CARE ETHIOPIA
MARCH 2011
VALIDATION REPORT
GOVERNANCE PROGRAMMING FRAMEWORK
1.Governance Context - Ethiopia
2.Overall Description of Governance Portfolio – Care Ethiopia
2.1.Definition of Governance – CARE Ethiopia
2.2.Governance work in CARE Ethiopia
2.3.Governance staff
3.Analysis of Governance Portfolio Against GPF
3.1.Domains and Sub Domains
3.1.1.Empowered Citizens
3.1.2.Expanded Spaces for Negotiation
3.1.3.Accountable and Effective Public Authorities and Other Power Holders
4.External Consultation with Beneficiaries & Stakeholders
4.1.Focus Group Discussions with beneficiaries
4.2.Internal reflection of CARE Ethiopia staff
4.2.1.Identified achievements
4.2.2.Usefulness of the Unifying Framework
4.3.Institutional analysis of Duty Bearers
5.Appropriateness & Usefulness of the GPF
5.1.Challenges and emerging lessons
6.Relevance of the Hypothesis
6.1.Gender equity
6.2.Gender/Women’s Empowerment framework & GPF
6.3.CI Accountability
6.4.Other Power Holders
6.5.Governance SII
ACRONYMS
CBOCommunity Based Organizations
COCountry Office
CRRPCommunity Review & Reflection Process
CSCCommunity Score Card
CSOCivil Society Organizations
CSSGCommunity self help and saving Groups
DDDire Dawa
FAWGForward Accountability Working Group
FOField office
IGIncome Generating
GEDGender Equity and Diversity
GTPGrowth & Transformation Plan
INGOInternational Non-Government Organization
KebeleThe smallest administrative unit in Ethiopia
LDMLearning, Design and Measurement
LNGOLocal Non-Governmental Organizations
MAYAPMulti Year Assistant Program
PDTProject Design Team
PLWHAPeople Living With HIV/AIDS
PQATProgram Quality Assessment Tools
TAPITransparency, Accountability, Participation & Inclusiveness
(ToC) Theory of change
UCPAUnderlying Causes of Poverty Assessment
UCPUnderlying Causes of Poverty
UCPVUnderlying Causes of Poverty/Vulnerability assessment results
VSLAVillage Saving & Loan Association
WEFWomen Empowerment Frame Work
WoredaThe next administrative unit above Kebele
ZoneThe third Administrative unit above Woreda
1.Governance Context - Ethiopia
In Ethiopia, poor governance in the public sector has given rise to a demoralized bureaucracy, misallocation of budget resources and ineffective implementation of programs. It has constrained delivery of essential public services and led to wastage of limited public resources. The civil service also suffers from a significant gender imbalance. Poor democratic tradition and corruption coupled with weak institutional capacity and poor commitment of the public sector have perpetuated prevalence of poor governance.
Focus was on service provision and not on building the capacity, empowerment and attitudinal change of the service providers and communities on basic issues like their rights. The relationship between duty bearers and right holders was not in place and, if it exists at all, it was issue-based as opposed to bigger policy issues and dialogue.
Weak CSO capacity to raise community awareness of their rights, the supply tradition of service delivery that contributes to dependency, conditionality attached to services without any flexibility, inaccessibility of information, poor monitoring and evaluation of performance, absence of dialogue, fragmented approach, and the like were among the factors that affect governance.
2.Overall Description of Governance Portfolio – Care Ethiopia
2.1.Definition of Governance – CARE Ethiopia
CARE defines ‘good’ governance as the effective, participatory, transparent, and accountable management of public affairs guided by agreed upon procedures and principles, to achieve the goals of poverty reduction and increasing social justice.
Governance in Care-Ethiopia means establishing accountable and transparent systems for decision making and leadership that fully addresses the commitments we have made to all stakeholders (donors, staff, partners, communities/beneficiaries, government) and promotes joint coordination and partnership.
