Feminism in Action: Evaluation of AWDF's MDG3 Project

In the year 2011, the African Women's Development Fund (AWDF) received a grant of 32 million from Comic Relief for the period of April 2011 to March 2014. This was preceded by a grant of 31 million in November 2012, making it a total of 33 million. The framework for the delivery of this project has largely been determined by AWDF's 2011-15 Strategic Plan (SPIII) and was to be implemented in Sub-Saharan Africa. An end of project evaluation was conducted for AWDF between July and August 2014. The evaluation was specifically focused on the performance of AWDF's Phase II Project which was part of Comic Relief's (CR) Devolved Grant Making Program. The project focused on four areas, namely: Grant Making in each of AWDF's six thematic areas; Capacity and Movement Building; Strengthening AWDF's Communications; and Partnership Development.The purpose of the evaluation was to evaluate the project performance, identify good practices and draw out lessons that can be applied in future interventions. As the Comic Relief grant was meant to support AWDF's Strategic Plan, the evaluation looked at AWDF's main areas of work and assessed the role of the Comic Relief grant within which the AWDF initiatives were conducted. The evaluation also coincided with AWDF's Strategic Plan mid-way point. In 2008, the African Women's Development Fund (AWDF) received a grant of u20ac5 million from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs to promote the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 3 on women's empowerment. The grant was provided for a three-year period from 2008 to 2011 and was implemented as AWDF's MDG3 Project. As the project was coming to end, between July and September 2011, AWDF commissioned an independent consultant to conduct a summative evaluation. This evaluation sought to achieve four key objectives: (i) Document activities undertaken; (ii) Assess outcomes arising from the activities undertaken; (iii) Assess which strategies were most effective; and (iv) Based on this, make recommendations for future programming. In addition to this, the evaluation sought to assess the extent to which AWDF, as a feminist organization, had lived up to feminist principles in implementation of the project. In 2008, the African Women's Development Fund (AWDF) received a grant of 5 million from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs to promote the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 3 on women's empowerment. The grant was provided for a three-year period from 2008 to 2011 and was implemented as AWDF's MDG3 Project. As the project was coming to end, between July and September 2011, AWDF commissioned an independent consultant to conduct a summative evaluation

APFIC Regional Workshop on "Mainstreaming Fisheries Co-management"

This is the report of the APFIC regional workshop on "Mainstreaming fisheries co-management" held in Siem Reap, Cambodia from August 9-12, 2005 . The goal of the workshop was to provide a forum to learn from past experience and to promote devolved management of fisheries. Participants at the workshop had the opportunity to be exposed to a range of coastal and inland fisheries co-management interventions and the elaboration of approaches needed to make fisheries co-management a "mainstream" activity in developing countries. The objective of the workshop was to develop summary conclusions on the status of co-management in the region and provide some concrete recommendations for action towards mainstreaming fishery co-management in the Asia-Pacific region. The report contains the action plan and recommendations of the workshop. Many agencies (both governmental and non-governmental) are striving to improve the livelihoods of poor people that are dependent on aquatic resources by including these stakeholders in the planning and implementation of fisheries management. Many states have adopted decentralization as the way to implement future fisheries management, especially in developing countries, which often involves a partnership between government and the local communities, i.e. a co-management approach. The challenge is to find a way for co-management to become a mainstream practice of both government and non-government organizations and communities

Review of the Learning Alliance for Adaptation in Smallholder Agriculture

The Learning Alliance for Adaptation in Smallholder Agriculture is a knowledge platform which leverages the strengths, opportunities and diverse audiences of the International Fund for Agriculture (IFAD) and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). The objective of the Learning Alliance is to produce and disseminate evidence for informed policy and implementation of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) interventions by capturing, analyzing and communicating lessons emerging from the IFAD supported global Adaptation in Smallholder Agriculture Programme (ASAP). The Learning Alliance strives to enable agricultural development policy-makers and practitioners make science-based decisions in the context of climate change. The underlying assumption of the Learning Alliance is that the “provision of demand-driven research outputs to policy-makers and practitioners is a key mechanism for improving the effectiveness of adaptation actions among ultimate beneficiaries, in this case smallholder farmers”. The review aims to identify areas for improvement to achieve the planned outcomes of the Learning Alliance more effectively. It provides recommendations to inform a further phase, based on the experience of those closely involved in the knowledge production and implementation of the Alliance

Expert-based development of a standard in CO2 sequestration monitoring technology

Bureau of Economic Geolog

Building the System: Follow-up, monitoring & adaptive management

Does impact assessment (IA) end when the license has been granted? While societal resources tend to focus on rigorous project approvals, what happens to the project, to the public and to the environment once approval is granted? Follow up and monitoring are often an afterthought for legislators, public servants and proponents. But they are critical to public confidence and to ensuring that proponents live up to their commitments in a rapidly changing world."This report draws from research funded by the Impact Assessment Agency as part of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Knowledge Mobilization Grant on Informing Best Practice in Environmental and Impact Assessment.

Four types of diaspora mobilization : Albanian diaspora activism for Kosovo independence in the US and the UK

This comparative study explores the conditions and causal pathways through which conflict-generated diasporas become moderate or radical actors when linked to homelands experiencing limited sovereignty. Situated at the nexus of scholarship on diasporas and conflict, ethnic lobbying in foreign policy, and transnationalism this article develops four types of diaspora political mobilization—radical (strong and weak) and moderate (strong and weak)—and unpacks the causal pathways that lead to these four types in different political contexts. I argue that dynamics in the original homeland drive the overall trend towards radicalism or moderation of diaspora mobilization in a host-land: high levels of violence are associated with radicalism, and low levels with moderation. Nevertheless, how diaspora mobilization takes place is a result of the conjuncture of the level of violence with another variable, the linkages of the main secessionist elites to the diaspora. The article uses observations from eight cases of Albanian diaspora mobilization in the US and the UK from 1989 until the proclamation of Kosovo's independence in 2008

Reforming Agricultural Development Banks

The issue of agricultural development banking discussed in this paper has a history to it. For a hundred years or more, until the middle of the 20th century, a small number of agricultural banks existed outside of Europe. During that period, 15.5% of the banks in the AgriBank-Stat inventory, were established.1 Some seem to have led an inconspicuous life, like the predecessors of the Agricultural Cooperative Bank in Syria and the Agricultural Credit Corporation in Jordan, established in 1888. Others, like the predecessor of Bank Rakyat Indonesia dating back to 1885, were at the center of lively debates over such issues as centralized vs. decentralized rural banking; the role of the government as a decision-maker vs. the people themselves, perhaps organized in cooperatives; and banking in kind vs. banking in money.3 However, whatever lessons might have been drawn from that experience appear to be lost in history. --