T-Shirts to Web Links: The Project Design

- from T-Shirts to Web Links: Women Connect! Building Communications Capacity with Women's NGOs

With the success and lessons learned from the pilot project, the Pacific Institute sought funding toexpand to at least three countries and approximately 10-15 organisations per country. In January 1999, the Gates Foundation awarded a grant of one million dollars for the expansion, called Women Connect![17] The objectives, values and assumptions that motivated the pilot project were retained but more clearly defined in Women Connect! Principles that emerged from or were reinforced by the pilot project, and that then guided Women Connect!, are shown below

Women's Health: Whose Agenda?

In seeking funding for Women Connect!, the project team debated at great length the extent to whichhealth, and specifically reproductive health, should be emphasised. This question cuts directly to the heart of several thorny issues in north-south cooperation. The dilemma was this. On the one hand, it is well-established that donor funding is much more available for work related to reproductive and sexual health -- especially family planning, contraception, and HIV/AIDS – than for efforts aimed only at improving the status, or even health, of women more generally. On the other hand, NGOs in southern (developing) countries strongly resent being "donor-driven" and strongly prefer that northern organisations do not super-impose agendas that sway them from their missions and intended goals.

We wanted to set an example of how a northern organisation could collaborate with southern organisations while allowing them to pursue their self-defined agenda and needs. We argued with ourselves that Women Connect! should not restrict its collaboration only to women's groups that were working on reproductive and sexual health, or would do so as a condition for support. The factwas that relatively few women's NGOs in Africa have reproductive health as a major focus, although many are tackling HIV/AIDS and violence against women. In conferences such as the ICPD and the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, women from southern countries had made it clear that, for women living in poverty, their health is linked directly to other issues: food for their families, access to clean water, land and credit, and inheritance and other legal rights. For example, in Zambia, of 13 NGOs assessed for Women Connect!, 10 included reproductive health as a priorityarea but gave greater importance to economic empowerment and land rights, explaining that these issues greatly impact reproductive health. "Poverty needs to be tackled first so that women are empowered, and perhaps given the tools to seek positions of leadership. In that capacity, they are likely to make health a priority and that will translate into policies that will uplift the status ofwomen in their constituent districts" (NGO Coordinating Committee of Zambia). The decision for Women Connect! was to include emphasis on women's health, with hopes of collaborating in the area of reproductive and sexual health, but with a willingness to let women's health be interpreted very broadly, as "health and well-being." Project materials expressed this as: Women Connect! would assist women's groups in appropriate use of media and technology "to communicate and advocate for the causes they feel are important in their communities – forexample, women's reproductive and sexual health, inheritance rights for women, and the reductionof all forms of violence." This decision had both beneficial and problematic consequences.

Project Values and Working Style: The Hands-On versus Hands-Off Challenge

An additional issue in north-south cooperation is the extent to which a northern donor or partner imposes reporting and other requirements on the southern organisation. Large donor agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) or the World Bank use public monies and must report to the U.S. Congress or northerngovernments on their impact. This translates into extensive requirements to show precisely how the funds are used and how their use has produced quantifiable results and impacts. Although many NGOs welcome the financial support that often comes from work with a majordonor, for small southern NGOs these requirements are usually onerous and even suffocating. In Uganda, for example, Safe Motherhood Initiatives, a women's NGO, began as an affiliate of the Holland-based Women's Global Network on Reproductive Rights. It soon changed its name to Safe Motherhood Initiatives to facilitate doing project work for USAID and UNFPA. Eventually, facing a multi-million dollar health and nutrition contract with the World Bank, the founder recognised she and her staff were burned out from being donor-driven, working on agendas that were not their own.

She decided to say no to the World Bank's millions and work instead, on a much smaller scale, on violence against women. Representatives of some 30 women's NGOs in Nicaragua expressed similar concerns in convening a workshop on "How to have successful collaboration with Northern organisations." Being very cognisant of the issues southern (developing country) women's organisations have with northern donors, we were determined to find a successful formula.

