Lessons

Inclusive partnership strategies and local participation during project design and at the project start-up stage are critical for more precise and consistent alignment with contemporary priorities. Consistent involvement in project implementation by local offices and coordinators is necessary to mitigate contextual challenges and effectuate activity redesign, including bottom-up involvement in the development of training materials and knowledge-sharing. In this case, the presence of country offices has been critical in mitigating project delays, changes in collaborative work with local authorities, and relying on broader networks of civic and media actors to ensure timeliness and impact. 

Inclusive project designs that rely on human rights actors from diverse professions and backgrounds have a high potential for engaging stakeholders and local authorities. In this case, inclusive project designs in Tunisia and Lebanon allowed to effectively work with local authorities towards understanding and addressing issues related to access to information and data-driven journalism.

An alternative strategy to foster more impactful and sustainable practices among media and civic actors in multi-country projects is to focus on specific themes of common interest, such as climate justice and gender or minority rights (which figured prominently in this project) across countries. Not only would this allow for the design of catered trainings, skill-and-capacity-building activities that focus on specific human rights areas but would sustain the network of journalists and civic actors focused on common interests regionally and internationally. In this case, project participants from different countries have been able to share experience, lessons, barriers, and solutions resulting in productive media outputs.

Women particularly from poor or marginalized groups may have very limited capacity or confidence to engage in public life. Support for women’s capacity development is therefore critical and needs to be continuous, taking place at multiple levels recognizing the linkages between individual and collective empowerment. In the present case, while the Implementing Partner had undertaken some individual capacity initiatives, there is clear case that these efforts need to be continuous, consistent and carried over a longer period of time for impact.

As the project experience indicates, engaging a community representative organization like the National Musahar Association is an effective strategy to build trust and gain access to the community focused on by the project.

The project experience clearly indicates that in order to be impactful, the project design should involve multidimensional approaches that address both the practical and structural challenges, ranging from individual capacity gaps to overall gender discrimination and institutionalized exclusion, which constrain women’s voice, decision-making and leadership. In the present case, the Implementing Partner was successful in maintaining a dual focus on promoting women’s political participation through building women’s capacity and awareness of their rights and connecting them to key decision-making processes on the one hand and engaging with the Musahar community, particularly men, to address gender discrimination through sensitization sessions.

Supporting government institutions in becoming gender responsive and inclusive requires substantial efforts in institutional capacity building through sensitization, training and equipping government officials with tools and skills to carry out gender responsive planning and governance. In the present project, while the project was successful in sensitizing local government officials, focused institutional capacity building could have contributed to a more impactful and sustainable change.

An effective way to address the structural barriers that marginalized women may face in accessing formal political space, is to start with building localized platforms and relevant capacities and gradually scaling up the effort to connect to formal institutional structures. In the present project, this was demonstrated successfully by the creation of the local Women Musahar Empowerment Forums which were eventually scaled up to district-level platforms as well as connected to the National Musahar Association.

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.

Connected support to enhance individual women’s capabilities and empowerment is important for women’s collective action. Support to build individual women’s leadership capacities is particularly important to build leadership skills and political capacities in order for them to work effectively with existing systems and political processes. In this case, while the Implementing Partner was successful in mobilizing and raising awareness for collective action among the Musahar women, focused support to build women’s capacities in communications and leadership would have further enhanced their ability to lead the women forums.