2013 07-cef-sustaining-civil-society-advocacy processed

Funding change:
Sustaining civil society advocacy in education

Front cover image:
Pupils in front of the enrolment table at Kosia Primary school, Kenya
Liba Taylor/ ActionAid

Funding Change: Sustaining Civil Society Advocacy in Education
Table of contents
page
Acknowledgements 2
Abbreviations 3
Funding Change: Foreword 4
Executive summary 6
1 Looking to the future of funding for civil society
advocacy in education 9
1.1 Aims of the research 10
1.2 Methodology 10
2 Changing agendas, agendas for change 12
2.1 A short history of education advocacy 12
2.2 The space for civil society 14
2.3 Challenges for civil society 17
2.4 What is ‘good’ advocacy? 19
2.5 Capacity building:
deficit, definition and determination 20
3 Global funding for education 22
3.1 The international framework 22
3.2 The changing nature of donor aid 23
3.3 Local Funds:
from the shadows into the spotlight 26
1
page
4 Learning from CEF and Local Funds 30
4.1 The Commonwealth Education Fund (CEF) 30
4.2 Local Funds 36
5 Is a national Civil Society Education Fund a good idea? 50
5.1 To fund (internationally) or not to fund? 50
5.2 Inter/national? 53
5.3 Fuelling the CSEF: sources of funds 54
5.4 Obtaining money 58
6 Establishing new Civil Society Education Funds 60
6.1 A standard model 60
6.2 Setting the agenda 61
6.3 The structure 63
6.4 A fair and open fund 68
6.5 Supporting the change 70
6.6 The road ahead 71
References 72
Interviewees 74
Questions to help in establishing national CSEFs 85

www.commonwealtheducationfund.org
2
Acknowledgements
This report was written by Kathryn Tomlinson
and Ian Macpherson for the Commonwealth
Education Fund (CEF).
The research would not have been possible
without the assistance of a huge number of
people. Thanks of course are due to the
hundreds of interviewees and focus-group
participants who gave of their time willingly,
and gave of their thoughts candidly. Most are
listed at the end of this report; gratitude is
due to them and their anonymous
colleagues.
The UK research team particularly wishes
to thank research colleagues across the
Commonwealth globe: Sabbir Bin Shams,
Malamin Ousman Sonko, William Ahadzie,
Kiran Bhatty, Catherine Agg, Pulane Lefoka
and Lipalesa Ntsinyi, Robert White, Catherine
Remmelzwaal, Oyinlola Olaniyi, Masooda
Bano, Nelson Clemens, Amarsiri De Silva,
Honest Prosper Ngowi, Cliff Benard Nuwakora
and Mwenda Mumbuna. A 17-country
research project was never going to be
simple, but their dedication, engagement
and humour made the task easier.
CEF coordinators and their colleagues, across
Africa and Asia, have been invaluable in their
assistance in appointing and working with
the researchers. The project could not have
taken place without Mohammed Muntasim
Tanvir, Francis Vernuy, Nyakassi Jarju, Zakaria
Sulemana, Niraj Seth, Chris Marsden, William
Migwi, Palesa Mphohle, Grace Taulo, Tome
Eduardo, Andrew Mamedu, Shahjahan
Baloch, Beatrice Karim-Sesay, Jonathan
Saffa, Samuel Bangura, Rohan Senarath,
Chandima Liyanagamage, Patrick Ngowi,
Nickson Ogwal, Joan Larok and Hendrina
Doroba. The research workshop in Nairobi
only took place because Loice Odhiambo,
Margaret Ronoh and Emily Lugano made
sure that it did.
Thank you.
The consistent and engaged support and
guiding questions of the CEF UK
management committee has been much
appreciated; thanks to David Archer,
Akanksha Marphatia, Sonya Ruparel, Sheila
Aikman, Amy North and Katy Webley. In
London, the CEF UK team has provided
fantastic support, companionship, coffee and
laughter, and, for most of the time, desks.
Many thanks to Chike Anyanwu, Jill Hart,
Montse Pejuan, Nimrod Nyakanyanga and
Oley Dibba-Wadda. Particular thanks are due
to Montse, without whom there would have
been no country researchers recruited, no
visas or researcher visits, no documents to
read, and much, much else. She is due far
more than Kilimanjaro tea. Jessica Muir
provided invaluable assistance trawling
literature databases, and Anna Marriott
completed the UK research team in an
engaged and utterly reliable way.
Thank you both.
This report is dedicated to three important
people whose lives intersected with this
research: Beatrice Karim-Sesay, former
CEF coordinator in Sierra Leone, and Jaff
Brendan, our charismatic Cameroon
researcher, who sadly passed away, and
Louis Macpherson, who came into the
world during the same period. They remind
us that there is more to life than funding
mechanisms.

ADEA Association for Development of
Education in Africa
ANCEFA Africa Network Campaign on
Education for All
CBO Community-based organisation
CEF Commonwealth Education Fund
CIDA Canadian International
Development Agency
CSEF Civil Society Education Fund
CSO Civil society organisation
DANIDA Danish International Development Agency
DBS Direct budget support
DFID Department for International
Development (UK)
EPDF Education Programme Development Fund
EFA Education for All
EU European Union
FAWE Forum for African Women Educationalists
Finnida Department for Development
Cooperation (Finland)
FBO Faith-based organisation
FCS The Foundation for Civil Society (Tanzania)
FTI Fast-Track Initiative
GBS General budget support
GCE Global Campaign for Education
IMF International Monetary Fund
INGO International non-governmental
organisation
JICA Japan International Cooperation Agency
MC Management committee
MDBS Multi donor budget support
MDGs Millennium Development Goals
NGO Non-governmental organisation
NORAD Norwegian Agency for Development
OECD Organisation for Economic
Cooperation and Development
OVCs Orphans and vulnerable children
PRSP Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper
RWS Real World Strategies
SAP Structural Adjustment Policy
SBS Sector budget support
SDC Swiss Agency for
Development and Cooperation
SIDA Swedish International
Development Agency
SWAp Sector-wide approach
UN United Nations
UNAIDS United Nations Project on HIV/AIDS
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund
Abbreviations
3

