Supporting local civil society
If inclusion is a bedrock principle of Voice, supporting rightsholder groups in all the diversity of their formations is its raison d’etre. The Voice theory of change seeks to strengthen the capacity of (informal) groups, organisations, and networks to influence, to find strategic allies among powerholders and duty- bearers, and to promote collaboration within civil society to defend rights in an ever- shifting civic space. The support to informal groups is crucial to deliver on Voice’s mandate of shifting resources to those left furthest behind recognising that formal registration is beyond the reach of many rightsholder groups. Whether or not to support a group to register as a formal organisation, depends on their own dream and organisational trajectory. However, Voice is precluded from entering into a direct grant agreement with unregistered organisations due to MFA mandated financial compliance policies. To find a way around this restriction, Voice has sought to work through fiscal hosting arrangements whereby informal groups are asked to partner with formally registered organisations who can hold and manage the funds on behalf of the unregistered counterparts. While we realise this is an incomplete solution, it remains the only practicable path within Voice’s current Trying to connect with ‘unusual suspects’ among rightsholders groups means that Voice is having to constantly assess the effectiveness of its outreach methods. A reflection done by the Voice teams at the end of the first programme year compares this effort to needing to “access Reaching PEOPLE- where they are
situation. As mentioned above, Voice is currently part of the ‘Power of Voices’ (PoV) grant instrument within the Dutch MFA’s ‘Strengthening Civil Society’ policy framework. Addressing the core component of ‘lobby and advocacy’ of the PoV grant instrument, Voice provides Influencing grants. These aim at strengthening the influencing,lobby and/ or advocacy capacities of organisations and networks in amplifying the voices of marginalised and discriminated groups to influence others that have the potential ‘power’ to improve their situation. Recognising that opportunities of influencing are dynamic and often times unanticipated, Voice also provides Sudden Opportunity grants that target specific contextual changes impacting the rightsholders. The time-bound nature of the grants notwithstanding, it has been important for Voice to be able to contribute to myriad efforts of local civil society organisations seeking to influence at multiple levels from individuals and communities to (sub-) national to international.
Lessons on Inclusion and Innovation Inclusion@soul
with youth or increasing the effect of advocacy for indigenous people’s access to land, or respect for sexual and gender identities in Southeast Asia. Lessons from these interventions shaped the future calls for proposals and the trajectory of Voice. Most of the Voice funded projects as well as the linking and learning processes, therefore, centre on getting the personal story of the rightsholders out. In addition to shaping grant programmes, the process of grant-making also learned important lessons on inclusion. An early one was on language inclusion. While Voice started with the express mandate to work in two languages - English and French, the languages of the Voice focus countries far outnumber those two. In Indonesia for instance, the grants team came to the realisation that having English as the only working language for Voice would prevent particularly informal groups from accessing resources. Thus, the country teams insisted on creating grant applicationsand materials inBahasa Indonesia. This came with the additional cost of language translation for the grants team, but it was necessary to go this extra mile in the spirit of inclusion.
At its start, Voice was described as a grant facility aiming to support the most marginalised and discriminated groups in the focus countries and regions. This initial intent transformed into a bedrock principle, guiding all of Voice’s work and came to be called ‘inclusion’. Voice’s linking and learning activities were key to strengthening the programme’s understanding of inclusion and innovation right from the beginning. The eight grantee partners selected from the first call for proposals were invited to share their approaches and methodologies during the first learning event dubbed I-Cube (Inclusion Innovation lndaba). The experiences shared during this first learning indaba underlined the importance of actions led by those with ‘lived realities’. Personalisation was a recurrent aspect in the approaches and methodologies of the eight selected grantee partner projects. These included innovative approaches around empowerment, self-esteem and personal change like looking in, looking out, the transformational use of user personas and user stories to get to understand the goals, motivations and the needs of rightsholders, playing games
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