Project

Promoting Human Rights through Providing Access to Information for Marginalized Women in Zimbabwe

Grantee: Media Centre

The project had four objectives: to increase and improve gender-sensitive media coverage of issues affecting women in marginalized communities, in traditional/mainstream media in Zimbabwe; to create tools and use non-traditional media to disseminate and exchange information; to increase the capacity of marginalized women to use social media to access human rights information and freely express themselves on political, social, economic and cultural issues; and to increase marginalized women’s participation in policy dialogues and decision-making in target communities. The project was implemented in 10 communities across Zimbabwe and was designed to benefit over 7,000 women through activities including training of citizens journalists, and professional journalists in gender-sensitive reporting; the production of phone-in radio programmes; mentoring of student journalists; and use of Internet-based platforms for sharing information. The project was based on a good analysis of the gender inequalities faced by marginalized women in relation to access to information, awareness of their rights and exercise of political participation. Nevertheless, the project’s relevance was marred by its overambitious design and a lack of prioritization among its various objectives and approaches.

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Lessons from Project

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The project’s planned SMS platform was overtaken by the use of social networks, partly because more participating women had access to smartphones than was originally expected at project planning stage, and partly because of usage costs: text messaging was significantly more expensive than the data subscription allowing access to the Internet and the use of WhatsApp and Facebook.

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The project did not fully reflect on the strategic implications of supporting citizen journalists or bloggers. In at least some locations, professional journalists perceived citizen journalists as competitors, and there were reciprocal accusations of plagiarism and misuse of images, pitting bloggers/citizen journalists against professional journalists. The concerns expressed on both sides were made sharpened by the very precarious economic situation of many journalists, professional and citizen alike.

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The project document did not explicitly prioritize the identified needs from the point of view of marginalized women. As a result, despite the sound analysis, the project’s relevance was hampered by a tendency to spread activities too thinly across a broad range of issues. The project was trying to address many different problems, all genuine concerns, but ones that could not all be addressed effectively on the project’s financial resources.

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The grantee presented the project as a partnership with three other NGOs and a private commercial radio station. The partners clearly brought added value to the proposal because they had long-standing experience working with women in the project areas. However, the partners had been insufficiently involved in the design of the project, and that they were presented with a set of activities to implement but had had little say in defining the project’s strategy.

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The project design lacked clarity of purpose and prioritization: it was not clear whether the grantee’s intention was to improve gender sensitivity in reporting, to give a bigger role to women in the media, or to encourage alternative, more gender-sensitive channels of information.

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It is important to note that the project benefited from the perceived neutrality of UNDEF as a UN agency donor. In the sensitive context of Zimbabwe in relation to the media, the grantee noted that the fact that the project was funded by a UN agency helped local authority accept it and even buy into it.

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The project ensured that a critical mass of women in the 10 communities across the country have acquired skills necessary to use social media purposefully to exchange information. The WhatsApp group created by the project continued to be active and used by the participants.

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The training gave a very palpable boost to the self-confidence of the women who participated. The capacities of citizen journalists have also been substantially improved, and some women have clearly acquired skills that enhanced their status at local level and continued to spur their posting of information on social networks.

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