To achieve this requires a significant investment in the
capacity of civil society organisations (CSOs) working
in the education sector. CSOs need to develop new
skills to engage in policy dialogue, to understand
national education budgets and to present a coherent
voice. There have been significant developments since
2000, with the emergence of national education
coalitions in many countries. These coalitions often
link a wide range of international, national and local
non-governmental organisations (NGOs), teachers’
unions, parent groups, students, faith-based
organisations (FBOs) and diverse social movements.
But funding these coalitions and funding their
membership to develop their capacity to engage
actively in national processes is not easy.
Since 2002, the Commonwealth Education Fund
(CEF) has supported civil society education advocacy
work. This work was carried out in 16 low-income
Commonwealth countries and was made possible
through a £12.6 million grant from the Department for
International Development (DFID). CEF has been quite
unique in this regard, supporting as it does the
combination of coalition building, education budget
monitoring and the channelling of learning into policy
dialogue. Much has been learnt over the past five
years and it is clear that this work needs to continue.
In 2006, CEF commissioned independent research
to explore the ways in which its mission could be
sustained as the organisation itself comes to an
end in 2008. Two lead researchers were recruited
to manage independent researchers across the 16
4
Funding change:
Foreword
At the World Education Forum in Dakar in 2000, a commitment
was made to the development of national education plans with
the systematic and sustained involvement of civil society in their
development, monitoring and implementation. Increasingly,
international donors are coordinating their aid behind sector-wide
national education plans, through mechanisms such as the Fast-
Track Initiative. This is clearly welcomed. However, too often the
focus of dialogue has been between Ministries of Education and
consortiums of donors, with little space for the active
engagement of civil society. Yet for national education plans to
be effective, they need to be owned and supported not just by
the government but by wider society, with national governments
accountable to their own citizens for the direction and
effectiveness of educational reforms.

5
Many children at this school in northern Uganda are internally displaced by the insurgency.
Gideon Mendel/ Corbis/ ActionAid
CEF countries and the UK. Collectively, this multi-country
research team interviewed over 500 people,
representing donors, governments, academia and
CSOs. The research interviews were conducted in
complete confidentiality so that the researchers
could gather the honest opinions of all involved.
The result is this report, Funding Change: Sustaining
Civil Society Advocacy in Education, which offers a
comprehensive and rigorous analysis of the issues
and lays out a clear direction for the future. The
researchers concluded that, where conditions are
right, support to civil society education advocacy can
be best supported by national funds. The report points
towards a clear gap in the international aid architecture
and the need to create national Civil Society Education
Funds (CSEFs), registered in each country and
managed by inter-agency boards with a small,
independent secretariat. These national CSEFs would
support CSOs to engage with and advocate to their
own governments on education policy, work that
proves difficult to fund through existing mechanisms.
The CEF welcomes the analysis and
recommendations laid out in this report. Moving
towards establishing national funds will take time and
will be a focus for CEF in its final 18 months. In the
coming months, CEF will develop a briefing paper
about CSEFs – summarising the learning from this
report and laying out guidelines for how such funds
can be established in any country.
However, it is not for CEF alone to do this work.
National CSEFs could and should be created beyond
the 16 countries that have been the focus of CEF.
Many countries remain significantly off-track from
achieving the Education for All goals by 2015. Civil
society mobilisation must be galvanised in every
country to help get back on track. Funding this work
requires innovative approaches to funding that can
reach beyond incumbent governments. CEF calls on
CSOs committed to Education for All to join in this
work – and calls on donors to support this process.
CEF Management Committee
March 2007

The Commonwealth Education
Fund and its research
The CEF works strategically with civil society in those
Commonwealth countries that are most at risk of
missing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on
education and gender. It aims to make education a
sustained domestic priority and to make public schools
work effectively for all children. The work of CEF and its
partners is focused on coalition building, budget
tracking and increasing access to education for
marginalised children. CEF works in 16 countries in
Africa and Asia (Bangladesh, Cameroon, The Gambia,
Ghana, India, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique,
Nigeria, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Tanzania,
Uganda and Zambia), with a Secretariat in the UK. It is
jointly managed by ActionAid, Oxfam GB and Save the
Children UK, and funded by DFID.
Changing agendas for civil society
The past decade has witnessed the rise of international
civil society advocacy in education, particularly with the
establishment of the Global Campaign for Education
(GCE), the events surrounding the DakarWorld
Education Forum in 2000, and the Education for All
(EFA) targets and MDGs. These provide standards
against which governments can be held to account
and hence work as frameworks within which civil
society can advocate to government for better
education.
Donors, international non-governmental organisations
(INGOs) and civil society organisations (CSOs) agree
that CSOs should be involved in policy processes and
monitoring government implementation. While these
actors saw some small role for CSOs’ continued
provision of services in hard-to-reach areas, this was
seen by southern government interviewees as the
main role for CSOs. This points to one of the many
challenges for CSOs engaged in advocacy: the limited
will of governments to engage with them. In this
context, advocacy is seen to include both social
advocacy (mobilising people) with the ultimate aim of
policy advocacy (to achieve changes in policy and
practice). Such ‘advocacy’ (including monitoring,
networking, budget tracking, research) requires good
6
Executive summary
Education is often spoken of as a political priority at international
and national levels. Civil society advocacy strives to ensure that
these education promises are fulfilled on the ground. However,
this advocacy work receives limited and unpredictable funding.
The Commonwealth Education Fund (CEF), the only
international fund focused solely on supporting advocacy in
education, commissioned this research to identify nationally
appropriate ways to maintain support for such work after the CEF
itself comes to an end in 2008. Twenty researchers
undertook the research across 16 CEF countries and the
UK, together interviewing 529 people. This report and a
companion publication, focused on building and supporting civil
society coalitions, are the result of this research.