Good governance is to ensure transparency, accountability, participation and inclusiveness in ourselves, communities, and partners.
Good governance= T+A+P+I
Transparency is availing information to communities and clarifying polices, responsibilities, inputs, requirements, government rules, regulations, and decisions; accountability is answerability to the community and stakeholders that an organization serves; participation refers to the involvement of communities in all aspects of the development process; inclusiveness is the involvement of all stakeholders and beneficiaries in the process.
There exist barriers between government and civil society towards mutual cooperation and responsiveness. Mistrust prevails on both sides due to historical and current events as well as a genuine lack of capacity to implement programs that create a linkage between supply and demand side stakeholders to achieve mutual goals (i.e. poverty reduction). Enhancing Transparency, Accountability, Participation and Inclusiveness (TAPI) are critical in addressing the weak capacity of local government bodies and civil groups to deliver services in spite of their well-intentioned efforts to do so.
2.2.Governance work in CARE Ethiopia
Good governance is one of the cross-cutting themes in the Care-Ethiopia’s program. In working with partners and communities, special attention is therefore paid to governance aspects, including transparency, accountability, participation and inclusiveness.
The key areas of work CARE Ethiopia is undertaking under the governance and policy implementation program are:
a.Creating and upgrading the Country Office’s technical skills in good governance programming in the urban and rural context
b.Conducting research and analysis to deepen CARE Ethiopia’s understanding of policy problems embedded in underlying causes of urban and rural poverty and seeing the connectivity and impacts they may have on the overall urban governance situation.
c.Undertaking a collaborative and participatory action learning and reflective learning
d.Building partnership and establish alliance and partnership action to strengthen and broaden the capacity of our partners we work with.
e.Strengthening CARE Ethiopia’s country office capacity to understand and address the underlying causes of poor urban and rural governance relating to inadequate policy implementation with particular focus on marginalized groups and gender.
CARE Ethiopia is interested to assess, learn and work together with government, CSOs and communities to understand poverty situations in our intervention areas. The whole aim lies on the fact that during most of the past twenty years CARE Ethiopia has been involved in implementing projects with the aim to safeguard food and health security. These interventions have largely been focusing on bringing relief and other emergency commodities. Over the last three years CARE Ethiopia has moved from project based interventions and broadened its scope from an emergency/relief and development oriented service delivery to addressing underlying causes of poverty to bring about long-term solutions to the poor and the vulnerable based on long term identified programs.
This is a challenge to all of us but CARE Ethiopia, based on experiences its own activities and from other sister institutions, has put the vision to begin to work towards this target. CARE Ethiopia conducted extensive underlying causes of poverty analysis in Dire Dawa and Bahir Dar (two urban centers in Ethiopia). Thus CARE Ethiopia believes that it is time to strengthen institutional and organizational capacities of partners to respond to poverty and advocate for lasting solutions to poverty and these are areas of our governance work.
A review and revision of the CARE Ethiopia strategic plan (2007 – 2012) in 2010 highlighted four strategic directions:
Strategic Direction 1 - Governance and Policy
Support ongoing efforts to strengthen gender-focused and pro-poor policy formulation, adaptation and implementation, with an emphasis on accountability of service providers, starting with ourselves.
Strategic Direction 2 –Innovation, Impact Measurement and Learning
Transform CARE Ethiopia into an organization that generates and applies learning and impact evidence to innovate and improve programming approaches.
Strategic Direction 3 - Gender Equity and Diversity
CARE Ethiopia will create a diverse and gender-balanced work place that attracts values-driven staff with the qualities needed to advance its mission.
Strategic Direction 4 - Partnership and Facilitation
Programs will form and nurture partnerships with a range of compatible and complementary organizations, with a deliberate capacity building agenda and an openness to learning from others.
