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Lessons

LESSON

Lesson Learned: Narrowing the Gender Gap in Flood Affected Areas of Pakistan

One challenge for the project was that the grantee did not provide material incentives to participants which had become expected in the flood affected areas after years of relief efforts. They were able to mitigate this to a large extent through socializing efforts that introduced the project and its activities; first to the male decision makers and then to the rest of the community.
Project Partner
Pattan Development Organization
Project Description
The objective of the project was to reduce gender disparity and gender-based violence in eight flood affected districts of Pakistan. Its intended outcomes were: increased awareness of gender issues; increased progress towards certain Millennium Development Goals (MDG 3: gender equality and empowerment of women; MDG 4: reduced child mortality; and, MDG 5: improved maternal health); and increased capacity of women to counter gender discrimination and to hold government accountable. The project objectives were directly relevant to the needs to strengthen gender rights and equity within Pakistan and especially within rural, marginalized flood prone areas The grantee took a rights based approach that integrated men as well as women into the project activities and structures. This increased project relevance for the communities and helped to ensure that the women were able to participate in these male dominated areas.
Evaluation Date
July 2014
Country
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Narrowing the Gender Gap in Flood Affected Areas of Pakistan

The project developed and used a Gender and Governance Performance Scorecard to monitor governance and service delivery. It also used mobile phones to communicate instances of corruption and violence against women. Community members marked the scorecards and sent text messages to the authorities drawing attention to corrupt practices as well as violence against women. The grantee aggregated the data and the findings were discussed with local officials in quarterly Gender Reform Committee district meetings. However, resolving these issues required more than sharing the information with officials, and without follow up most of the problems remained unresolved.
Project Partner
Pattan Development Organization
Project Description
The objective of the project was to reduce gender disparity and gender-based violence in eight flood affected districts of Pakistan. Its intended outcomes were: increased awareness of gender issues; increased progress towards certain Millennium Development Goals (MDG 3: gender equality and empowerment of women; MDG 4: reduced child mortality; and, MDG 5: improved maternal health); and increased capacity of women to counter gender discrimination and to hold government accountable. The project objectives were directly relevant to the needs to strengthen gender rights and equity within Pakistan and especially within rural, marginalized flood prone areas The grantee took a rights based approach that integrated men as well as women into the project activities and structures. This increased project relevance for the communities and helped to ensure that the women were able to participate in these male dominated areas.
Evaluation Date
July 2014
Country
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Narrowing the Gender Gap in Flood Affected Areas of Pakistan

The grantee worked with existing government policies and structures to promote gender equity, which grounded its activities within local governance and service delivery systems. For example, its work to promote registrations for birth and the Computerized National Identity Card addressed the basic preconditions for civil and political rights - the ability to be recognized by the State as a citizen. The participants who subsequently registered then became eligible for public services as well as gained the right to vote.
Project Partner
Pattan Development Organization
Project Description
The objective of the project was to reduce gender disparity and gender-based violence in eight flood affected districts of Pakistan. Its intended outcomes were: increased awareness of gender issues; increased progress towards certain Millennium Development Goals (MDG 3: gender equality and empowerment of women; MDG 4: reduced child mortality; and, MDG 5: improved maternal health); and increased capacity of women to counter gender discrimination and to hold government accountable. The project objectives were directly relevant to the needs to strengthen gender rights and equity within Pakistan and especially within rural, marginalized flood prone areas The grantee took a rights based approach that integrated men as well as women into the project activities and structures. This increased project relevance for the communities and helped to ensure that the women were able to participate in these male dominated areas.
Evaluation Date
July 2014
Country
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Narrowing the Gender Gap in Flood Affected Areas of Pakistan

The project should have put in place stronger follow-up activities with the communities after the workshops as well as with the government officials, specifically on the findings of the Governance Performance Scorecards and mobile phone reporting. The Gender Reform Committee structures were underutilized as project implementation remained centralized and driven by the grantee.
Project Partner
Pattan Development Organization
Project Description
The objective of the project was to reduce gender disparity and gender-based violence in eight flood affected districts of Pakistan. Its intended outcomes were: increased awareness of gender issues; increased progress towards certain Millennium Development Goals (MDG 3: gender equality and empowerment of women; MDG 4: reduced child mortality; and, MDG 5: improved maternal health); and increased capacity of women to counter gender discrimination and to hold government accountable. The project objectives were directly relevant to the needs to strengthen gender rights and equity within Pakistan and especially within rural, marginalized flood prone areas The grantee took a rights based approach that integrated men as well as women into the project activities and structures. This increased project relevance for the communities and helped to ensure that the women were able to participate in these male dominated areas.
Evaluation Date
July 2014
Country
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Narrowing the Gender Gap in Flood Affected Areas of Pakistan

Participants felt that the project had an abrupt ending and some were waiting for it to continue. The mobile phones that were given to the participants as part of the project were also returned to the grantee at the end so that the beneficiaries were not automatically able to continue to use the tools they had learned.
Project Partner
Pattan Development Organization
Project Description
The objective of the project was to reduce gender disparity and gender-based violence in eight flood affected districts of Pakistan. Its intended outcomes were: increased awareness of gender issues; increased progress towards certain Millennium Development Goals (MDG 3: gender equality and empowerment of women; MDG 4: reduced child mortality; and, MDG 5: improved maternal health); and increased capacity of women to counter gender discrimination and to hold government accountable. The project objectives were directly relevant to the needs to strengthen gender rights and equity within Pakistan and especially within rural, marginalized flood prone areas The grantee took a rights based approach that integrated men as well as women into the project activities and structures. This increased project relevance for the communities and helped to ensure that the women were able to participate in these male dominated areas.
Evaluation Date
July 2014
Country
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Narrowing the Gender Gap in Flood Affected Areas of Pakistan