evidence, and the organisations that undertake
advocacy need support to develop their proposal
writing, financial management, networking and
research skills.
Global funding for education
Significant developments in the international funding
regime affect the funding available for civil society
engagement in education advocacy. In particular,
bilateral donors are increasingly using lump sum
support to recipient governments in the form of
direct budget support (DBS). DBS has grown
in the context of increasing donor harmonisation,
recognition of the need to reduce conditionality of
aid, and for increased financial support for progress
towards the MDGs.
The changing role of CSOs, associated with a view
of the state as duty-bearer for provision of education
to its citizens, has affected how donors support civil
society. Social Funds and Challenge Funds were
intended by donors to act as a counterbalance to
the weight of funding channelled to governments,
by encouraging local CSOs to set the agenda for
work with poor and vulnerable groups. However,
there is limited evidence of success of these funds
in achieving these aims. As successors to these,
Local Funds are nationally based funding
mechanisms intended to stimulate partnerships for
development. It is in the form of Local Funds that
there is potential for taking forward indirect donor
support for civil society advocacy in education.
Learning from Local Funds
Thirteen Local Funds planned or in operation across
Africa and Asia were documented and analysed
during the research. These include Local Funds
managed by local CSOs and coalitions, hosted by
INGOs, run by private sector or government
representatives, and three that are or will be
independently run. Some – including Manusher Jonno
(Bangladesh) and the Foundation for Civil Society
(Tanzania) – are already well known, but the majority
have had limited international exposure. All provide
lessons for consideration when establishing a Civil
Society Education Fund (CSEF), including
suggestions to:
• avoid dominance by one member through a
multi-stakeholder board and independent
implementing agency
• use donor requirements to assist in accountability
but to harmonise reporting mechanisms to
donors
• separate financial management, administration
and grant approval functions to encourage
impartiality, and consider using the private sector
to supply some of these functions
• provide capacity building to improve potential
partners’ advocacy.
Also of value in developing future models is the vast
experience of CEF, to date the only international fund
solely supporting civil society advocacy in education.
CEF experience suggests it is important that such
funds have sufficient staff to support careful grant
management and to be aware of the challenges of
domination by host agencies. There is widespread
support for collaboratively managed funds that provide
both grants and capacity building to CSOs
undertaking education advocacy.
7
Teacher in classroom with pupils in Bangladesh.
Elaine Duigenan/ ActionAid

The case for a Civil Society Education Fund
The research recognises that the money available
for national CSEFs will be international in
source, as there is insufficient commitment of private
and national money to such a fund. But international
funding has weaknesses, including the reproduction
of inequality by southern organisations’ reliance on
northern donors, the distortion of an organisation’s
purpose and the limitation such funds place on whom
the recipient may critique. It is noted that national
context varies. For example, in south Asia there is
considerably more reluctance to use foreign funding
than in countries in Africa with a history of donor
dependency.
But the reality is that northern governments finance
southern development and, consequently, that there
are recipient country expectations of that money.
There is also the undeniable need for funding in order
to continue civil society’s advocacy work in education.
Any fund must negotiate delicate power dynamics,
including potential domination by national elites; CSOs
and INGOs are not immune to such struggles. Any
new fund will need a structure that is able to manage
and control these dynamics to ensure the fund
operates as transparently as possible.
Many bilateral donors are generally supportive
of the idea of national CSEFs as long as they are
transparent, accountable and have sound financial
management. It is clear that bilateral funding is now
more accessible at country level rather than at an
organisation’s headquarters, which supports the view
that national funds are now more desirable than an
internationally managed model. Multilateral donors,
INGOs and southern governments seem less
enthusiastic or able to support CSEFs financially, but
foundations may be a potential source of money. The
private sector may be interested, but without tangible
outcomes such support should not be assumed.
In addition to applications for in-country donor
contributions, mechanisms for obtaining and
managing money could include the establishment
of an endowment fund. A mechanism could also be
established so that, whenever donors coordinate
funding to support a government education sector
plan, an additional 3% would be triggered to support
civil society advocacy and monitoring work, to be
managed through the CSEF. These and other options
require further national and international investigation,
and there remains a need to promote the concept
and establishment of CSEFs internationally. This
role might be filled by collaboration between CEF
and GCE.
A model Civil Society Education Fund
All funds have an agenda, and any fund that focuses
on advocacy is to some extent drawing on a northern,
donor-related agenda. Yet it is vital for the content and
details of the agenda of any new fund to be set by
in-country stakeholders who are most engaged in
developing civil society education advocacy. A
common structure for national CSEFs is
recommended, on the basis that the concept has
widespread approval across the research areas (Africa,
Asia, Europe and the USA). Moreover, the countries in
which CSEFs might be established operate in the
same global context of Poverty Reduction Strategy
Papers (PRSPs), EFA targets and MDGs. Additionally,
the same donors might contribute to such funds
internationally, with similar requirements across
the globe.
The research thus recommends a model designed
to fulfil the essential criteria of accountability,
transparency and accessibility. A CSEF should provide
grants and capacity building to civil society
organisations engaged in education advocacy.
The organisation should consist of a board and an
implementing agency. The implementing agency
should be responsible for three units, namely
financial management, capacity building and
evaluation. Any or all of these units may be sub-contracted;
the implementing agency should retain a
core staff consisting of a director, administrator and
project officer(s). The board must be multi-agency,
constituted of people who both give to and gain
from (non-financially) its operation, with a formalised
relationship to government. The fund should, ideally,
be located outside of any other organisation. The fund
should provide varying sizes of grants, smaller
ones to be approved by the implementing agency,
and larger ones by the board.
The road ahead
There is both a need and widespread support for the
establishment of national CSEFs. These funds would
assist CSOs to continue their important advocacy work
but also provide donors with a nationally owned
mechanism to support the developing relationships
between governments and civil society in advancing
along the road to education for all. Establishing such
funds must be a nationally owned process, and
although the task might be complicated, their creation
is likely to be highly instrumental in sustaining civil
society advocacy in education.
8

1 Looking to the future of
funding for civil society
advocacy in education
This research was commissioned by the Commonwealth
Education Fund (CEF) in order to identify nationally appropriate
mechanisms for sustaining support to civil society funds working
on education advocacy.
9
CEF was launched in 2002, and operates in 16
Commonwealth countries in Africa and Asia, with a
Secretariat in the UK. Jointly managed by ActionAid,
Oxfam GB and Save the Children UK, CEF aims to
create a social and political environment in which
education becomes the number one national priority
for developing nations, by:
• strengthening broad-based and democratically
run national education coalitions that have active
membership across the country and can
effectively channel grassroots voices and
experiences in influencing national level policy
and practice
• ensuring that financing for education is sufficient
to make public schools work for all girls and boys,
and that government budgets are effectively
targeted and reach where they are most needed
• supporting evidence-based influencing of policy
rooted in innovative work that has succeeded in
getting excluded children, particularly girls, into
public schools.
CEF’s country-level work will come to an end by June
2008. However, CEF in general, and the CEF UK
Management Committee in particular, are committed
to sustaining collaborative support for civil society and
national coalitions working on advocacy, campaigning
and strategic monitoring of education. CEF began its
process of planning for sustainability in April 2004,
when a discussion document on sustainability options
was circulated to all CEF country groups for comment
and development (CEF UK, 2004a). CEF’s Global Mid-term
Review resulted in a proposal to DFID to expand
the CEF model to benefit other countries likely to face
difficulties in achieving the MDGs, particularly in
Francophone and non-Commonwealth Africa, Asia,
Latin America and the Caribbean (CEF UK, 2005b and
2005c). Although the planned expansion was not
approved at this time, the interest in disseminating the
benefits of this model of funding contributed to CEF’s
decision to appoint an independent research team to
identify possible ways to build on the achievements of
CEF and its partners after 2008.
This research was therefore initiated to identify
appropriate national solutions for each CEF country in
order to sustain the good work that has been done,
and plan for the remaining 18 months of CEF’s in-country
operation, so that civil society and national
education coalitions continue to work and grow. These
national solutions need to be based on a sound
understanding of the history and nature of education,
civil society and coalitions as well as the wider context
in each country, while making use of learning from
other country contexts. They also require an
understanding of views from donors and other
stakeholders on the potential for more strategic
support to civil society and coalitions, and information
about the technical requirements for establishing a
sustainable funding mechanism. Additionally, CEF

