"Good governance is...at the centre of a vision of inclusive societies, describing the dynamic relationship between responsive and accountable states and responsible and active citizens which ensures that the interests of poor and marginalised people are taken into account."
Plan UK website on September 29 2014.
This guide is part of a series of Unit Guides developed for use with children who are members of Soul Buddyz Clubs in South Africa. This issue focuses on active citizenship and provides activities for Club members which promote team building and show participants what it means to become active citizens. The guide consists of two sections. Each section includes a project and expected due date that aligns with the Soul Buddyz club programme for that year:
English
24
The Health Compass website on November 12 2014.
Oxfam
"This paper pulls together insights and lessons from 10 case studies of Oxfam’s's work in promoting active citizenship. The case studies, written over the course of 2013/14, employ a 'theory of change approach' to explore how change happens in different contexts."
This Oxfam paper analyses case studies from a range of programmes, both in terms of geography and sector ("humanitarian, long-term development, advocacy and campaigns"). This series forms part of a wider Oxfam research project on 'How Change Happens'."
Oxfam United Kingdom (UK) website, February 4 2015.
Company Profile:
Only candidates who have been selected for an interview will be contacted. No phone calls, please.
MSI is an EEO/AA/ADA Veterans Employer.
To apply: Please visit our website, www.msiworldwide.com
Equal Access International , an international NGO headquartered in San Francisco, CA, creates positive social change and empowers millions of underserved people across the developing world. With award winning expertise in communications for social change, Equal Access combines the power of media with direct community mobilization to address critical challenges such as women’s and girls’ empowerment, youth life-skills and livelihoods, education, global health, civic participation and peacebuilding, and economic development.
To apply or download the appointment details, please visit www.perrettlaver.com/candidates quoting reference number 1967. The closing date for applications (CV & cover letter) is 12:00 p.m. CST on Monday, May 4th, 2015.
BACKGROUND
To apply, please send a cover letter indicating your reasons for interest in the position and a resume to: jobs@equalaccess.org with "Program Associate or Officer" in the subject line of the email. Applications will be reviewed on an ongoing basis. Please apply May 7, 2015. This is an exempt, full-time position. Applicants must have the right to work in the U.S. Equal Access does not provide sponsorship.
EOE M/F/D/V
Nairobi, Kenya
This workshop is being organised to help build the capacity of civil society organisations (CSOs) in East Africa to work with United Nations (UN) and African Union (AU) systems. Hosted by the Programme on Women’s Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (PWESCR), 24 members of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) from Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, and South Sudan are invited to participate in the training.
These guidelines from the United Nations (UN) Inter-Agency Network on Youth Development’s (IANYD) Subgroup on Youth Participation in Peacebuilding are intended to provide guidance to UN agencies, governments, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in increasing youth engagement in conflict prevention.
The document recommends multiple approaches to involving youth in civic engagement and active citizenship:
Arabic, English, French, Russian, Spanish
4
Common Ground Newsletter - Spring 2014 sent to The Communication Initiative on May 8 2014.
On air since 2009, Brekete Family Radio (BFR) is a reality radio talk magazine programme in Nigeria modelled after a public complaint forum or people’s court. People call in to report on issues of impunity, whether public or private and a panel in the studio discusses the issue and invites the public to give advice. The radio programme is broadcast on Rhythm FM 94.7, and is supported in part by the Open Society Initiative for West Africa.
Conducted in the local pidgin English, the Brekete Family Radio programme is intended to be a platform "for gathering public opinion, obtaining public redress, facilitating arbitration, and fundraising for a scholarship programme for the poor." The programme airs from 8pm to 9pm, Mondays to Fridays. People call in to report complains or issues, usually related to governance, which are discussed by the in-studio panel and the audience. In some circumstances, the government official involved is actually called while the programme is still on air to offer an explanation over an alleged issue. According to OSIWA, "this kind of on-air public accountability inquest has become very effective in putting a large number of public officers on the spot and has also achieved significant results in confronting impunity."
Brekete Family Radio is aired in five states in Nigeria, including Abuja and has an estimated listenership of 20 million people. In addition to calling in, people can respond to the show through SMS and submit complaints through an online form.. The Brekete Family website includes an archive of recorded radio programmes.
Aside from producing this daily radio programme, the project involves a monthly newsletter that captures the key cases to be followed up on and a collection of evidence that may be used as a basis for future advocacy efforts on political, economic, and social issues. People can also interact with the project and discuss issues on the Brekete Family facebook page. In addition, audiences can stay in touch with what is happening by following the show on Twitter, which is being run by Ordinary Ahmad Isah, the presenter and founder of the programme.
According to OSIWA, “every day the program is flooded with thousands of text messages and hundreds of phone calls. There is also always a crowd of plaintiffs in the BFR office itself. They work with volunteer lawyers, and do their best to assist everyone and anyone that has an issue.”
Governance
Rhythm FM 94.7, Open Society Initiative for West Africa
Open Society Foundation Website and Brekete Family Website on June 23 2014.
Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) (Bidwell, Glennerster); Stanford Graduate School of Business(Casey)
This 41-page research report discusses how debates between candidates during elections affect voting behaviours, based on research conducted in Sierra Leone during the 2012 Parliamentary elections. Researchers collaborated with Search for Common Ground to host, film, and screen structured, inter-party debates. Debates were held in fourteen competitive constituencies in the lead up to Election Day, and videos of the debates screened at 197 public gatherings at polling centre level.
Email from Mike Jobbins on April 21 2015 and Search for Common Ground website on May 8 2015.
Image credit: Glenna Gordon.
