Women, WASH, and the Water for Life Decade

From childbirth to education to domestic responsibilities to dignity and safety, access to water and sanitation affect women and girls more than men and boys. This report details recommendations for policy and global practice that will empower women and water-related projects

Co-constructing a new framework for evaluating social innovation in marginalized rural areas

The EU funded H2020 project \u2018Social Innovation in Marginalised Rural Areas\u2019 (SIMRA; www.simra-h2020.eu) has the overall objective of advancing the state-of-the-art in social innovation. This paper outlines the process for co- developing an evaluation framework with stakeholders, drawn from across Europe and the Mediterranean area, in the fields of agriculture, forestry and rural development. Preliminary results show the importance of integrating process and outcome-oriented evaluations, and implementing participatory approaches in evaluation practice. They also raise critical issues related to the comparability of primary data in diverse regional contexts and highlight the need for mixed methods approaches in evaluation

Urban food strategies in Central and Eastern Europe: what's specific and what's at stake?

Integrating a larger set of instruments into Rural Development Programmes implied an increasing focus on monitoring and evaluation. Against the highly diversified experience with regard to implementation of policy instruments the Common Monitoring and Evaluation Framework has been set up by the EU Commission as a strategic and streamlined method of evaluating programmes’ impacts. Its indicator-based approach mainly reflects the concept of a linear, measure-based intervention logic that falls short of the true nature of RDP operation and impact capacity on rural changes. Besides the different phases of the policy process, i.e. policy design, delivery and evaluation, the regional context with its specific set of challenges and opportunities seems critical to the understanding and improvement of programme performance. In particular the role of local actors can hardly be grasped by quantitative indicators alone, but has to be addressed by assessing processes of social innovation. This shift in the evaluation focus underpins the need to take account of regional implementation specificities and processes of social innovation as decisive elements for programme performance.

Connected Women: How Mobile Can Support Women's Economic and Social Empowerment

This report explores how mobile services provided by Vodafone and the Vodafone Foundation are enabling women to seize new opportunities and improve their lives. Accenture Sustainability Services were commissioned to conduct research on the services and to assess their potential social and economic impact if they were widely available across Vodafone's markets by 2020. It showcases the projects and the work of those involved and also poses the question -- what would the benefit to women and to society at large be if projects such as these were taken to scale and achieved an industrialscale of growth? This reflects the Foundation's commitment not solely to the development of pilots but rather the Trustees' ambition to see projects which lead to transformational change. In order to understand this more deeply, the Report looks at the benefits for women and society and providessome financial modelling for how the engagement of commercial players could achieve industrial, sustainable growth in these areas. Accenture has provided the modelling and, given the public benefit and understanding which the report seeks to generate, these are shared openly for all in the mobile industry to understand and share. It is the Trustees' hope that the collaboration with Oxford University and Accenture in the delivery of this Report will stimulate not only the expansion of existing charitable programmes but will also seed other philanthropic, social enterprise or commercial initiatives

Proceedings of the African Diaspora Conference on Sustainable Development

The authors urge the Western donor organizations to facilitate and support the take up of such more sustainable models

Partnerships for Sustainable Development Goals 2016

This present document is the fourth edition of a report that has been prepared by the Division for Sustainable Development of UN-DESA as a follow up the Rio+20 Conference in 2012, as an effort to provide status of progress multi-stakeholder partnerships and voluntary commitments have in realizing sustainable development. This current 2016 edition reviews a number of action networks and multi-stakeholder partnerships, with a particular focus on how they support the theme of the 2016 High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) - "Ensuring that no one is left behind". Information in the report is largely based on submissions from the Partnerships for SDGs online platform, which was originally developed following the Rio+20 Conference in 201. The platform was recently redesigned ahead of the adoption of 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015

Use of Civil Society Organisations to Raise the Voice of the Poor in Agricultural Policy

This working paper examines how civil society organisations (CSOs) -- particularly those representing poor and marginalised rural people -- can inform and influence the processes of agricultural policy formulation and implementation. We summarise the role of different interest groups in shaping 'pro-poor' agricultural development and explain how poor people can gain 'voice' to express their views and shape policy processes in a meaningful way

Youth and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): Challenges and Opportunities for Implementation

Young people ages 15 to 24 are 1.2 billion of the world’s human capital. Around the world, many of them are already making contributions to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and their work should be further acknowledged and strengthened. Increasingly, youth are recognized as key participants in decision-making and development, as reflected in the growing presence of non-governmental youth organizations and the upsurge of youth advisory boards and committees to international institutions and programmes. Yet building the capacity of and creating sustained partnerships with young people are crucial strategies to achieving the MDGs that have not been fully realized by the international community. This paper aims to provide an overview of youth participation as it currently exists, to outline the ways in which youth are directly involved and affected by each Goal, to demonstrate the ways in which young people are contributing to the MDGs, and to provide ‘Options for Action’ that governments, the United Nations system, donors and other actors can harness, support, and scale-up in order to support young people in making significant contributions to achieving the MDGs. Part I outlines the existing mechanisms for youth participation in development policy. These channels can be used by governments and institutions to strengthen and mobilize young people as partners in policy formulation. Successful modes of participation should be recognized and replicated, and also adapted to the challenging political and socio-economic realities facing many youth-led and youth-serving organizations. Part II presents youth participation as it relates directly to the MDGs. Each goal is analyzed with respect to its effect on young peoples lives as well as how young people can play – and indeed are playing — a role in its implementation. Under each goal are a number of “Options for Action” that governments, the UN and multilateral organizations can use to fully harness the contributions that youth can make to achieving the MDGs. Part III outlines the synergies between the Options for Action presented in this report and the Quick Wins proposed by the Millennium Project. The Options for Action are complimentary and provide a process to implement the Quick Win actions, using young people as key implementing agents and service providers. Part III also outlines a number of youth-focused Quick Wins that can make a significant and measurable difference to the state of young people in target countries. Part IV elaborates on how youth can participate in achieving the MDGs and contains cross-cutting recommendations on youth engagement in all 8 Goals. Overall, the report demonstrates that investing in youth will provide the longest and most effective dividend towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by building the social capital needed to foster pragmatic development. Indeed, without the involvement of young people, a demographic that comprises one fifth of the world’s total population, the full achievement of the MDGs will remain elusive and their long-term sustainability will be compromised. Youth participation is currently quite varied, ranging from effective, to sometimes tokenistic, to often non-existent. There are specific ways in which youth and youth organizations can contribute to the design and implementation of MDG-based strategies, some of which are outlined in this document. Many projects are already happening, but there is much work left still to be done.Youth participation; Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); Poverty Eradication

Rockefeller Foundation 2010 Annual Report

Contains president's letter; 2010 program highlights, including support for Africa's green revolution, sustainable and equitable transportation policy, and healthy communities; grants list; financial report; and lists of trustees and staff

Powerful-synergies: Gender Equality, Economic Development and Environmental Sustainability

This is a collection of evidence-based papers by scholars and practitioners that explore the interconnections between gender equality and sustainable development across a range of sectors and global development issues such as energy, health, education, food security, climate change, human rights, consumption and production patterns, and urbanization. The publication provides evidence from various sectors and regions on how women's equal access and control over resources not only improves the lives of individuals, families and nations, but also helps ensure the sustainability of the environment