Building Democratic Spaces in Egypt

The “Public Awareness” component of the project was merely an add-on to other activities. There was no plan concerning the intended audience for activities or events. No thought was given to how the “booklets” and other documents produced were to be distributed, and no consideration was given to providing guidance on how the documents were to be employed.

The project’s Training Workshops were well-organized; yet, each was a “one-off” affair, with no follow-up. Such activities will probably have been of short-term value to participants, but are unlikely to have had broader impact.

While members of a number of those groups listed as stakeholders – political parties, trade unions – and beneficiaries participated in project activities, no effort was made by the project team to engage with them on a continuing or consistent basis. The design of all activities should have included a process to enable participants to provide feedback on their experience.

The grantee failed to present any kind of baseline data against which progress might be assessed, which could have clarified the extent to which the needs of the targeted beneficiary groups were actually met.

A number of the individual events, viewed in isolation, seem to have been quite successful. They could have formed a basis for a stream of activities which might have enabled the project to deploy its resources in such a way as to work towards concrete results. The project scattered its resources in such a way that no issue and no social group received continuing attention. There was also no effort to build on what had been accomplished in any of the activities undertaken.