The Communication Initiative
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The Communication Initiative
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Civil Society and Media - Strengthened Together and Advancing in New Directions (CSM-STAND)

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"Thriving, inclusive and independent civil society and media are key to vibrant democracies."

The Civil Society and Media - Strengthened Together and Advancing in New Directions (CSM-STAND) programme seeks to strengthen independent media and civil society around the world. Specifically, the programme works to foster independent civic forces, enhance civic engagement, and build vibrant, resilient, and self-reliant civil society and media sectors that cultivate more pluralistic, democratic societies. To realise its goal, CSM-STAND designs and implements wide-ranging country- and regional-focused programmes aimed at strengthening civil society and media actors. It also seeks to promote trans-regional learning and develop next-generation technical resources for the civil society and media sectors. Launched in 2021, the 5-year programme consists of 2 regional programmes, one focused on Africa and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and the other covering Asia, Europe and Eurasia, and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the 2 regional programmes are managed by Pact, which co-leads a consortium of global, regional, and technical partners with IREX.
Communication Strategies
CSM-STAND is organised around three key objectives:
  1. Build civil society and independent media capacity and leadership to constructively engage in civic space.
  2. Provide the democracy, human rights, and governance sector with technical resources and adaptable programme options.
  3. Operationalise and effectively manage a broad-based, diverse consortium for implementation.
Programming that is implemented under the CSM-STAND leverages the consortium but focuses on collaborating with and empowering local partners to tackle a broad range of country- or regionally-driven issues and problem sets. Some of the areas of programme focus include the following:

Capacity strengthening for individual, institutional, and network change-makers:
  • Organisational development for civil society and media institutions, networks, and coalitions;
  • Use of south-to-south and exchange-based capacity development;
  • Leadership development for individual change agents, including women and youth;
  • Support for "transition" to direct US government (USG) funding for civil society organisations (CSOs); and
  • Financing sustainability and building philanthropic ecosystems.
Media development and information integrity:
  • Support for improved journalistic practices for open and closed information environments;
  • Promotion of journalistic safety practices, including safe use of technology;
  • Context-appropriate application of digital-first strategies;
  • Combating and promoting resilience to disinformation; and
  • Support for sustainable financing grounded in local media markets.
Enabling and sustaining civic engagement:
  • Strengthened legal and normative enabling environments for civil society and media;
  • Support for effective civic education that contributes to healthy civic behaviours;
  • Promotion of transparent, citizen-responsive governance and service delivery;
  • Fostering youth engagement and positive youth development; and
  • Support for advocacy and policy reform for priority issues.
The CSM-STAND programme includes the following areas of activity:
  • Project implementation: CSM-STAND works on a number of projects across Africa, Asia, and Latin America to develop evidence on effective strategies to strengthen civil society and the media for shared learning. One example is the Transform (Transform Digital Spaces to Reflect Feminist Democratic Principles) programme, which was launched by IREX in 2022. It is a 3-year pilot initiative that seeks to expand opportunities for women to safely exercise their civic voice and agency, both online and offline, by addressing technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV). The pilot project is being implemented in Kenya, Georgia, and Guatemala. More information on projects falling under CSM-STAND can be found here.
  • Learning agenda: CSM-STAND developed a learning agenda that directs how the programme develops learning questions to be answered through its projects and related research activities globally. The learning agenda has three focus areas and four cross-cutting priorities:
    • Safety and well-being - Interventions to improve digital, physical, and psychosocial safety and well-being for journalists, activists, and organisations.
    • Networks and collective action - Interventions to strengthen and diversify networks, collaboration, and collective action across borders and boundaries. Interventions may focus on formal coalitions or social movements, and boundaries may be geographic or social.
    • Information integrity and trustworthiness of civic and media institutions - Interventions to increase the independence and capacity of civil society and media organisations, and to improve the quality, relevance, and reach of information they put out, with the aim of becoming more trustworthy to the public.
    The four cross-cutting priority areas are:
    • Women- and/or youth-led activities;
    • Questions around what resources and capacities, broadly defined, sustain positive change;
    • Dimensions of civic space; and
    • Activities that have the goal to change behaviour or norms.
  • Learning management system: To assist with the learning agenda and sharing of knowledge, the programme launched the online platform, Spark. It offers a range of learning resources in 10 languages and is intended to be an online learning space for civil society, media, and others supporting the promotion of democracy, human rights, and governance. Learning resources available through Spark are developed by and for civil society and media institutions, networks, and coalitions. The platform contains adult-learner focused content related to accountability and anticorruption, advocacy and policy reform, civic engagement, combating information pollution, inclusive development, institutional strengthening, media and journalistic development, and monitoring and evaluation.
  • Collaborative technical strategies and thought products: The project seeks to collaboratively develop technical strategies and other products, such as the Participatory Design and Co-Creation Guidance, Private Sector Engagement for Civic and Media Space strategies and the IREX-led strategy on Mitigating the Impacts and Spread of Manipulative Information. The Participatory Design and Co-Creation Guidance, for example, is designed to help CSM-STAND partners implement and further enhance their commitment to participation and co-creation. It reviews the principles upon which programmatic design should be based to foster shared ownership and commitment over programme interventions. It also provides practical recommendations and standards for ensuring constructive and collaborative design with diverse partners.
Development Issues
Media Development, Democracy and Governance, Freedom of Expression
Key Points
Rationale for the programme:
Thriving, inclusive, and independent civil society and media are key to vibrant democracies. Yet in many countries, declining social trust, shrinking civic space, and polluted information ecosystems undermine the ability of civil society and media to serve the people they are intended to represent and inform. Despite examples of progress, too many countries are facing increasingly authoritarian governance, erosion of basic freedoms, restrictions on independent media, and the exclusion of entire groups of people from meaningful participation in civic life. Even within the most restrictive environments, dedicated civic and media activists work to serve and inform their constituencies, sometimes at great risk. CSM-STAND, therefore, works with its partners to build civil society's and media's capacities to credibly represent citizen interests and hold governments accountable through advocacy, oversight, and outreach. This goal is pursued by fostering independent civic forces, enhancing civic engagement, and building vibrant, resilient, and sustainable civil society and media sectors, as outlined above.
Partners
  • Global partners: IREX, Aga Khan Foundation, International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, and The Asia Foundation
  • Partners in Africa and MENA: AfriLabs, Arab Network for Civic Education, Samir Kassir Foundation, Sonke Gender Justice, and West Africa Civil Society Institute
  • Partners in Asia, Europe and Eurasia, and LAC: European Journalism Centre, MAKAIA, Prague Civil Society Centre, FORUM-ASIA, and Fundación Gabo
  • Technical partners across projects: Moonshot, Omdena, eQualitie, and TechSoup
  • Funder: USAID
Sources
Pact website; IREX website; CSM-STAND Factsheet; and Pact website - all accessed on July 11 2023. Image credit: Pact