Political participation of indigenous and non-indigenous women in Guatemala

Background:
NCA and CODEFEM received funding from the European Union to implement the project "Political participation of indigenous and non-indigenous women in Guatemala". The project ran for 3 years (2008-2011), and an external evaluation of the project was carried out in 2012.
The objectives of the projects were
1. To strengthen the knowledge, skills and capabilities of indigenous and non-indigenous women to ensure that they influence municipal management processes
2. To help strengthen the capabilities of municipal and state-level officials to institutionalize standards and mechanisms that guarantee participation and organization by women in the municipality

Purpose/ Objective:
The following aspects were assessed in this evaluation:
a) elements of sustainability
b) cooperation between NCA and CODEFEM
c) recommendations to share and institutionalize good practices and lessons learned. 

Methodology: 
The methodology used, can be summarized in the following steps:
1. Preparation and initial agreements.  In a joint workshop, the consultant and the NCA and CODEFEM representatives defined the meaning of “good practices” and documented the history of the project’s implementation and the partnership between both organizations.

Recovering knowledge from documents. A review was made based on evaluation documents, case studies, and reports. Collective reflections with NCA and CODFEM were conducted based on this review. Conclusions, lessons learned and good practices were developed on the following topics:

- CODEFEM organizational culture towards learning. 
- Design and planning of the project; the context management.
- Institutional capacities of NCA-CODEFEM to operate the project.
- The training and organizational process of the women. 
- Working with men.
- Political advocacy.

2. Learning workshop and focus group discussions.  A two-day workshop was conducted with the CODEFEM and NCA staff involved in the project, both program and management, to reflect on the experiences of the project focusing on the six issues listed above.

The focus groups were half-day meetings on separate dates, with two groups of women who participated in the project: San Juan Ermita and Santa María Jocopilas.  These sessions were focused on the three substantive themes of the project, mainly the training and organization of women.  Other women's groups in the area covered by the project were not included due to resource constraints.  Another limitation was that the interview of the officer of the European Delegation in Guatemala was not conducted, as she was unable to attend the learning workshop.

a) Documenting the results.  
The consultant documented and gathered the results, organized them according to the analyzed topics and proposed recommendations from all discussed by the participants, both for the workshop and the focus groups. The result is the evaluation document. The last part of the document has recommendations to communicate the lessons learned and for the institutionalization of the good practices, which was done as the last meeting with NCA and CODEFEM.

Key Findings:
Elements of sustainability:
As shown by the reports of meetings with groups of women from San Juan Ermita and Santa María Jocopilas, benefits appear to be long-lasting in terms of knowledge and key skills acquired, trust in verbalizing in front of a group, clarity of what they want, and at the same time, of what they can expect from local authorities, and the quickness with which they included what they learned into their routine. By 2012, when the project is no longer operating, they have a work plan and ways to follow the plan, they are better connected with public agencies in relation with the rights of women, they have experienced advocacy activities that go beyond the traditional asking for things, and in many places, women’s groups are more closely linked to community authorities usually dominated by men.

At individual level, the changes of attitude by many women have encouraged others to wish to accomplish the same. The project closing evaluation picked up several testimonies.

These elements provide sustainability more on the side of social demands than on the side of public supply, since, in general, having laws and mechanisms enacted which further the many years of work of women’s organizations throughout the country has already been accomplished.

Today, the challenge continues to be to give them adequate human and material resources to enforce these laws. For example, Municipal Code reforms in 2010 that establish the obligation to allocate resources to OMM. The vulnerability over which municipal accomplishments are built is even more serious because they are rarely respected with the change of authorities.

The project witnessed experiences where the mere change of individuals meant a change in the situation of women, sometimes favourable, sometimes unfavourable.

Cooperation between NCA and CODEFEM:
This relationship is several years strong since both share program visions and strategies in the area of women and governance and the fight against Violence Against Women (VAW). The relationship is sound also because the commitment to work with a long-term process view is shared. This is made evident through sustained though modest funding, which focuses on the priorities that have been outlined from the project’s experience.

In the project “Political participation of indigenous and Non-indigenous women in Guatemala”, both organizations made an effort to ensure that the new activities that were not considered in the original design would be covered with the same resources, although finally NCA had to contribute more financial resources than originally promised.

