AWOMI - African Women's Millenium Inititative

The Accountability Tracking (ACT) is one of AWOMI’s three main program areas of work. It covers action research mapping all critical issues related to gender, economic reforms and social justice including access to water and sanitation, HIV/AIDs, services related to sexuality, reproductive health and rights (SRHR); food sovereignty and nutrition, finance, women’s unpaid work, representation, participation and voice.

Integrating women’s rights issues into economic policy, poverty reduction strategies programs (PRSP), budgetary formulation and community development processes is key to promoting sustainable development. The ACT therefore connects commitments to women’s human rights to participatory evidence building and policy dialogue with elected officials and development institutions. Implementing the ACT, AWOMI was able to build the knowledge, advocacy skills and leadership of key change agents from young women to local level organizations of women. AWOMI was also able to place them to dialogue face to face with decision makers on budgets responsive to their demands or establishment of benchmarks to meet the MDGs. Through the dissemination of the ACT AWOMI managed to reach out to women political leaders like parliamentarians and four women mayors in Senegal who reach the conclusion that investing in women’s health, especially SRHR is smart development that generates substantial political gains. This is a transformative process in the sense that it brings at center stage, issues that has been sidelined for too long in policy processes. It also enhances movement building around women’s economic and social rights.

The ACT was first introduced as training tool during the July 2008 second edition of the month-long Young Women Knowledge and Leadership Institute (YOWLI) in Goree Island, Senegal. Different courses used the ACT as guiding framework for evidence building and policy advocacy. Using the tool in these sessions was quite significant because it brought together different groups of youth that brought down from the lived experiences the different manifestations of impoverishment through the linkages and complex synergies between inequalities, gender and economic policies and rights. Those from rural areas articulated how the global food crisis and climate change were hitting home in a context food un-sovereignty and neglect of women food producers. Those coming from urban informal settlements discussed challenges related to flooding, lack of access to clean water and sanitation, unemployment. These issues linking challenges related to access to finance to creative way of finding livelihoods including in conflict situation examined reasons behind preventing youth youth from having a voice and participation in national and international gathering and policy making. The YOWLI 2008 also created a space where ideas that challenge existing strategies and organizing for social transformation were examined. AWOMI was able to enhance youth networking and social mobilization by supporting define and implement their forward looking strategies using the ACT as a transformation instrument to influence Government and international financial and trade institutions policy decisions and program design.

The ACT was also tested in regional training where women and YOWLI graduates were brought together to assess the validity of the questionnaire and the robustness of the policy analysis in line with human rights commitments and their own realities on the ground and at national level.

Application of the ACT mechanism enable women and youth living of poverty to gather  evidence and call upon their leaders and  decision makers that commitments have not been fulfilled. From March to July2009, women and youth organizations with AWOMI partner media institutions from met in Senegal and discussed implementation strategies of the ACT from the research to advocacy. The first implementation took place in Senegal and Mauritania where about 15000  and 1000 heads of households and  500  and 100 leaders of associations were respectively involved in a participatory evidence gathering under the direction of women and YOWLI graduates.  Participants all indicated that for the first time they were conducting research on themselves by themselves. A woman leader from Sibassor, Fatick, Senegal said “This process of participatory evidence gathering is more empowering than getthing financing because it provides us knowledge and courage that will be with us forever”

The participatory process of building the ACT started with looking at what exists, what other tools have been developed by regional and international partners. Then a process of putting women at the forefront of identifying the gaps in the poverty reduction policies at national and local level, combined with Government commitments in realizing SRHR was set up. The ACT was presented and tested during the second edition of the Young Woman Knowledge and Leadership Institute (YOWLI), organized in July 2008. This YOWLI has been significant in many ways.  In the composition of participants, it was a mix of activists, young women active in SRHR clubs supported by UNFPA throughout Africa, women’s leaders and activists from the women movement, economist and academics. The YOWLI’s focus was to ensure that the ACT was understood and owned by participants who would then implement it once back home. Given the serious gap in addressing SRHR issues in economic policies, PRSP and budgets it was essential to build a partnership between the young YOWLI activists, women leaders in communities, academia and the media.