The project introduced Gender Reform Committees as representational grassroots structures. These started in the communities at the district level and then grew to the provincial and national levels. This extended the project's reach and built community ownership for gender rights activities.
Project Partner
Pattan Development Organization
Project Description
The objective of the project was to reduce gender disparity and gender-based violence in eight flood affected districts of Pakistan. Its intended outcomes were: increased awareness of gender issues; increased progress towards certain Millennium Development Goals (MDG 3: gender equality and empowerment of women; MDG 4: reduced child mortality; and, MDG 5: improved maternal health); and increased capacity of women to counter gender discrimination and to hold government accountable. The project objectives were directly relevant to the needs to strengthen gender rights and equity within Pakistan and especially within rural, marginalized flood prone areas The grantee took a rights based approach that integrated men as well as women into the project activities and structures. This increased project relevance for the communities and helped to ensure that the women were able to participate in these male dominated areas.
Evaluation Date
July 2014
Country
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Narrowing the Gender Gap in Flood Affected Areas of Pakistan

The monitoring and evaluation plan was admirably comprehensive as was the baseline survey. However, the impact survey only repeated a portion of the baseline questions which makes determination of impact difficult.
Project Partner
Pattan Development Organization
Project Description
The objective of the project was to reduce gender disparity and gender-based violence in eight flood affected districts of Pakistan. Its intended outcomes were: increased awareness of gender issues; increased progress towards certain Millennium Development Goals (MDG 3: gender equality and empowerment of women; MDG 4: reduced child mortality; and, MDG 5: improved maternal health); and increased capacity of women to counter gender discrimination and to hold government accountable. The project objectives were directly relevant to the needs to strengthen gender rights and equity within Pakistan and especially within rural, marginalized flood prone areas The grantee took a rights based approach that integrated men as well as women into the project activities and structures. This increased project relevance for the communities and helped to ensure that the women were able to participate in these male dominated areas.
Evaluation Date
July 2014
Country
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Youth as Agents of Democratic Change through Knowledge and Information Acquisition and Exchange in Laos

Bio-diversity and indigenous knowledge topics (local customs and traditions) have made their way into the education curriculum of primary schools in more provinces and are taught by more teachers than expected in Laos.
Project Partner
Participatory Development Training Center
Project Description
The project enhanced the technical capacity of youth group leaders to introduce rights-based development knowledge. It also supported leadership development, and therefore was a relevant effort to involve youth in democratic and participatory processes regarding the management and use of natural resources. In addition, trained teachers of 17 primary schools from 6 provinces developed locally relevant curricula introducing indigenous knowledge. Given the political and administrative realities, the identification of bio-diversity issues and general development challenges, rather than direct democracy issues, represented smart approaches to support participation in environmental policy formulation by youth. The youth’s field-work identified about 30 different bio-diversity themes and general development challenges, and subsequently suggestions were made related to farming practices, but also to the need to preserve local culture and traditions. In view of the appreciation expressed by central and provincial representatives, evaluators are of the view that the project effectively contributed to improved consideration of local and biodiversity knowledge in local community development processes.
Evaluation Date
June 2014
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Representation and political participation of five urban indigenous populations in Santa Cruz de la Sierra

Well-established indigenous organizations displayed some resistance to the founding of the grantee’s network, which was to serve as an umbrella group for all urban indigenous organizations.
Project Partner
Apoyo Para el Campesino - indígena del Oriente Boliviano
Evaluation Date
June 2014
Country
LESSON

Lesson Learned: Empowering Civil Society Groups to Promote Social Accountability

The project worked constructively to draw attention to deficiencies in governance in Papua, and contributed to building a broader awareness of social accountability and what it entails. There was potential for the project to have a catalytic effect. As the grantee represented a highly-credible, mainstream Indonesian policy research institution, it would have been in a position to facilitate dialogue between government and civil society in Papua in a way that locally-based organizations might find more difficult. Had it managed to secure additional funding, lessons learned from the project could have represented a beginning rather than an end.
Project Partner
Centre for Strategic and International Studies
Project Description
The overall goal of the project was to improve governance in Papua, Indonesia. Specifically, it focused on developing and implementing a practical strategy to build a forum for civil society organizations where civil society could develop skills in social accountability and promote accountability and transparency of the provincial and city governments. Given the deep suspicion of civil society on the part of government in Papua, the intention of the project was to establish the CSO Forum as a legitimate body in the eyes of both decision-makers and the public. Training was provided to all stakeholders – including government officials and a series of dialogue sessions was also organized. However, gaps in the initial baseline analysis and stakeholder consultations, along with a decision to implement the project without a local partner, reduced the project’s relevance to the Papuan context and the needs of beneficiaries. Eight visits to Papua over a two-year period by members of the Jakarta-based project team limited opportunities for contact between the visiting team and beneficiaries, and a lack of continuity across activities restricted what the project was able to accomplish.
Evaluation Date
June 2014
Country