recognised that there was a need to document the
experience of CEF and its partners regarding the
process of coalition building, in order to share this
learning internationally.
1.1 Aims of the research
The overall aims of the research project were
therefore to:
• document the process of coalition building and
the experience and impact of coalitions in the
education sector, to understand the strengths
and weaknesses of different approaches in order
to provide insights that can guide future practice
• identify sustainable ways to channel coordinated
funding into strategic civil society work on
education in each CEF country, and consolidate
international learning about the most effective
structures and governance for collaborative
support for strategic civil society work on
education.
This report examines ways to sustain funding for
CSOs engaged in education advocacy, in part by
drawing on the collaborative experience of CEF. The
experience of coalition building is discussed in more
detail in the companion report.1
1.2 Methodology
The research was carried out by a team of 20
researchers, 17 of whom were based in
Commonwealth countries in which CEF has an office,2
and three in the UK. The CEF country researchers
were contracted from June to September 2006 to
undertake interviews on all aspects of the research,
and to write a report specifically on Sustaining funding
for civil society advocacy in education in their country.
The majority of the data on which this and the country
reports are based are drawn from semi-structured
interviews and focus group discussions in the CEF
countries, as well as in the UK and elsewhere in
Europe, USA and a small number of other non-CEF
countries. In total 529 individuals were interviewed or
participated in focus group discussions. These include:
• 90 coalition or network staff or representatives
• 89 national or local CSOs – many of the CSO
representatives were members of their national
coalition
• 30 CEF staff – the research team sought to
interview all CEF staff, including coordinators,
accountants, administrators and project officers
• 92 INGO staff – of these, 60 were from the three
CEF agencies (ActionAid, Oxfam GB and Save
the Children)
• 90 donor representatives (49 bilateral, 16
multilateral and 25 Foundation or Fund staff) –
in-country researchers struggled to meet with
bilateral or multilateral donor representatives,
largely because the data collection period
straddled August, a significant time of leave
for expatriate staff
10
1 Tomlinson, K. and Macpherson, I. (2007) Driving the Bus: the Journey of
National Education Coalitions. London: Commonwealth Education Fund.
2 Although CEF operates in 16 countries, two researchers worked in Lesotho.
Teacher and pupils in Tanzania.
Paul Bigland/ ActionAid

• 43 private sector representatives – this figure
includes national bank officials, private fund
management companies and a range of other
commercial organisations with some
engagement in education sector support
• 37 international organisation staff – all but two
from United Nations agencies
• 32 government officials and Members of
Parliament
• 27 academics and other researchers.
In CEF countries, most interviews were carried out
face-to-face with the interviewee, while the UK team
carried out the majority of its 73 interviews by
telephone. All interviews were carried out in
confidence: the data was only made available to the
research team, and, apart from inclusion in a list of
interviewees, respondents’ identities would be
concealed in all resulting research reports. Where
possible, the researchers observed CEF management
committee meetings and interactions between CEF
and coalition members.
It had been planned that each country researcher
would facilitate at least two focus group discussions
with key stakeholders in their country, ideally with the
national education coalition and with representatives
from the donor community. Fifteen focus group
discussions were held, but it was very difficult for the
researchers to even meet with donors, let alone gather
several together for a discussion. In hindsight, the
research team felt that it would be more valuable for
CEF to organise such discussions after the research
has been published, in order to disseminate the
results and to begin eliciting support for the
establishment of national funds.
All researchers also drew on published literature
and unpublished documentation (often provided
by interviewees). A UK researcher spent seven days
searching databases including ASSIA, BLDS, BRIDGE,
Eldis, ERIC, Id21, International Bibliography of Social
Sciences, JSTOR, ODI catalogue, Participation
Reading Room, Science Direct, Social Science
Information Gateway and Web of Knowledge, as well
as searching the internet using Google. Approximately
60 relevant items were identified, 40 obtained and 20
read. In addition, the UK research team also had full
access to CEF documentation, which was used in
both the development of the research plan and in
writing this report.
To support the research process, the UK research
team sent a questionnaire to all CEF coordinators in
early July 2006, primarily to gather the contact details
of key stakeholders for use by the country researchers.
The full research team gathered in Nairobi, Kenya, at
the end of July, for a workshop to clarify the research
objectives and to finalise the research instruments. UK
researchers also undertook short visits to Bangladesh,
Ghana, India, Tanzania and Zambia, in part to support
the country researchers, but primarily to experience
the differing national contexts in which CEF operates.
Country researchers were in regular contact with the
coordinating UK research team throughout the
research period, through progress reports and
telephone calls. They sent interviewee data to the
UK research teams and submitted their reports in
September. This report draws heavily on both
these data and reports.
It should be noted that, because the research has
been carried out from the UK and in Commonwealth
countries, looking at a model of funding instigated by
DFID, which is managed by three major British INGOs,
many of the interviewees work within a particular and
British-based perspective on development. Thus the
views of INGOs and donors cannot be taken to
represent those of the whole sector, but those of a
particular persuasion operating in the countries where
CEF works. Similarly, the national CSOs interviewed
were for the most part CEF partners, and hence, by
definition, working in advocacy (rather than, or in
addition to, service delivery). Their views also cannot
be taken as representative of all CSOs in the
countries concerned.
This report first examines the international education
advocacy and funding contexts in which CSOs work.
It then looks at models for funding such work, and the
need for structured funds, before recommending a
model for sustaining funding at national level for civil
society advocacy in education.
11

