Lessons

Community-based radio is a key tool for raising community level awareness and promoting citizen engagement in debates around issues of corruption due to high levels of local listenership. Organizations should take care to conduct community radio programs in local languages in order to ensure maximum engagement with the local community.

Utilizing local structures can have both positive and negative effects. Although utilizing local structures can ensure that key project messages become ingrained in community debates and discussions, they may also serve to reinforce existing power structures (in this case, male-dominated decision-making spaces).

Newspaper coverage of a certain issue will have a wider reach than simply the number of copies printed. Stories about controversial or pertinent issues are often debated and discussed on community radio stations which have wider coverage.

Full scale mobilization and engagement of relevant stakeholders throughout all regions of the target country (Morocco) is crucial to project success. The creation of structures of coordination and new civil society networks has been a key factor in successful implementation of the project throughout Morocco.

The capacity-building process is a marathon, not a sprint. It must involve regular coaching of trainees and performance monitoring in order to ensure sustainability. In order for capacity-building activities to achieve their intended results, one must ensure the activities are inclusive to all, including the vulnerable and illiterate. The use of audio-visual approaches in social media has proved to reach a larger number of people than the 'class-format' approach.

In order to effectively achieve project goals, grantees must be realistic about their organizational capacity, especially when working in areas and subject matters that are new to their organization. Grantees should call upon the expertise of other organizations with more experience in those fields if possible.

It is easy for nongovernmental organisations who are focusing their efforts
on promoting the greater accountability of government and the private
sector to forget that they in turn have an accountability to the
beneficiaries they serve, particularly where projects are funded by public
money. It is important to ensure the institution of effective complaints
mechanisms to enable beneficiary feedback.

Grantees should take care to adapt the information used in capacity-building exercises to the needs of the target groups. Grantees should consider adapting the information into more accessible or creative forms such as role plays, dramas, or art, or delivering information in conjunction with other activities meeting beneficiary needs (such as sports, life skills workshops) to bring key messages across.

This project provides a good model of planning for project sustainability. The grantee planned for sustainability in every component of the project, leaving nothing to change. This particular grantee's experience suggests that projects that deliver tangible benefits to communities may be sustained by those communities themselves.