Strengthening access to information via community radio in Latin America

In transitioning societies with the control and accountability mechanisms under development having tangible assets delivered, strategic position-holders interested, and locally recognized agents of change with multiplication potential involved are important to ensure the target population’s immediate interest, as well as the longer-term sense of ownership to be developed and the sustainability of the project to be achieved. Whenever possible, adding the beneficiary financial contribution element, such as community funds, can help in enhancing the sense of ownership and accountability for public expenditures and improving processes for public consultation in development planning.

Without the team’s emergency management skills that have been developed throughout the decades of work at the national and regional levels as epidemiologists, toxicologists, and water and hygiene experts, as well as the donor’s flexibility, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Nagorno Karabakh the project would not have reached its objective and improved the daily lives of the target population. While the staff’s professional and results-oriented performance and UNDEF’s flexible approach allowed to not only deliver the intended outputs but also extend the project’s geographical and demographical scopes, it is generally important to consider various internal and external risk factors as part of a risk mitigation and emergency response strategy to ensure the full achievement of the project’s objective.

The project could have done more to ensure involvement of all the main political parties. While invitations were sent to the eight official parties, only two of them showed interest in participating in the trainings. More follow-up after the invitations would have been required to ensure involvement.

The project design and logical framework were weak and too ambitious. Lack of baseline studies and mapping of women participation in politics was another handicap, as well as the inappropriate indicators for selecting the trainers.

The project was managed on a somewhat ad-hoc basis. The grantee was working with reduced human resources and there were weaknesses in the management capacity of the team. Lack of SMART key-indicators and, of a formal monitoring system was another problem. The grantee board members and project manager also had scarce and irregular contacts with the implementing organizations, a situation that jeopardizes achievement of expected outcomes and sustainability of the grantee’s goal of building a network.

As part of the capacity building process, at the end of the training session, each facilitator had to submit to the class a project proposal, including a selection of the topics more relevant for her own communities, including an action plan and a budget. This was a very practical approach that worked. The action plan was also a condition for the release of funds to start implementing workshops at the local level.

One of the main project impacts was to get a significant number of women and the vulnerable population to go to vote. Rural women gained a better understanding of the importance of participating in the elections and young sex workers and street women who had never been involved in electoral events, got registered and went to vote.

A large number of the vulnerable population benefited from the capacity building activities: one of the main strengths of the project was to make training facilities accessible by people who were usually excluded such as persons with disabilities, people living in remote areas and marginalized women including sex -workers. The training sessions involving the sex workers were particularly effective at providing learning that connected to the beneficiaries’ lives and motivated them to participate for the first time in the electoral process.