In 1998 ActionAid launched ‘Elimu’, a campaign to
strengthen the voices of poor people in education
decision-making at all levels, particularly by
encouraging community participation in management
of schools and involvement with the district education
authorities. Elimu was motivated by experiences in
Kenya and India, where civil society coalitions and
alliances built campaigns that focused on national
priorities, bringing together diverse civil society actors.
12
2 Changing agendas,
agendas for change
The right of all persons to education was established when the
concept of free and compulsory education was proclaimed by the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Forty years later,
in 1990, international discussions in Jomtien, Thailand, led to the
establishment of the Education for All (EFA) targets,3 with a
commitment to greater access, equity and quality in basic
education, and to mobilise resources to enable this to happen.
The importance of education in promoting social equity and
assuring poverty reduction was further addressed at a number of
international conferences that followed the Jomtien initiative,
particularly in Dakar at the World Education Forum in 2000 and
with the development of the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs) in the same year (OECD, 2006). The significance of the
EFA targets and MDGs is that nearly all southern countries signed
up to these mandates, and in so doing committed themselves to
working towards them. It is therefore within this context that
national advocacy in education takes place, within the sphere of
entitlements by virtue of government sanction.
2.1 A short history of education advocacy
During the 1990s, evidence suggested that southern
governments developed education policies in
response to donor influence exerted through
conditionalities of aid and, significantly, that civil
society had little or no input into the policy process as
they had no ‘voice’. Members of this INGO community
‘came to see this democratic deficit in education as
the fundamental root of all the other problems of
access, quality and equity, which we had struggled
with over the years’ (Archer and Anyanwu, 2005, p. 4).
3 UNESCO (2006)

In 1999 Oxfam International launched the ‘Education
Now’ campaign, which centred on the impact of
structural adjustments and debt repayments on
education provision and quality. The campaign
challenged governments and donors to honour the
commitments they had made in Jomtien through
global policy analysis and lobbying (Murphy and
Mundy, 2002, p. 3). Linked with the highly visible
Jubilee 2000 campaign on debt relief, Oxfam GB
approached senior officials in the UN and at the World
Bank and secured them a position on the EFA
Steering Committee in 1999. At the same time
Education International – the global federation of
teachers’ unions – launched a campaign called
‘Quality Public Education for All’, which aimed to
challenge the neo-liberal agenda and the creeping
privatisation of education. Simultaneously the Global
March against Child Labour, a southern-based
alliance, came to view education as the most effective
way of ending child labour.
A meeting between these four4 key organisations and
others5 in 1999 led to the creation of the Global
Campaign for Education (GCE). GCE was initially
conceived as a short-term campaign to achieve
recognition of the global education crisis, and to put
pressure on the global community to provide the
resources and to implement reforms needed to
achieve education for all.6 A core statement and
agenda was agreed that brought together the diverse
experiences of those involved. GCE undertook a range
of advocacy activities in the run up to the 2000 World
Education Forum in Dakar to garner support for the
Global Plan of Action and civil society’s involvement in
its development, including convening a regional
African conference on EFA in South Africa in
December 1999 and arranging the first Global Week
of Action in April 2000 to raise awareness and support
for EFA. GCE representatives from India, Senegal,
Brazil and the UK were elected to the drafting
committee of the official conference and the
committee to determine future EFA structures.
More than 300 NGOs attended the World Education
Forum in Dakar. While there were considerable
tensions between NGOs, GCE gained the support of
most and ‘became the de facto representative of the
NGO position’ (Murphy and Mundy, 2002, p. 6),
securing meetings with key international actors in the
UN and at the World Bank. The impact was
considerable; the GCE positions led to ‘clear and
substantial changes’ to initial drafts of the Dakar
framework (Archer and Anyanwu, 2005, p. 5).
After Dakar:
education advocacy through coalitions
Following its success at Dakar, the GCE continued
to expand its campaign in pressing G7 governments
and international development organisations for
better funding and coordination whilst stimulating
civil society participation in national EFA policy work.
However, there was criticism that northern INGOs
were over-represented. GCE then realigned itself to
provide a balance between northern and southern
voices, NGOs and unions. Partly in response to the
domination of the northern voice, the African Network
Campaign on Education for All (ANCEFA) was born,
developed from and strengthening existing national
coalitions including TEN/MET (Tanzania), GNECC
(Ghana), Elimu Yetu (Kenya), CSACEFA (Nigeria),
MEPT (Mozambique) and FENU (Uganda). In Asia
some national networks working on EFA campaigns,
particularly the Campaign for Popular Education
(CAMPE) in Bangladesh and the Education
Network in Nepal, achieved prominent success
in basic education.
Additionally, UNESCO’s Collective Consultation on
NGOs in EFA body underwent reform in 2001 and
took a ‘more formalised role in Dakar follow-up
activities, and began to take on the task of supporting
civil society involvement in the forming and
monitoring of national education plans’ (Murphy and
Mundy, 2002, p. 8). At the same time, major INGOs
and other education actors in the USA formed the
Basic Education Coalition to press the US government
to increase its funding to EFA and to participate in
13
4 ActionAid, Oxfam International, Education International and Global March
against Child Labour.
5 South African NGO Coalition, the Campaign for Popular Education
(CAMPE) in Bangladesh, and the Brazilian National Campaign for the
Right to Education.
6 Archer and Anyanwu (2005, p. 5), Jouen qtd. in Human Rights Education
(1999)

