Project: Strengthening promotion of women’s rights (Kenya)
Evaluation Date: October 2011
Report: [report link]
Lesson Learned:

While the project succeeded in bringing stories from women at grassroots level into the Kenyan mainstream media, simple steps could have improved the coverage of women’s issues. Several women mentioned that they were unable to provide images to illustrate the issues they wanted to highlight because either they did not have cameras or they had not been trained to use them. To ensure sustainability and quality in the coverage of women’s issues, the grantee should include training in photojournalism and social media in future activities.

Theme: Women's empowerment
Project: Strengthening promotion of women’s rights (Kenya)
Evaluation Date: October 2011
Report: [report link]
Lesson Learned:

Training in media management successfully created links between NGO’s and relevant journalists in Kenya, and empowered NGO’s to frame their messages in a more media friendly way. Previously, NGO’s had a difficult time making their material relevant to journalists, and lacked access to media outlets. The NGO training was seen as vital in promoting coverage of women’s issues in the media.

Theme: Women's empowerment
Project: Civil Society Monitoring of Governorate Councils in Iraq
Evaluation Date: August 2014
Report: [report link]
Lesson Learned:

Although factors like the security situation in Iraq made it difficult to probe the impact of the intervention, significant advances were made in short-term government responsiveness and transparency to the public. The grantee published Annual Monitoring Reports to highlight the gap between public expectations and the actual performance of the Governorate Councils. These were circulated widely and managed to attract considerable interest from the mass media and senior government officials. In response, several of the participating Governorates Councils devoted greater efforts to transparency and providing information to the public. Further, the central government expressed their interest in expanding civil society monitoring to all provinces in the country.

Theme: Interaction with government
Project: Media, Transparency and Accountability in Albania
Evaluation Date: September 2010
Report: [report link]
Lesson Learned:

The grantee mastered the reporting and production aspects of the project activities, but its biggest challenge was finding a market for its products. This was illustrated repeatedly by stations pulling out because of political or advertiser pressure. Perhaps linkages with a strong enterprise are necessary to ensure a platform to broadcast such shows and to be able to withstand the subsequent political pressure.

Theme: Media
Project: Grassroots Gender Accountability in Uganda
Evaluation Date: April 2014
Report: [report link]
Lesson Learned:

Investigative journalism was intended to critically review shortcomings discovered by VBCs throughout the project’s target districts; TV and radio shows were meant to overcome the lack of interfaces between the local population and duty bearers and to serve as a strategy for increased accountability. Furthermore, NGOs are still inviting the grantee’s Kibaale field officer to radio shows to share the approach and achievements of the monitoring work with a wider audience. One particular radio station has even offered free airtime. There is hence relevant impact towards transparent, gender-responsive local service provision in the form of vivid online readership discussion and comments in relation to the project’s investigative journalism outputs.

Theme: Interaction with government