In line with the first strategic direction – governance and policy implementation stated that it supported on going efforts to strengthen good governance and policy implementation in areas (thematic and geographical) in the context of the Growth and Transformation Plan. This strategic direction is designed to move CARE Ethiopia slowly but steadily in to the realm of working with partners to hold stakeholders (itself included), accountable and to promote the implementation of policies that support social equity. Based on constructive engagement and in alignment with GTP, Care-Ethiopia will support the strengthening of institutions and processes that model/ reflect principles of good governance at all levels.
CARE’s vision is to seek a world of hope, tolerance and social justice, where poverty has been overcome and people live in dignity and security. CARE Ethiopia’s mission is to work with poor women and men, boys and girls, communities and institutions, to have a significant impact on the underlying causes of poverty. The essential dimensions of CARE Ethiopia’s good governance work are:
•Participation of organized communities (or empowered local stakeholders) in local public sector decision-making (this includes partnership among all local stakeholders);
•Transparency or information sharing, open behaviour, clear decision- making procedures;
•Efficiency of staff and partners in achieving their objectives (‘pro poor’ development) or in managing their public resources;
•Equity or impartial and equal treatment of similar cases by local authorities;
•Gender-sensitivity in governance is intended to increase women’s participation in formal structures and ensuring civic engagement. It is also meant to strengthen gender awareness and capacities among both women and men and staff; deliver services addressing the specific needs and interests of women and men in the community which require a gender-sensitive development planning and resources allocation; and create awareness of women’s rights.
CARE Ethiopia’sapproach to governance programming is a cross cutting issue that is an essential aspect of the underlying causes of poverty and should be addressed across all domains however, is highlighted in the enabling environment.
2.3.Governance staff
CARE Ethiopia has a governance (Accountability Adviser) at the head office level who coordinates the over all activities pertinent to accountability (governance) on full time basis with second degree and relevant experience in the field. The accountability adviser has set in place all necessary mechanisms and systems in place for the country office and field office staff to exercise principles of good governance and to pilot and disseminate learning and best practice across all initiatives.
3.Analysis of Governance Portfolio Against GPF
CARE Ethiopia has identified three Programs based on three different impact groups (groups that CARE Ethiopia wants to measure the impact of its contributions). These are pastoral school-aged girls, chronically food insecure rural women, and resource poor urban female youth. Initial in-depth and participatory underlying causes of poverty and vulnerability (situation) analyses of each group have been conducted in seven pastoral, sedentary and urban/peri-urban locations of Ethiopia. Three program design Teams (PDT) have been established to develop each program. Each PDT has developed an action plan that guides their work. Accordingly, a series of workshops, meetings and external consultations have occured, resulting in recursive refinement of the impact groups, enrichment of the situation analysis and development of the programs’ theories and pathways of change, drafting indicators. Although at different levels, currently all the three programs have draft program goals, theories of change (ToC) and pathways. Progress with the program design with regard to each impact population group is annexed.
CARE Ethiopia works in various ways: The majority of the projects/programs are implemented directly by CARE, few by Partners but there is a concerted move to work in partnership including recent initiatives such as the MAYAP, Early Marriage, ACCESS, CIDA Livelihood projects. Although sub grantee type of partnership is utilized, there is also a move to real partnership in which the local NGO’s are invited to participate from the design stage and whereby they play the major implementation role and CARE Ethiopia is playing facilitation role.
3.1.Domains and Sub Domains
3.1.1.Empowered Citizens
Key aspects we have conducted in empowering citizens are efforts made to improve governance relevant to care-Ethiopia’s context and to achieving our impact goal and objectives. We have also undertaken the following activities among other things:
- Consulting with all stakeholders, especially beneficiaries (during phases of project design, planning, implementation, and monitoring)
- Establishing complaints and response mechanism in all initiatives
- Providing transparent and timely information about decisions
- Ensuring compliance with all internal and external regulations (CARE USA, donors, Ethiopian Government, etc)
- Keeping the interests of the communities we serve at the core of all that we do
- Improving on coordination and partnership with other humanitarian and development actors
- Increasing transparency and accountability
- Strengthening the role of civil society
- Strengthening national governance systems
- Civil society strengthening,
- Institutional strengthening
3.1.1.1.Rights awareness and access to information
Whenever possible our projects embrace organizational and institutional strengthening. Our cross-capacity building approaches include organizational/institutional capacity building, technical capacity building, information dissemination, knowledge management, and net work strengthening and organizational development. Rights awareness is a component of technical capacity building and is integrated into each initiative.
