Best Practices for Women´s Participation in Democracy at Local Levels (Argentina)

Focusing on specific topics of concern and relevance to youth would have helped make the youth associations more effective and led to more targeted actions in the field of public policy.

Although more than eight hundred young people from Chad were informed about their rights and duties, the project did not lead to any changes in the youth organizations’ perception of how the voice of young people could be heard. Most of the young interviewees declared that there was no additional dialogue with authorities after the project’s termination.

Indicators should have been defined as part of a quality control system framework linked to monitoring of activities so that the extent to which there was youth ownership of the platforms and progress being made could be measured.

The project design would have benefited from a better use of lessons learned from the grantee’s previous projects and its youth association network. This would have helped identify the challenges faced by young people and to develop a proper national action plan and youth platforms that were relevant.

The establishment of youth platforms was not linked to any particular task or mission for youth action; and the elaboration of a national plan was not linked to priorities for action nor were there any financial resources for implementation. The survey which was supposed to enhance the skills of the young people was not published and did not capture the information needed for youth advocacy towards public authorities.

The project outcomes were ambitious especially given the outputs that were delivered to achieve them. The authorities in Chad were not adequately informed or involved during the project. The grantee assumed that putting youth organizations together and formulating a youth plan and platforms would be sufficient to create autonomous youth initiatives and to forge dialog with authorities.

The exchange of experiences between young Muslim and Christian organizations was a good attempt to overcome historical social divisions that still exist in society.

Project monitoring could have been enhanced with a more efficient strategic approach focused on analyzing the results, and the integration of lessons learned in the work with beneficiaries.

Project monitoring could have been enhanced with a more efficient strategic approach focused on analyzing the results, and the integration of lessons learned in the work with beneficiaries.

Expand the institutional vision of gender to include men’s involvement and commitment to creating opportunities for equitable, egalitarian participation in different aspects of social, political, cultural, and economic life.

The grantee’s institutional track record and deep roots in society make it a credible intermediary point of reference for other organizations working on the issues of gender equity and women’s rights – an important component in terms of sustainability. Its diverse relations with international cooperation agencies have served to consolidate its financial sustainability. At the technical and institutional levels, the project yielded results that will support the continuity and replication of its initiatives.

The project empowered women leaders by bolstering their leadership skills, and the organizations and venues in which they worked. Prioritizing the local level as the intervention area helped put the issue on the provincial agenda. The project enabled the beneficiaries to learn about each other and forged ties among women leaders of social and community initiatives in different jurisdictions.

The study Sex and Power. Who runs Argentina?  led to the development of the Women’s Participation Index (IPM), a methodological tool that will facilitate future studies on women’s gains in policy-making. The publications have had an extensive impact and are being used not only by the beneficiaries but by stakeholders outside the project (e.g., UNDP, FLACSO, British Embassy, CSOs)