Pupils studying in Government school underneath a cyclone shelter, Char Kukri Mukri, Bangladesh.
international EFA schemes. Coordinated INGO
pressure, itself instrumental in influencing UNESCO
and the World Bank, resulted in the request for a
background paper for the 2002 G8 meeting. The
outcome was a G8 declaration on EFA and high level
political support for EFA.
Certainly this global movement has been massively
influential in pushing education up the global
development agenda and national political agendas.
But global level action is no panacea for national level
action, and international conventions such as EFA
need to be articulated in context by national civil
society. Positive donor and government rhetoric on
CSO advocacy on education is not always supported
by funds to carry out this work.
2.2 The space for civil society
‘Civil society’ means different things in different
contexts. In Bangladesh, for example, research
respondents felt civil society is synonymous with
NGOs only. Yet there is consensus throughout the
research data that civil society is a broader term that
refers not only to NGOs with a developmental focus
but encapsulates local community-based
organisations (CBOs) such as parent–teacher
associations, academics, professional associations
(including unions), student associations, research
institutions, faith-based organisations (FBOs),
charitable organisations and the media. Civil society
therefore ‘commonly
embraces a diversity of
spaces, actors and
institutional forms, varying in
their degree of formality,
autonomy and power (Centre
for Civil Society, 2004) and
denotes ‘the arena outside
the family, the state, and the
market where people
associate to advance
common interests’ (INGO
director).7 This broad plethora
of organisations and groups
is seen as an intrinsic part of
an active, functioning society:
the milieu of non-state action,
although the activities of civil
society are regulated and controlled by a
government’s authority. However, a government’s
authority is itself affected by the agendas of
international organisations. This section therefore
examines both how international actors shape the
roles of national governments, and the space available
to civil society in these interactions.
International actors’ prescription of the
roles of national actors
In order to understand the role of civil society, it is
necessary to recognise the influence that the
international development community has played in
shaping this role. Whilst cross-pollination of ideas has
occurred between different organisations at the
international level, for the purposes of this exposition
they are split into the donor community on the one
hand,8 and INGOs on the other. From the mid-1980s
to 1995, the World Bank and International Monetary
Fund (IMF) imposed Structural Adjustment Policies
(SAPs) as a conditionality of aid, significantly
14
7 Although some commentators include the private sector in civil society,
this report does not.
8 This incorporates bilateral donors (government agencies funding other
countries directly), and multilateral donors (including World Bank, IMF, EU
and UN agencies) that manage collective funds provided by governments.

influencing the national plans of recipient
governments. As a consequence of these policies
there were large cuts to government spending in
education – and other social service sectors – with a
resultant drop in both access and quality of education
for the poor and marginalised. In this context NGOs at
the international and national levels engaged in ‘gap
filling’: delivering education services where the
government was either unable or unwilling to do so.
INGOs spent considerable resources not only
delivering services themselves, but encouraging
and supporting national organisations to do likewise.
Similarly, bilateral donors channelled significant
resources into national and international NGOs
engaged in service delivery, often seeing them as
more responsive and effective providers than
the state.
SAPs were succeeded in 1999 by Poverty Reduction
Strategy Papers (PRSPs), strategies of reform that ‘set
out a country's macroeconomic, structural and social
policies to promote growth and reduce poverty’
(Bretton Woods, 2006). PRSPs, also imposed as
conditionalities of aid, aimed to be ‘participatory
processes involving domestic stakeholders as well as
external development partners, including the World
Bank and International Monetary Fund’ (IMF, 2006).
Under PRSPs, national governments are encouraged
to involve civil society in policy formation and
implementation to promote national ownership of
solutions to poverty that recognise the complexity of
poverty and the diversity of organisations involved in
development. Yet as conditions of aid, PRSPs
effectively force governments to open their doors to
civil society, which presents a major shift in the way
that government and civil society had previously
engaged. Bilateral donors who also follow the PRSP
format therefore exert irresistible pressure for
governments to engage with civil society. In this way,
the political space in many contexts was therefore
invited by governments – through donor pressure –
rather than being created by civil society. This process
significantly shaped the role of civil society, and led
the director of an international organisation to describe
African civil society as a ‘modern sector creation’.
However, it is important to acknowledge the
considerable critique of PRSPs; that in fact they
narrowly limit the amount of civil society policy
consultation space by excluding CSO–government
discussion on issues such as industrial, trade and
fiscal policy, privatisation and financial liberalisation as
well as domestic investment and land reform issues.
ActionAid (2004) argues that the way PRSPs are
structured excludes CSOs because the IMF
determines the macroeconomic policies – through the
Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility – which in turn
allocates government budgets even before the PRSP
process begins. CSO participation in such debates is
therefore excluded. Consequently, ActionAid argues
that CSOs should consider ‘whether participation in
other CSO-led public formats might be a more useful
strategy for advocating alternative development
policies and mobilising domestic support for them’
(ActionAid, 2004, p. 2). Thus while donors view PRSPs
as opening up the political space for civil society,
other observers feel this is not the case and that civil
society has to actively create the political space it
occupies.
Since 2000, the perspective of many INGOs has also
shifted from service delivery to a rights-based
approach. Previously many INGOs were engaged in
delivering education services by working with and
through southern organisations, most notably in the
areas of non-formal education as a response to poor
and ineffective state services. However, there has
been a shift to view the state as the ‘duty-bearer’ for
social services and citizens as ‘right-holders’ with
entitlements to these services. The role of citizens was
therefore to articulate and secure their entitlement to
this right. This is an instance of INGO–donor cross-pollination,
because, since 2000, DFID has also been
articulating a rights-based approach. Consequently,
given these shifts at the international level, the role of
civil society in education depends on whose viewpoint
is solicited.
The role of civil society
Government9 respondents to the CEF research
overwhelmingly claimed that, because of their limited
capacity, civil society needed to assist in delivery of
15
9 Recipient rather than donor governments.

