As the MDG 3 Initiative comes to a close this December, the Huairou Commission secretariat reflects with great gratification on three years that strengthened the practices and work within its Governance Campaign, and deepened relationships with groups and institutional partners to unprecedented degrees.

Funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs' MDG 3 Fund, the goal of the Initiative that supported a total of 47 grassroots women's groups within the Huairou Commission network was to advance women's empowerment through investing in grassroots women, while enabling them to share their local strategies and approaches to development with stakeholders, policy makers and institutions - a goal it achieved to impressive degrees, according to the evaluation.

"Change happens," the report states regarding one of the Initiative's key results, "when both grassroots women and leaders come together in an interactive space and jointly identify and collaborate on mutual priorities." Supporting women at the grassroots to design projects that initiate such open and inclusive dialogues between poor communities and local authorities has in many cases contributed to shifts in attitudes and perspectives; and ongoing partnerships needed for gender-inclusive development.

Groups actively participated in the evaluation process, provided detailed reports of the various gains they made in their communities and elaborated on their experiences through a series of interviews. Based on these findings, the report concludes that "Grassroots women now have access to decision-making structures they did not have access to before [and] through influencing and advocacy efforts, have been able to obtain and secure land and housing."

Video Documentation

As part of the final year of the Initiative, the Huairou Commission sought to support the consolidation and communication of innovative practices through visual documentation of groups' work. This effort was launched through three video documentation projects conducted in Nepal, India and Kenya.

In addition to professional video documentation of the organizing
efforts of women credit groups, vegetable cooperative and health mutuals in India and Nepal, The Huairou Commission initiated a participatory video project in Kenya, where eight grassroots leaders from the
GROOTS Kenya network built their skills in videography, storytelling and self-representation. As a result, they now function as a "documentation team," with the capacity to travel to various communities across the country to document and share their work with each other.The Huairou Commission looks forward to sharing the fruits of their effort in the New Year.

Sustainable Change

The work of supported groups was made sustainable not in the last part because of their close collaboration with the Huairou Commission, the report suggests, which over the three-year duration of the Initiative supported the building and deepening of relationships between women and public officials, as well as the sharing of strategies between women across regions. The evaluation acknowledges "clear foundations [for] future impacts in Institutional, policy and well-being changes."

Thank you for your support.
 

The Huairou Commission Governance Campaign