At the start of the project, the direct assistance provided by NCA to establish proper administrative and financial systems to respond to EC requirements was very useful. For its part, CODEFEM opened up the possibility for the internal changes involved. Among the most important lessons learned by both organizations was the need to fine-tune mechanisms for the joint development of proposals and to strengthen documentation and follow-up systems, as well as better technical development of indicators.

Finally, NCA and CODEFEM did not pass this opportunity up to identify their lesson learned and turn it into good practices that are included in their work from here on to the future.

Recommendations:
In summary, the recommendation is to pay attention to some items to make better use of the lesson learned. In order to institutionalize the good practices identified in the project, the proposal is:

1) To keep an open culture to learning in CODEFEM, by strengthening joint work practices by program and administrative teams, by broadening the flow of information among all the teams, by systematizing personnel training; by promoting methodological innovation; by documenting institutional memory; and by keeping specific moments for the thought process and learn about their own practices every year.

2) To keep and strengthen CODEFEM good practices in working with others, in looking for and taking advantage of partnerships with women’s organizations, in the public sector and in NGOs. A good understanding of the strategic importance of working with others, in teams, their reasons to do it and to develop ways to do it should be a permanent part of internal training plans. To have a short document of this partnership policy and of work with others will ensure common basic understanding.

3) To write methodological guides and material with basic content on the main themes for education and training. More than calling them “manuals”, guides make it possible to keep readiness open to review and permanently improve those instruments, and not give the feeling that a manual is cast in stone.

4) We recommend that on issues related to greater innovation, such as addressing VAW, healing, identity, care for boys and girls, and work with men, time be invested carefully to systematize and define the methodological approach and criteria with which these issues will be addressed, and how they are linked to other program components.

5) To coordinate these new internal documents with existing documents to create a set of institutional policies to determine how CODEFEM carries out programs. To this end, we should clarify the internal mechanism to build, validate and make said policies official.

6) To develop a personnel management system (human resources) that includes good selection, hiring, compensation and social security practices, as they are described in the appropriate section of Chapter II of this document. To write this policy in times of resource crisis requires a dose of realism without sacrificing its institutional identity as a women’s rights defence organization. This is a very important added value.

7) To institutionalize the experience of making a diagnosis for the baseline with qualitative and participatory approaches, by systematizing the process in a guide that includes successes and failures for these processes not to take any longer than needed to produce quality results without losing their opportunity value.

To improve program quality, the experience of the project suggests the need to strengthen some internal areas:

8) To fine-tune internal mechanisms in the relationship with NCA to produce proposals with more participants, and a flowchart indicating where the process begins and where it ends. In addition, to organize internal training to improve “smart” objective and indicator development, by drawing from our own experience the type of indicators that might be better for political advocacy and women’s rights programs.

9) To be accountable and improve program quality it is necessary to review and improve current record-keeping and information recovery by including an intermediate moment to consolidate information and thus permit report production. On the other hand, to include report production focused on internal training outcome analysis, particularly for field reports. Experience showed that it is not enough to have a format if there is no understanding of where the importance of an action lies.

10) Last, but not least, to re-establish the ability to monitor indicators. Once there is more capacity to develop adequate indicators for the intention of the project which are feasible and useful to render accounts, we recommend organizing a simple and agile mechanism to confirm indicator progress once or twice per year, depending on the seasonality of each project.

Comments from Norwegian Church Aid (if any):
This evaluation helps NCA and the European Union to understand the impact of the joint project, mainly regarding the methodology of working to promote women's political participation. What this evaluation shows is the need for flexible planning and to be able to adapt to the context in the communities when the activities are being implemented. This also implies the political and technical adaptation when considering new actions: working also with men's awareness, child care and gender-based violence.

The project developed strategic lines to support women's participation in public affairs, both in terms of individual and collective capabilities.

The project also sought to transform attitudes and views of men with local authority (civil servants and municipal officials) on the relations between men and women; and also men living in close relations with the women (couples, children).

Likewise, the project has promoted the implementation of public policies and institutionalizing the initiatives authorized for the attention of demands and needs of women, all focused on the municipality level.

Finally, this evaluation process allowed NCA to identify the partnership characterization for this project through the recognition of the quality relation more than just the accomplishment of the formal clauses of the contract.