education services, particularly in remote areas and to
marginalised groups. This was partly because
‘education is a shared responsibility’, partly because
of the proximity of civil society to local communities,
but also because civil society can innovate and
respond quickly to local situations. And despite the
ostensive participation of civil society in the PRSP, only
two of the 31 government individuals interviewed
claimed that civil society has a role in policy formation,
that ‘we need civil society to push for certain issues’.10
Similarly, only one government respondent
commented that civil society had a role to act as a
check on the government:
“I feel there is a great need for advocacy work
by civil society groups. There is so much
corruption in the state system. If the government
was working efficiently and all the resources were
being put to their right use, we won’t have the
current education problems. There is immense
need to check the government, and the advocacy
work is very important for this.”
The general government perception was in marked
contrast to the views of multilateral and bilateral
donors, as well as INGOs, NGOs and CSOs. They
claimed that, while civil society did have a limited role
in service delivery – that ‘only in special cases should
CSOs be service providers, such as with children with
disabilities’ (CSO in Malawi) – the roles of civil society
were broader and intrinsic to democratic educational
planning and transparent management at the national
level. Specifically, two major roles were outlined that
hinged on engagement with the state, acting as a
watchdog to the government and participating in the
policy process.
Due to the general move towards decentralisation,
donors saw strong roles for civil society in monitoring
the government through a variety of activities,
including budget tracking. In a similar vein, a CSO
member from Cameroon viewed their role as a
‘watchdog and pressure group to the government’,
acting as the mouthpiece of those who were not
catered for in government provision. Monitoring
government spending was cited by NGO officers in
Nigeria, Cameroon, Bangladesh and Lesotho and, in
this way, not only did civil society aim to ensure that
money allocated was spent in education but also that
the budget was increased in certain areas, and that
transparency in the government was nurtured. Another
facet of the watchdog role was explained by a bilateral
donor:
“In the context of direct budget support,11 civil
society has to be more aware of their role because
donors are now less involved with national plans
as well as being less involved with civil society.
Therefore civil society has to participate more in
the exchange with multi- and bilateral partners and
organisations. So civil society provides information
not only to governments but to donors as well as
the other way around – taking information down
to the community level.”
In addition, a further watchdog role for civil society was
identifying gaps in the quality of government provision,
‘blowing the whistle on the government and making
sure that government and their institutions live up to
their responsibilities towards achieving qualitative
education’ (NGO director). Succinctly put by one
donor, ‘civil society tempers governments to be more
relevant to what a particular province or district needs.
Civil society is therefore critical in ensuring the
relevance of education’.
Overwhelmingly, however, donors, INGOs, NGOs and
CSOs saw that ‘it is the job of civil society to ask
difficult questions of the government, to disagree with
policy’. Yet as one donor representative explained, ‘It’s
not just about strengthening the voice of civil society
to be audible, it’s about having a more informed and
intelligent voice… through evidence-based research
so that education matters can be presented in an
informed manner which is most likely to have impact’.
There are two elements to this. On the one hand this
16
10 This implies that the engagement of civil society with government is, as
per ActionAid (2004) often tokenistic.
11 Direct budget support (DBS) is discussed in Chapter 3.

involves sensitisation of the community to EFA and
MDGs – ‘conscientising society about EFA’ (CSO
Malawi) – and, on the other, working with the state to
be involved in the policy planning process. Civil
society therefore links what happens at the micro-level
to the meso- and macro- levels, and is not solely
about civil society ‘using their new found voice to just
complain louder against government but rather to be
complementary in their approach’ (INGO Tanzania). As
a representative of an international coalition
suggested:
“Civil society is the local eyes and the ears that
watch how national and international policies are
translated into practice; civil society is like the
intelligence service feeding information back up
from the ground. Civil society has a massive depth
of information; they are able to make investigations
into corruption and transparency issues, loads of
different issues… They are really good at collating
evidence, reporting and being part of a feedback
loop and they can be conduits of information
flowing both ways – from the government to the
community and the community to the
government.”
In Nigeria and Cameroon, CSO members stated that,
whilst civil society cannot make policy, it can add
value to the formation of policy by analysing the
problems of society, identifying gaps in provision,
articulating the needs of society and providing
alternative solutions, as well as monitoring and
evaluating the implementation of policy. This was also
captured by a Bangladeshi NGO director who stated
that, ‘civil society needs to challenge the downwards
filtration policy of offering a minimal level of education
for the general mass’ by ‘acting as a trailblazer to
popularise the agenda of education quality’. As a
donor in The Gambia argued, ‘without the engagement
of civil society in education, not much can happen.
With DBS and SWAps, the involvement of civil society
is absolutely necessary’.
Therefore, whilst government respondents view the
role of civil society as focused on service delivery, in
the eyes of donors, INGOs, NGOs and CSOs the roles
for civil society are perceived as three-fold:
• qualified service delivery to particular areas and
sectors of society that are not reached by the
government
• acting as a watchdog to the government (through
a variety of means and functions such as budget
tracking, community mouthpiece and whistle
blower)
• participation in the policy process (through
evidence-based research, community
sensitisation, information conduits and articulators
of community issues).
These roles are associated with changing perceptions
about the role of the state, from seeing the market as
the driver of development (under SAPs) to viewing the
state as the duty-bearer of development and,
correlated to this, civil society as the regulator of the
state, comprised of citizens with entitlements to rights.
Yet these roles are considerable and require both
skills and resources, which the following section
examines.
2.3 Challenges for civil society
The primary role for civil society – as assigned by all
respondents other than government – is advocacy
through monitoring and policy engagement. Yet there
are two significant problems with this. First is that the
advocacy role is often donor-imposed. Second is that
many CSOs lack ‘capacity’ to engage in advocacy and
many are unable to establish micro–macro linkages by
translating grassroots reality into policy advocacy
agendas. More specifically, ‘many do not even have
the capacity for programme development and writing
proposals that can attract funding’ (CSO member),
lacking skills in financial management, managerial
processes and physical resources. Thus there is,
according to an INGO representative, a ‘dearth of
capacity for both advocacy and budget tracking’.
Yet beyond technical skills and resources that can
prevent CSOs from travelling to conferences or
meeting the government, a significant part of the
ability to articulate needs rests on knowledge, as a
government representative in The Gambia explained:
17

“Civil society… is far from what we expect it to
be doing. They are supposed to be reminding
national governments of their commitments and
track[ing] their adherence to those commitments
and keep[ing] them on their toes. They do not
have enough capacity to do that. They must
know government policy direction, actual policy
statements and content. They must be able to
track policy implementation and produce empirical
evidence of deviation. They should also be able
to know what international protocols and
commitments that national governments have
signed up to so as to hold them accountable.
They cannot challenge me on any of the above.”
The statement indicates how many CSOs lack
knowledge of how to access relevant information,
skills in research, networking skills and confidence to
engage with the government. More basically, a
bilateral donor was of the opinion that CSOs ‘don’t
really understand what advocacy is about and
therefore restrict their activities to service delivery’. In
addition, many INGOs and NGOs noted a ‘lack of
coordination between
national level policy
advocacy organisations
and grassroots
organisations’, with the
result that ‘independent
CSOs fail just because
they act on issues without
having any national level
consensus: one effort by
one CSO is diluting
another’s effort’. Yet lack of
coordination is not solely
due to poor
communication and
insufficient networking
skills, but also because
‘there can be a great deal
of competition between
NGOs, especially for
funding. So you find that
they are not always willing
to share with others’
(bilateral donor).
Not only do power and politics saturate civil society
but the sector has become flooded with ‘briefcase
NGOs’: organisations set up to access funds but who
then do not implement anything. This phenomenon
seems most germane to the African countries involved
in this research, all of which shared a young history of
NGO activities. For example, in Mozambique, a
commentator explained how:
“We don’t have a strong history of NGOs. They
really began in 1991 when the Law allowed them
to become associations. Many of them didn’t have
any constituency – they just wanted the trappings
– the cars, offices, etc. that they saw. It was not a
true movement because it was created by the
donors who needed partners. They didn’t ask any
questions about governance – they didn’t want to
know… they just write proposals to get funds.”
Such a lack of integrity compounds the competition
between CSOs, especially when one considers, as in
the case of Ghana and Mozambique, how numerous
NGOs have been established by disgruntled
18
Mephina Primary School, Mozambique.
Boris Heger/ Save the Children

