: Educating Rural Women in Haiti for Democratic Citizenship
Evaluation Date: March 2012
Report: [report link]

Lesson Learned:

The approach taken by the project prioritized strengthening the capacity of women facilitators and motivators from the rural communities and provided close monitoring and support. This enabled the project to capitalize on its achievements and to continuously adapt the intervention to the specifics of the context.

Theme: Women's empowerment

Haiti adapt, capacity, leverage, rural

Project: Promoting the African Charter on Democracy, Elections, and Governance
Evaluation Date: June 2012
Report: [report link]

Lesson Learned:

The shifting project focus regarding promoting of the African Charter on Democracy, including changes in target countries, was both a strong and a weak point of the project from the standpoints of effectiveness and impact. Flexibility allowed the project to respond to changing circumstances and priorities.

Theme: Community activism

Burundi, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Namibia, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa adapt, charter, democracy

Project: Campagne d’Education au respect des Principes Démocratiques et Promotion du dialogue Démocratique au Burundi
Evaluation Date: November 2014
Report: [report link]

Lesson Learned:

The project strategy assessed the needs of municipal elected councillors’ through a survey. Based on this the project undertook trainings, meetings, and debates amongst political leaders and Parliamentarians. The project also translated the Electoral Code into Kirundi from French to make it more accessible to citizens. This activity was not foreseen in the project document. The project aimed to propose improvements to the electoral code however, the electoral code was already modified by the authorities and agreed political parties when the project started.

Theme: Community activism

Burundi adapt, language

Project: Enlarging the Social Base for Democracy and the Rule of Law in Egypt
Evaluation Date: April 2013
Report: [report link]

Lesson Learned:

While decentralization of activities is a positive goal, in times of political volatility and security challenges, extending democracy support beyond the capital can lead to organizational and logistical problems. Given these challenges, the project decided it was safer to bring people from the regions to the capital rather than trying to export activities from the capital to the regions.

Theme: Rule of law

Egypt adapt, regions, security

Project: Addressing Ghana’s Governance Deficits through Constitutional Reform
Evaluation Date: July 2013
Report: [report link]

Lesson Learned:

The unexpected announcement by the government that there would be a Constitutional Review led to the grantee to refocusing its project design since the initial project document was developed before the government had made a firm commitment to a constitutional review process. The project was initially designed to make the case for the urgency of governance reform and to identify the most critical issues. With the surprise announcement of the Constitutional Review, the grantee had to engage in in a process of identifying priorities for constitutional development and undertake advocacy in their support.

Theme: Interaction with government

Ghana adapt, advocacy, government

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