The Global Fund for Women provided an alternative model. In dramatic contrast to the hands-on approach of the major donors, the Global Fund for Women is distinctive in its hands-off approach to grantmaking. The Global Fund defines its mission as "to assist women and women's organisationsto transform their societies." A basic premise of the Global Fund is that women's groups know best what is needed to improve the lives of women in their communities and contribute to positive transformation of their societies. It recognises that there is a gap between large-scale funding agencies with set agendas and the capacities and flexibility needed by small-scale local women'sgroups. The Global Fund seeks to fill that gap by providing small grants (up to $15,000) to women's groups without defining what specific issues grantees must address in their programmes -- except thattheir work fit within a broad women's rights context.[18] When the Global Fund for Women awards a grant, it usually asks only for an end-of-project report – thus imposing only the barest minimum of paperwork requirements.

The Pacific Institute for Women's Health had worked with the Global Fund for Women and had a deep appreciation for the strengths of its hands-off approach. Women Connect! sought to incorporate these values, but to intervene more directly in the activities of the recipient organisations by specifying a realm of activity and providing training and technical assistance. Our goal was to find an optimal middle ground between allowing full freedom of activity (the Global Fund model) andproviding technical input in a narrowly-defined area of activity (the standard large technicalassistancemodel). NGOs choosing to participate in the project would have the freedom to select the content of activities they would carry out, but would do so within the general areas of media and technology as we presented them. This was another decision that had both beneficial and problematic consequences.

Although we were positioning Women Connect! in a middle ground in terms of intervention, we were committed to proceeding in accordance with values articulated by southern women's NGOs.

These included: transparency; building on and giving credit to work already done by others; collaboration as a method of empowerment (thus technical collaboration rather than "technical assistance"); information sharing, partnerships and capacity-building among women's NGOs; andfollow-through to maximise the continuation and sustainability of activities initiated through oursupport. Women Connect! would use an institutional development approach that focuses on the group's organisational needs rather than on delivery of rigidly fixed content.

Project Structure & Implementation

Women Connect! was designed with the following complementary activities: needs assessments, training workshops, technical collaboration, distribution of health information and materials, and small grants.

Selecting participating organisations and conducting needs assessment. The project team made assessment visits to nine countries in Africa and selected Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Uganda. Subsequently in each country a local researcher familiar with the NGO community, communication strategies, and health issues visited NGOs that seemed appropriate to the project. From a wider sample of NGOs, the researcher identified 10 to 15 groups per country that best met the project criteria and with each conducted a needs assessment focused on communication needs and priorities related to women's health. The assessment confirmed that reproductive health was seen in thecontext of a broad range of concerns that influence a woman's life and therefore her health. These concerns include safe motherhood, access to the political arena where it is possible to influence policies that affect women, protection from all forms of violence, access to property and socioeconomic advancement. Among groups working on health issues, most common was tacklingHIV/AIDS, dealing with both prevention and care, as well as working to prevent other sexually transmitted infections. A total of 30 organisations – all having some explicit emphasis on health in their work – were selected and invited to participate in training workshops.

Training: Media Strategy and Information Technology Workshops. In each country the project identified a leading local NGO to link Women Connect! to a network of grassroots women's groups and that would co-host a Media Strategy and Information Technology Workshop. Women Connect! also identified several professionals in each country to participate in the workshop as trainers andco-facilitators. Immediately prior to the workshop the project team made site visits to participating NGOs to meet their directors and communications, advocacy and training staff to further explain the project and generate interest and commitment. (A special Executive Seminar for NGO directors in Uganda and Zambia was very instrumental in gaining their interest and support.) The workshopswere four days duration, two days on media strategies and campaigns and two days on information communication technology. Training was highly interactive and based on the most current research on how adults learn.

Technical collaboration individually tailored to participating organisations.

Complementing thetraining, Women Connect! provided ongoing technical collaboration to individual groups through local project facilitators in each country, on-site visits by the U.S.-based project team, and e-mail relationships and feedback from the project team to each participating organisation.

Distribution of health information and materials.

The Pacific Institute for Women's Healthreviewed, compiled and provided to each NGO a large collection of the latest health-related materials most appropriate to the needs and the literacy levels of the communities served by the women's NGOs. It also provided a list of health information websites appropriate for use with community groups.

