Project: Enhancing Political Participation of Marginalised Women in Nepal
Evaluation Date: September 2010
Report: [report link]
Lesson Learned:

Since top-down government approaches have failed to address social exclusion and effective participation of marginalized women, the project combined a top-down strategy within a bottom-up approach. Planned activities were supported by strong top-down mechanisms and implementing partners were firmly rooted in a bottom-up approach, with the direct participation of the target audience. The adoption of the community organization pyramid, which involved monitoring of all activities by resource persons appointed by beneficiaries, consolidated the networks step by step. Stakeholders were able to collaborate at the local level while remaining connected to Kathmandu.

Theme: Women's empowerment
Project: Cultivating Democratic Leaders from Marginalized Groups in Thailand
Evaluation Date: December 2010
Report: [report link]
Lesson Learned:

What will be the role and responsibilities of the implementing partners at each stage of the project (and after)? Do they have the capacity to achieve these? If necessary, include capacity building/training of partners into the preliminary stages of project activity. In this case, control remained in the grantee’s office in Bangkok and was not delegated to the regions. As a result, quality control could not be guaranteed without additional personnel being allocated to the project, with resulting additional costs. This structural weakness created a corresponding imbalance between money spent at central level versus the grassroots level.

Theme: Youth engagement