Posted Date: May 20, 2001
PROWID Promotes Partnerships and Dialogue on Effective Development Strategies
PROWID Promotes Partnerships and Dialogue on Effective Development Strategies
Improving women’s lives is crucial to alleviating poverty, malnutrition, and infant and maternal mortality; increasing children’s school enrollment; encouraging smaller families; and other development goals. Today, many development projects are either specifically targeting women, or making an effort to incorporate women and women’s needs. But until recently, there was little investigation into what really works, and limited sharing of information among projects.
A recently-concluded four-year grants project, managed by InterAction members the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) and the Centre for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA), provides many answers to the question of how best to improve women’s lives. The Promoting Women in Development (PROWID) project, funded by the Office of Women in Development at USAID, enabled development professionals from around the world to share information and network at regional and international meetings. This project aimed to improve the lives of women in developing countries and economies in transition by promoting development that is based on practical insights gained from field-tested interventions.
"People were looking for a new body of information and knowledge," said Julia Masterson, education adviser at CEDPA. "We wanted to document what works and what doesn’t work. And we wanted to share that information around the world to benefit development practitioners and to inform policy."
The PROWID project received 500 grant applications and funded 44 projects in 30 countries. About two-thirds of the funded projects were conducted by NGOs based in the project country, and one-third of projects were conducted by NGOs based in the United States, Canada, and other industrialized countries. The projects selected had to bring new knowledge to women in the field of development, such as research to inform the next steps of action, or pilot projects testing a particular strategy.
"The PROWID process was very important," said Masterson. "It was not just about giving out money or giving technical assistance, but about forming real partnerships." Early in the process, PROWID held regional workshops in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America. "These served to help people form informal networks, share experiences, and get specific skills in strategy planning and advocacy," said Masterson. "The people working on domestic violence in Mexico had a lot to learn from, and teach to, people working on domestic violence in India." A final conference in April of this year brought all the projects together to share lessons learned.
While the PROWID managers are still sorting through the data and will produce a final synthesis of lessons learned at the end of the summer, several lessons stand out, said Richard Strickland, socioeconomist at ICRW. "We learned not to underestimate the importance of organizational capacity-building," he said. "Often, funders don’t see capacity-building as an objective. We heard from the projects that often the process of building their organization’s capacity was most important." At least one PROWID project focused specifically on capacity-strengthening. The pilot project, conducted by the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), developed a series of picture diaries to allow a rural women’s group made up of illiterate and semi-literate women to monitor and manage their activities and progress. Thus, the women’s group was able to operate their group independently of SEWA. The diaries helped the women identify trends and problems, and improve their work performance.
Strickland indicated that the most sustainable development work benefits from high levels of participation. "This is not cost-free," he said. He cited two projects in Latin America as good examples of participation. In Brazil, the Rainforest Alliance trained Amazonian women to use non-timber forest products, and empowered women to demand inclusion in local decision-making. The project hoped to end the trend of selling forests to timber companies by making sure the local women had an economic stake in ensuring that the forests remain standing. Communities were able to negotiate with loggers to save fruit trees; to start microenterprises selling hammocks and jam; and to learn about political participation. Because a demand for firewood is a factor in the decimation of mangrove forests in El Salvador, the Centro de Estudios Ambientales y Sociales para el Desarrolo Sostenible (CEASDES) held town meetings in which women decided they wanted efficient wood stoves to decrease the demand for firewood. The stoves decreased firewood consumption from 43 pounds per capita per week, to about 38 pounds per capita per week. Since women were involved in all stages of the project, there is less likelihood that the improved stoves will be abandoned (as has happened in other projects).
Masterson at CEDPA said that one important lesson learned was "that two-year projects are just a drop in the bucket. A lot of the partner NGOs mentioned that things are just getting going after two years. For example, impacting policy and building a constituency are not short-term endeavors. We’ve made a lot of inroads into building movements, but these are just the first steps."
Projects in Africa dealing with the eradication of female genital cutting (FGC) are some of the most successful "movements" started under the PROWID umbrella. The Foundation for Research on Women’s Health, Productivity, and the Environment promoted an alternative initiation ceremony in parts of the Gambia, which taught girls about their religious rights and responsibilities; health (including the negative consequences of FGC); and community citizenship. This project "has been enthusiastically accepted by community members, circumcisers, local leaders, and local and national policymakers," according to a brochure about the project. Tostan in Senegal promoted a Village Education Program that taught women about their human rights, problem solving, and health, which resulted in 80,000 people from 105 villages issuing a public declaration ending the practice of FGC. CEDPA’s Egypt office operated a project seeking individuals who, openly or quietly, had rejected female genital cutting, in order to show that such "positive deviance" already exists in the community.
While not all projects produced the expected results, the overall findings will provide valuable insights for future development efforts. Strickland said a study of the impact of a microcredit program in Ecuador revealed that "it was very difficult to say there was any impact because there had been no baseline study," Furthermore, the study found that the small loans were often not enough to offset the precarious incomes of many households. While short-term improvements were recorded, these improvements did not prove to be sustainable over the long term. "There has been so much said about the benefits of microcredit, but this research shows that to really run a sustainable program that meets larger needs, you need more resources and ancillary services," said Strickland.
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