Lessons

Another multi-faceted benefit of regional partnerships are the synergies that are created on the national level stemming from local partners that bring different experiences and lessons learned to the fore. In this case, the Moroccan partner focuses on producing stories in multiple vernacular languages for community-level resonance and highlights the role of communitarian media as garnering legitimacy among listeners and readers at the local level. In Tunisia, the local office brings a large network of journalists, media professionals, and engaged civic organizations to the project that helps informing on navigating complex legal frameworks governing information access.

Material outputs are most useful when they hold long-term temporal value and become staple references, such as the Human Rights Code of Ethics for North Africa and the Middle East (JHR code of ethics for human rights journalists on a regional level). In this case, the Implementing Partner relies on synergies with its other projects and thus far has increased signatories committed to the code by 100% beyond target.

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. 

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.

Strategic engagement with the media can yield good results in amplifying voices of the marginalized, providing them with a platform to address wider audience to promote gender responsive and inclusive local governance and development. In the present case, the project engaged the media successfully to widely disseminate the project initiatives as well as leverage it as an accountability mechanism for following up with government officials on their promised actions in promoting inclusive local governance.

Women’s participation in political change processes not only enhances gender equality, but it also makes a positive contribution to local development outcomes. The present project experience clearly demonstrates the transformative impact of women’s inclusion in local development in the shape of a number of local needs-based infrastructure schemes undertaken by the Women Musahar Empowerment Forums in their Municipalities.

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.

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.