Using the Outcome Harvesting (OH) methodology to look at grantee partners’ influencing outcomes:
These and other rightsholders’ stories show how they were able to challenge discrimination and marginalisation, with many of them being successful in influencing changes in knowledge, attitudes, and behaviour of powerholders in society. Successful influencing action relies in many aspects on the other two pathways of change- empower and amplify. When rightsholders are empowered and their collective voices amplified, their influencing actions can successfully push towards positive social change. The following Impact Stories illustrate what form ‘Influence’ can take in grantee partners’ projects: INFLUENCING CHANGES Spearheaded by the HIV and AIDS Research Center, Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia (PPHUAJ), the “Yes, I Can!” project aimed to improve the economic and social status of the transgender community around the university campus. The project’s approach was based on a vocational education program for selected professions combined with activities to increase self-esteem, reduce self-stigma, and inculcate professionalism among the participants. As one of the joint business units of the community of participants trained in a professional manner, the programme led to the establishment of the salon “The Queen (Sang Ratu)”. The existence of “Sang Ratu” on the university’s campus - which was even covered by local media outlets - as well as other activities led by the participants brought changes to the attitudes of the campus residents. While harassments targeting the transgender community were common around the campus at the start of the project, there were no open acts of discrimination against transgender people at the project’s closure. The Kilimanjaro Clinical Research Institute (KCRI) developed Embiotishu, an interactive call-in platform in the Maasai language that provides free and easy access to family planning and reproductive health education for Maasai communities in Esilalei Monduli District, Tanzania. The increased awareness about family planning and reproductive health resulted in community members’ better understanding that family planning is not a negative concept as many had thought before the project. The platform’s success encouraged KCRI to partner with a local radio service to provide family planning and reproductive health to other Maasai communities in the region. The project has had such a positive impact on the community that KCRI now plans to continue implementing the approach through other funders. They also plan to use the data already gathered to develop two papers that can be submitted to scientific journals that focus on East African health and family planning in general.
The OH methodology has enabled Voice grantees, their implementing partners, as well as Voice programme staff, to collect evidence on what has changed. They can then trace the process backwards, to determine how an intervention has contributed to changes in the areas of 1) marginalised people being accepted by power holders as equal citizens and political, economic and social participants, and 2) responsive, inclusive policies and practices of companies and governments. An observable change in the willingness of an influencing individual, organisation, or institution to support the rightsholders’ positions is a crucial step towards substantial changes in policy design or implementation. For instance, an influencing project implemented by OND- HESED in the Philippines reported contributing to the following changes between 2017 and 2018: On 20 December 2017, a national Task Force consisting of Civil Society Organisations was formed as an unintended outcome of the lobbying for the cancellation of an Integrated Forest Management Agreement (IFMA) and against the military operation in Datal Bonglangon in the same month. On 15 March 2018, a variety of state and non-state actors attending a multi-sectoral roundtable discussion in Koronadal City announced their agreement to review their commitments to provide social services, infrastructure, and security in the Data Bonglangon area to ensure complementarity of efforts.
In another example from the Philippines, the Mindanao Peoples’ Peace Movement (MPPM) reported that nine indigenous young people from Bangsamoro started to utilise their acquired skills in visual storytelling to develop stories that would amplify the call for full inclusion of Indigenous People’s (IP’s) rights in the Bangsamoro Basic Law. For young people, their participation demonstrated its value to themselves and to civil society and potentially to government. Their participation is important not just in the assertion of their right to self- determination but also in strengthening and sustaining their indigenous political structures (IPS). Overall, the projects of the grantee partners influenced both expected and unexpected changes in state and non-state actors and contributed to changes in rules and procedures governing politics, bolstered the legitimacy and capacity of social actors and influenced the willingness of political figures to make public commitments in favour of rightsholders’ demands. The influencing work of the grantee partners ranged from inspiring and encouraging, facilitating and supporting, to persuading and pressuring stakeholder(s) to change.
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