3.1.1.2.Agency and voice
Among the major areas we had made interventions in this area is enhancing aspirations, resources, actions and achievements of marginalized groups and women to carry out their own analyses, making their own decisions, and taking their own actions in such areas as creating dialogue, Community Review and Reflection Process and Community Score Card with an objective to creating space between right holders and right bearers. The GF and WEF complement each other in such a way that the major dimensions of WEF (agency, structure and relation) comply with the three outcome categories of the governance framework: improving human conditions, improving social positions and creating a sound enabling environment. As far as CARE is concerned, from the governance framework and from the aforementioned outcome categories, gender inequality, social exclusion, unmet rights to “access” to resources and services, and poor governance are selected as underlying causes of poverty which are to be addressed in the interventions. The issue of gender equality and women empowerment can be therefore effectively addressed within the governance framework and the three categories of outcome.
Gender refers to the culturally and socially determined differences between men and women, the relationships between them, and their roles in the community at large. But in Ethiopia as many societies, women are afforded a lower status than men, leading to a 'denial of rights' such as access to information, adequate nutrition, health services, education, finances, property, reproductive rights, family planning, etc to which they are entitled. Looking at governance structure CARE find it useful as good governance implementation (that has accessibility, accountability transparency and efficiency as its four pillars), also ensures that gender equality is built upon.
3.1.1.3.Representation
With regard to representation, various efforts are made to ensure inclusiveness of the marginalized groups and women in the community dialogue, Community Review and Reflection Process, Community Score Card and in WASH committees and similar others to reflect their interests and aspirations.
3.1.1.4.Internal accountability
As part of ensuring internal accountability, significant work has been done among which the following can be sited:
•Forward Accountability and CSC training had been conducted in all field offices and with staff and partners
•Forward accountability action plans are prepared and entered in to implementation
•Forward accountability task forces are established and get operational
•CRRP and CSC are undertaken in different projects and areas
•Compliance and response mechanisms were put in place
3.1.1.5.Collective action
Care-Ethiopia is working to create a situation in which beneficiary groups in our intervention areas have a choice of them and involved such as CSSGs and VSLAs. These institutions are for their collective action, or are institutional arrangements that are formed by groups of women in order to overcome common problems such as male dominance, helplessness over an extended period of time by setting certain rules regarding access to the group (membership), use of the resources and services the group owns collectively, and management of these resources and services.
3.1.1.6.Social accountability
Our Forward Accountability articulates the needs and concerns of poor people regarding their access to basic services and programs that at least CARE Ethiopia provides and at most to other services and programs that are provided by others (Water and sanitation, agriculture, health, and education). Working through civil society organizations, our forward accountability tools such as community action plans, CSC, CRRP and other monitoring mechanisms opens up channels of communication between them and the relevant government bodies and public service providers. All our Governance initiatives are intended to ensure the poor receive essential basic services according to their needs in which citizens have become involved in the introduction and establishment of instruments to strengthen social responsibility. Dialogues take place with greater transparency, involving the local authorities as well as civil society organizations, citizens and service providers.
The program is helping civil society organizations, poor communities and women by empowering them through accountability mechanisms, such as community score cards, which people use to evaluate their local service providers according to the quality of their services. We also work together with Kebeles, Woredas and municipalities to increase transparency in the preparation and execution of program implementation, promoting participation for a wide range of people is a program priority.