Ethiopia Civic Engagement Activity

Programme Objective

The project aims to strengthen civic and community-based actors’ capacity to engage in policy analysis, advocacy, dialogue, and collective action for peaceful, democratic change; and foster multi-stakeholder civic partnerships in support of inclusive dialogue, respect for human rights, and advancing more effective, citizen-responsive, and accountable governance.

It will deploy a Collective Impact (CI) Approach to empower civil society to drive successful implementation and impact of the project. Networks of civil society organizations (CSOs) will co-create activities and capacity strengthening for themselves and the sector, with Creative and its partners taking a facilitative, supporting role in building comity, connection, and trust.

ECE will unite and bolster broad coalitions of CSOs and other stakeholders as they gain the skills and will to work together to solve common problems. ECE’s CI approach will be activated via problem-driven iterative adaptation (PDIA), which we will use as a core methodology to support joint action across local system actors as ECE CSO partners work to shift behaviors, deconstruct complex challenges, and address root causes.

Specific objectives

The ECE goal is to Strengthen Ethiopia’s civic fabric in support of more inclusive, peaceful, and responsive government. The two specific objectives are:
1. Strengthen civic and community-based actors’ capacity to engage in policy analysis, advocacy, dialogue, and collective action for peaceful democratic change.
2. Foster multi-stakeholder civic partnerships in support of inclusive dialogue, respect for human rights, and more effective, citizen-responsive, and accountable governance in Addis Ababa and selected growth poles.

VNG International’s role

The role of VNG International in the programme is to provide both long- and short-term technical assitance to the programme. VNG International will support Objective 1 in reinforcing advocacy and government accountability for service delivery and budgets and Objective 2 in supporting platforms for facilitating dialogue. VNG International will leverage its existing programming experience and network of partners and civil society organizations across Ethiopia brings social accountability expertise and deep networks in Ethiopia.

Key areas of contribution

More precisely, we will lead ECE efforts in:

• Supporting and facilitating the work of issue-based clusters (Support broad-based coalitions galvanize action and civic-government partnerships to enhance inclusion, respect for human rights, and more accountable, responsive governance.
• Building on VNG C2G and C2C platforms to strengthen service delivery and support grantees’ efforts to help citizens engage with local governments, assisted by CSOs and the media.
• Enhance mechanisms to increase citizen participation in governance processes. Citizen and local civic actors participate more in governance processes, representing their concerns and priorities through institutionalized ad-hoc mechanisms.
• Support work to enhance citizens and civic actors demonstrating mutual trust and accountability in addressing governance issues and resolving disputes through dialogue and peaceful conflict resolution methods.
• Capacity Strengthening of civic actors and project partners.
• With the support of the GESI/ Youth Advisor, ensure that the perspectives and voice of marginalized populations including women, youth, people with disabilities, and ethnic minorities are amplified in policy, governance, and conflict mitigation processes.
• Provide TA to the ECE project to reinforce advocacy and government accountability mechanisms for service delivery and budget, building on its expertise in social accountability under three phases of its ESAP program and deep network of more than 40 civil society partners.
• Explore opportunities to partner with local governments to pilot transparent and inclusive thematic local Citizen Advisory Boards/Commissions (potentially linked to the clusters) to engage local citizens in developing recommendations for local government.