Niambie ('Tell me' in Kiswahili) is a three-year civic engagement project which is designed to inform Tanzanian youth of political processes and issues so that they can play a more constructive role in the country’s democratic processes. This is particularly important in light of the local, parliamentary, and presidential elections taking place in late 2015, as well as the new proposed constitution being put to a referendum.
The Niambe project is designed to not only encourage young Tanzanians to vote, but also to be well-informed, and know their rights and responsibilities. The radio show's key focus audience is young people who will be voting for the first time in 2015, especially girls between the ages of 17 and 22. It features the voices and views of Tanzania's young people who interact with each other, and with local leaders and elected officials.
At the outset of programme production, producers travelled on a fact-finding mission to BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 1Xtra's London studios, to find out "what works" at one of the United Kingdom’s most popular youth radio stations, and how some of these ideas could be adopted or adapted in Tanzania. According to Niambie producers, the show has followed some of their advice in being entertaining and inviting celebrity guests to help reach wider audiences.
Listeners can interact with the show through the Niambie facebook page and by following Niambie on Twitter , as well as listen to episodes on Soundcloud.
In addition to the radio and digital content, the project is also working with national broadcasters and high-level Tanzanian media organisations – such as the Media Council of Tanzania (MCT) and the Tanzania Editors Forum (TEF) – to produce high-quality reporting during the election cycle. Training on editorial and leadership skills will also take place to provide more trusted, accurate, and balanced coverage to meet audience needs.
Youth, Democracy and Governance
At the beginning of the project, BBC Media Action conducted formative and baseline research to understand the barriers and drivers that affect young people’s social and political engagement. It included focus group discussions with youth across the country, in-depth interviews with key stakeholders, and a nationally representative survey with 1,993 respondents aged 15–30 years old conducted in May 2014.
According to this research, recommendations to guide the development of Niambie, and ensure it addressed young people’s needs, included the following:
(See Related Summary below for more information).
"Niambie (Tell Me), a new radio programme in Tanzania, seeks to increase young people’s civic and political engagement. Formative and baseline research reveals that young people are deeply frustrated by what they perceive as obstacles to achieving their aspirations, such as a weak education system and a lack of employment opportunities."
BBC Media Action website on May 20 2015.
Since 2012, Fahamu has been working with communities in Kenya to engage in participatory budgeting processes to help guide and direct public spending. Working with local government representatives, community activists, and existing social movements, citizens collectively identify priorities and make decisions about public monies. The projects is working in Kajiado, Kwale, Makueni, Kakamega, and Kisumu counties.
The Constitution of Kenya (2010) calls for citizens to participate in the governance management and decision-making socially, economically, and politically. One of the demands arising from citizens during the Fahamu-led Change Initiative forums was for citizens to be involved in this governance and to be part of determining their own development path. The Participatory Budgeting (PB) project was created in response to these demands, as a way of ensuring that agenda setting begins at the community level.
The Participatory Budgeting process allows communities to work collectively at ward level to decide how to allocate part of a municipal or public budget. "The practice allows citizens to identify, discuss, and prioritize public spending on projects, and gives them the power to make actual decisions on which projects to undertake as a matter of priority." The ward delegates are charged with developing specific spending proposals which will later be presented to the community for validation. If the community approves of the proposals, they are then forwarded to the county government to be considered for implementation.
According to Fahamu, Participatory Budgeting "is a way to involve local citizens in decision-making that is more in-depth and meaningful than traditional consultation processes. This means engaging residents and community groups who represent a diverse cross section of the community to make spending proposals based on the interests of the people, and democratically decide on budgetary allocations. Further the process provides the citizenry with a role in the scrutiny and monitoring of the process and results to inform subsequent decisions on an annual or regular basis."
In order to help guide communities and assist with the process, the project has developed a manual, Facilitating Participatory Budgeting in Kenya: A User Manual.
Democracy and Governance
Fahamu, Kajiado County, Kwale County, Makueni County, Kakamega County, Kisumu County, Kajiado Voices Forum, Msambweni Human Rights Watch, Mamamwiki Links Societym National Youth Sector Alliance,
Endelevu Community Development Services
Fahamu website, Pambazuka News, Februaru 2013, and Fahamu website on June 8 2015.
This toolkit provides practical tools and resources to facilitate the use of multi-stakeholder, citizen-led dialogue processes to promote socio-political change. The proposed methodology is based on observations at several local dialogue processes initiated by civil society around crucial challenges experienced in their communities. The input from these dialogues have been synthesised to take stock of the useful and sometimes unusual perspectives of local stakeholders around challenges, trends, and innovations on how citizens collectively engage in the decisions that affect their lives.
English, French and Spanish
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CIVICUS website on June 10 2015.
Accountability Tanzania (AcT) partners tend to use mass media extensively to enhance their interventions in governance, social, economic as well as environmental issues. Many of these CSOs have significant budgets to support the engagement of media (print, TV and radio, social) in furthering their objectives. Nonetheless, little is systematically documented about the effectiveness of using media in bringing about accountability as well as desired change.
Accountability in Tanzania Programme website on July 1 2015.
This 12-page brief shares findings of BBC Media Action’s assessment of how two national radio programmes, the magazine show Fo Rod (Crossroads) and the debate programme Tok Bot Salone (Talk About Sierra Leone), are helping influence governance knowledge and political participation in Sierra Leone. The research found that listeners of both programmes are four times more likely to have higher levels of knowledge on key governance issues compared to non-listeners, and are three times more likely to participate in political processes.
BBC Media Action website on August 5 2015.