Small grants.

"If you don't use it, you lose it." We knew that training alone is not enough to makesomething happen. Often in the development field, training workshops are conducted with the assumption that participants will go back to their organisations and implement the new ideas and skills that have been presented in the workshop. Previous experience had taught us that this is not enough – and, in fact, it rarely happens. NGOs in particular, many of whom depend on volunteers, often are not able to carry out new activities, despite interest and good intent, without additional funding. We saw small grants (ranging from $3000 to$5,000 per organisation) as putting steam inthe engine. Following the workshops we worked with each of the participating NGOs to help them conceptualise a small-grants proposal. "The grant part is very encouraging," responded one participant. "It gives hope to all of us that the workshop is a serious business." [19]

In total the Pacific Institute awarded $121,500 in small grants to 26 organisations in the three countries to conduct a one-year project on some aspect of communications presented in the training. Each recipient was encouraged to consider the grant an opportunity to move toward adoption of new communication skills. In some cases the group used the small grant as a pilot project. For example, the Uganda Media Women's Association (UMWA) used its small grant for a teen pregnancy pilot project in a slum area of Kampala with the intention of raising more money and expanding elsewhere. Evaluations by the grantee organisations emphasise the significant role of the smallgrants in allowing them to implement in a substantive way the tools and new learning introduced in the workshops.

Project Management, Monitoring and Evaluation

Women Connect! was managed by a project team based at the Pacific Institute for Women's Health, itself a small women's NGO, assisted in Africa by local researchers, trainers and technical support advisors. [20] In each country a local consultant was hired to oversee and facilitate the groups' progress on their small grants projects. Whenever possible we hired African women out of the conviction that providing appropriate role models is crucial for helping women stretch their ideas of what they can do. In particular, it was important to employ women with technology skills, as technology is a maledominatedarea where women often feel incompetent.

The Women Connect! team also periodically visited the participating NGOs to identify problems, successes, opportunities for collaboration and technical assistance needs. Because each NGO had different needs, structures and target audiences, these visits were extremely important. As one participant expressed it, "Women Connect! has been a very user-friendly programme. The fact that donors come to the ground is important. We have donors who live in Kampala who have not even come to see what we do. It is very important for donors to come to the ground, to know what the problems are and how they can be resolved" (Morna (2001).A variety of methods was used to evaluate and document progress. These included baseline organisational needs assessments, workshop evaluations, site visits, technical staff feedback and, from the NGOs that received the small grants, a six-month and year-end report, self-evaluation and case studies. A final external evaluation was carried out in 2001 by a South African communication specialist also knowledgeable about NGOs. [21]

Sustainability of accomplishments was a major concern. From the outset we had hoped that other sources of funding could be found that would support directly the African organisations with which Women Connect! had worked. This became especially important as the groups showed dedication and desire to capitalise on the momentum of activities initiated under the Women Connect! smallgrants. The Global Fund for Women became the principle partner for this and has re-granted the majority of the Women Connect! groups in all three countries for further communications work. Some European donors (e.g., Denmark's Danida) have also begun to launch communicationinitiatives and it is likely that many of our partner organisations will be able to leverage their experience to attract additional funding. German donors have already helped one NGO partner, NAWOU in Uganda, to develop a web site, and Jekesa Pfungua in Zimbabwe has now integratedcommunication strategies into all of its work, which is being funded by European donors as well as the Global Fund for Women.

18 The Global Fund for Women, The Global Fund for Women Annual Report 2000-2001, Palo Alto, California.

19 Pacific Institute for Women's Health, Women Connect! Workshop Evaluation, Harare, October 2000.

20 The U.S.-based team at the Pacific Institute consisted of project director Doe Mayer, project coordinator Muadi Mukenge, technology coordinator Carole Roberts, a part-time co-director Barbara Pillsbury, a part-time administrative assistant and occasional advisors.

21 Colleen Lowe Morna, "Learning to Link: An Evaluation of the Women Connect! Project of the Pacific Institute for Women's Health." Johannesburg: Gender Links, 2001. See also Morna and Khan, 2000.