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Project: Empowering Civil Society to Monitor Development Programmes in Tanzania
Evaluation Date: December 2012
Report: [report link]

Lesson Learned:

Only two thirds of the targeted 180 civil society organization members in Tanzania completed the training on policy dialogue and advocacy of development programme issues. To ensure impact the grantee should have made a greater effort to involve a higher number of civil society organizations in lobbying of government.

Theme: Community activism

Project: Human rights and democracy campaign
Evaluation Date: October 2011
Report: [report link]

Lesson Learned:

The project did not consider why legal and administrative documentation had not already been made available in languages other than French. Targeted lobbying would have been appropriate to highlight the necessity of translating legal and administrative documents into the different national languages and to facilitate their use by locally elected officials and rural communities.

Theme: Rule of law

Senegal French, language, lobbying

Project: Your Local Representative, Strengthening Citizen Participation in Ukraine
Evaluation Date: October 2013
Report: [report link]

Lesson Learned:

Project implementation followed the outputs listed in the project document but the aspects related to citizen participation and the lobbying of parties were missing. These activities had not been included in the request for proposals (RFPs) issued by the grantee. Conceptually, the project seemed to think these elements would emanate from website use but without a critical mass of users, this did not occur.

Theme: Community activism

Ukraine lobbying, online, participation

Project: For a More Vigilant Civil Society in Morocco
Evaluation Date: May 2016
Report: [report link]

Lesson Learned:

The capability of the CSOs to dialogue and to make themselves heard by political and legislative decision-makers remained limited, in particular at parliament level. Advocacy and lobbying activities among members of parliament supported by audio-visual tools, infographic sheets and properly written and formatted press releases could ensure better visibility and awareness.

Theme: Rule of law

Morocco advocacy, lobbying, media

Project: Supporting civic participation of grassroots communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Evaluation Date: June 2013
Report: [report link]

Lesson Learned:

The training sessions for grass-roots trainers were largely one-offs. The failure to build on these sessions made it difficult to assess the extent to which participants had understood and were able to use the knowledge imparted to them. The same applies to the guided tours to the offices of local administrations, and therefore it is unclear if participants acquired a sufficient understanding of administrative processes to conduct lobbying or other activities.

UNDEF/DRC

Theme: Rule of law

Democratic Republic of the Congo impact, lobbying, training

Project: Safeguarding the Rights of Transgender & Intersex Communities in Pakistan
Evaluation Date: March 2024
Report: [report link]

Lesson Learned:

Connected, aware and empowered CSOs and Human Rights Defenders can become a strong catalyst for change at the grassroots level in order to promote local action aimed at promoting transgender persons’ rights. In this case, the engagement provided them a chance to liaise and establish a link with government officials and departments which continued beyond the project.

Theme: Rule of law

Pakistan Access, advocacy, advocate, collaborate, community, Coordinate, goals, impact, lobbying, needs, network, partnership, project design, relationships, stakeholder, sustainability, sustainable

Project: Safeguarding the Rights of Transgender & Intersex Communities in Pakistan
Evaluation Date: March 2024
Report: [report link]

Lesson Learned:

Meaningful and transformative change to safeguard rights of transgender community is possible through legislative action. Creating adequate legal frameworks and making justice work for transgender community requires rigorous policy advocacy and extensive engagement with policy and law makers. In this case, while the grantee took a number of initiatives including legal and policy review as well as development of a draft law on Transgender Rights, it met with limited success to generate ownership to steer the legal reform process due to limited engagement with parliamentarians and policy makers.

Theme: Rule of law

Pakistan advocate, collaborate, commitment, Coordinate, goals, impact, lobbying, needs, network, outputs, political parties, politics, project design, relationships, representative, results, stakeholder, sustainability, sustainable

Project: Empowering Civil Society to Monitor Development Programmes in Tanzania
Evaluation Date: December 2012
Report: [report link]

Lesson Learned:

The civil society organizations in Tanzania networked with each other and were prepared to coordinate development priorities when lobbying for development planning at the district level. Members of the local community advocated for their needs during village-level meetings and through lobbying at district government levels. There is also evidence demonstrating early stages of participation in the monitoring of development programme processes.

UNDEF/ Tanzania

Theme: Community activism

Tanzania, United Republic of development, grassroots, knowledge

Project: Women in Democratic Transition in Egypt
Evaluation Date: July 2015
Report: [report link]

Lesson Learned:

Using credible data and statistics, the project made a tangible and significant contribution to advancing women’s democratic rights. The grantee was a leading force in lobbying for constitutional measures to ensure women’s representation – unsuccessful in the case of parliament but successful in the case of local councils. It also took the lead in successfully advocating for the institution of female quotas on political lists for the 2015 parliamentary elections and the adoption of a political parties’ Code of Ethics (formulated by the project, based on a situation analysis and consultations with 20-30 political parties) regarding women’s democratic participation.

Theme: Women's empowerment

Egypt advocacy, credibility, statistics

Project: Reinforcement of the role and image of women in West African media
Evaluation Date: October 2012
Report: [report link]

Lesson Learned:

Several participants in seminars and representatives of project implementing partners noted weaknesses that hampered the project’s effectiveness. The project design did not provide for an explicit lobbying and advocacy strategy addressing government authorities and media regulators on the representation of women in the media in West Africa. The implementing partners were not given enough organizational support.

Theme: Women's empowerment

Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger advocacy, change, culture

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