AWOMI then brought together YOWLI graduates, head of print and radio media house and women leaders of local organizations from Zambia, Ethiopia, Congo DRC, Namibia, Mozambique, Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea and Senegal to design an implementation strategy of the ACT combining evidence collection, advocacy, gender responsive budgeting, monitoring and policy dialogue to challenge and ask leaders to account. A rank ordering process of national and local Governments is one of the most innovative tools developed for putting pressure on them to deliver on their commitments as we move towards ICPD plus 15 and beyond.

AWOMI brought the ACT process into global gatherings like the AIDS 2008 conference in Mexico, the CSW where financing gender equality was discussed. AWOMI’s presentation of the ACT generated a wave of support and mobilization at several levels among different constituencies of women and youth. The ACT created the missing link between evidence building, economic policy and budget monitoring with women and youth leaders at the driving seat.

The ACT also enabled AWOMI to attract the attention of 4 women mayors in Senegal who signed an MOU with AWOMI to put SRHR at the center of their local development policies and earmark resources for this support. The participatory exercises enabled women to carry evidence based research back in their communities and articulate their demands for equitable budgets that would integrate provision of descent SRHR services at municipalities’ levels.

AWOMI is working on a book that would document both the ACT process as well as the very relevant outcomes including partnership with local authorities that contribute in building sustainability of this initiative.

This report to the FORD Foundation in Lagos concerns a project organizing and mobilizing women and youth change agents in poor communities in West Africa and developing their capacity to become strong advocates leading  initiatives of holding national and local governments and their development partners accountable.  It was velopped parallel to another project supported by the Foundation in New York and focusing essentially on sexauality reproductive health and rights. AWOMI is proud to report that the approach used end up being one of the best strategies to propel policy change.

Through action research, youth empowerment and advocacy skills building, AWOMI worked during  this grant period with  women and youth in a  selected number of countries to set up a monitoring process in order to enhance the realization of their economic and social rights.

AWOMI’s third program,  the Women Empowerment Fund (WEFU) is the corollary activity of the ACT and YOWLI. The WEFU serves on one hand to fund post YOWLI identified initiatives and on the other to promote income opportunities for women at local level. Following the month long YOWLI training AWOMI selects a few of the best YOWLI proposals that link implementation of the ACT to Advocacy and social mobilization and provides support to the YOWLI groups throght a partner mentoring organization. The WEFU has also enabled numerous women’s organizations to access seed money for implementing the ACT while enhancing their income earning activities. The WEFU is the vehicule that allows these economic actors to understand the place of their activities in the production chain of the sector and identify policy challenges that they can use in their advocacy for demanding change as well as increased budgetary allocations for their activity. The WEFU proves to be an innovative initiative in the sense that most financing to income generating activities do not integrate a research or advocacy dimension like the ACT . The WEFU is a catalyst for women understanding where is the money, who controls resources and decision making and how they can engage with them to ask for a more equitable distribution of the national and local budget.

Under this grant AWOMI has implemented the WEFU  and supported women’s organizations in West  Africa linking it  ACT mechanism, gender, advocacy communication techniques and gender responsive budgeting. By linking macroeconomic policies which determine the budget to women’s realities and living conditions, the WEFU program went beyond providing seed money to empowering women to demand accountability from their government. By building the capacity of women to better organize and their advocacy skills, AWOMI through this grant positioned women in local election processes and accompanied them until they women a considerable number of seats as city counselors. These women rural counselors are now sitting in different committees such as water, health, land management committees.

These 3 programs  contribute in no small way in the design, implementation and monitoring of gender responsive pro poor  poverty eradication and promotion of social justice and human rights in West Africa. They provide the stark proof that with the proper funding, the right program and genuine partnership, long lasting results can be achieved