politicians to access funds but who maintain strong
personal connections with the government. An
outcome is the tighter constriction of the political
space that genuine CSOs are able to occupy.
A further challenge for CSOs is the will of the
government to engage with them. In Bangladesh and
Cameroon, ‘democracy is not institutionalised yet, and
civil society cannot evolve strongly,’ resulting in an
‘unfriendly legal and political environment for NGOs’.
Tensions abound because CSOs can be viewed as
competitors to governments, especially because
‘some NGOs are just too radical for the government’.
Additionally, as observed by a UK academic, ‘many
governments see civil society as oppositional. The
term “non-governmental organisation” means just that;
“non-government” which some, such as in the Middle
East, equate to “anti-government”.’ The result is
government suspicion and mistrust, which can lead to
stringent and restrictive NGO policies, as in Ghana
and Tanzania, to allow governments to regulate the
CSO sector. An example of this is Haki Elimu, a
Tanzanian NGO widely supported by many external
organisations including donors and INGOs, and
enjoying a seat at the government table. However, in
2004 Haki Elimu organised a competition for
communities to provide evidence of corruption within
the government. Whilst the intention was laudable, the
upshot was that they were outlawed from working. In
the words of one bilateral representative, ‘The problem
for Haki Elimu, and potentially for others, is that they
were labelled as political and this was terminal’.
Civil society therefore faces a number of challenges in
engaging in their various roles, which include
challenges of insufficient capacity – including lack of
information and skills – as well as poor coordination
and lack of political will. This highlights how much
advocacy carried out by organisations has been, quite
simply, ineffective in respect to influencing
government policy. What constitutes ‘good’ advocacy
is therefore considered next.
2.4 What is ‘good’ advocacy?
There was broad consensus from a range of
interviewees that ‘there is real confusion about the
real meaning of advocacy’ (INGO Mozambique) or,
alternatively put, ‘nobody knows what advocacy is’
(bilateral donor, Bangladesh). This short section looks
at what ‘good’ advocacy is, not with a view to
producing a ‘how to’ narrative, but to provide insight
into how organisations have dealt with the issues
described above. It also has bearing on the agenda
that should be drawn up by any future fund for civil
society.
‘Advocacy’ is a catch-all term. It implies social
advocacy, increasing citizens’ understanding of certain
issues to promote public debate and to increase
public pressure for change in policy and practice.
There are various ways to do this such as organising
a rally, taking to the streets or conducting a radio
campaign on, for instance, minority language
instruction. The targets for social advocacy include
parents, teachers, students and the media. As an
INGO member explained, ‘most people seem to be
satisfied with the view that advocacy is the same as
popular mobilisation and awareness-raising’.
Yet ‘advocacy’ also implies policy advocacy that uses
research and evidence from service delivery to offer
innovative solutions and make clearly articulated
policy recommendations. Succinctly captured by a
consultant, ‘this advocacy is a very specific way in
which CSOs ask for a particular policy or point to be
included in a law or piece of legislation based on
evidence-based research or experience in order to
bring about social change’. This implies that, firstly,
policy advocacy must be legitimate: advocates need
to know what they are talking about and this is gained
from sound research and direct experience. As a
bilateral donor put it: ‘What you need are solid
examples of things that you have done and that have
worked’ as ‘otherwise, how can you advocate without
evidence?’ According to an academic, direct
experience is what ‘gives organisations the legitimacy
to talk about things they are engaged in’. Secondly, it
implies that advocates have access to information
about policies. This information has to be timely
because policy review processes are time-bound and
if an organisation makes recommendations too late
they cannot be used. Equally, policies tend to be of
limited duration and run for between three to five
years at a time; policies therefore change. In the
19

words of a bilateral donor, ‘The ultimate goal of
advocacy has to be [to] change policy. Why do you
want to mobilise people? There has to be a goal. First
policy has to change, then practice’.
‘Advocacy’ also implies civil society acts as a
watchdog to the government. These activities involve
budget tracking, identifying gaps in provision (such as
shortage of teachers) and whistle-blowing on
corruption or mismanagement of resources.
Altogether, ‘advocacy’ therefore implies a range
of activities oriented towards changes in policy,
management and practice. Part of the skill of
advocacy is choosing the most effective means of
communicating a particular message or issue. For
example, a radio campaign, a postcard campaign
targeted at politicians or regional education officials,
or linking with other national, regional or international
advocacy initiatives such as GCE’s Global Action
Week. Further, advocacy involves planning strategic
activities to address particular issues.
For these reasons the word ‘advocacy’ is used
throughout this report as shorthand for social and
policy advocacy, as well as watchdog activities.
Altogether, the acquisition of these skills and
proficiency with these processes may well lead to an
element of competition between CSOs. However, this
is not seen as a bad move as it would sort committed
and serious advocacy organisations from those along
for the ride or looking to profit from the increasing
global attention to advocacy.
2.5 Capacity building: deficit, definition and
determination
An INGO member in Mozambique commented that,
‘I face the problem of working with very, very weak
partners’. Throughout the research there were strong
views expressed that the focus of any fund for civil
society had to be, at least in part, capacity building. To
take some selected examples, ‘Building the capacity
of other civil society actors has to be one area of this
type of fund’; ‘It is not just about providing funds,
capacity building is vitally important,’ and, ‘You need
an organisation that gives more than just money’.12
The importance of this was captured by a government
official, who said that, ‘They seem to have very good
ideas and may have very attractive plans on paper,
which are never implemented. It is not so much the
lack of money that seems to stifle their work, it is
more a lack of skills.’ Yet ‘capacity building’ is a
nebulous and broad term. The research indicates
that there were three interrelated areas of capacity
building that needed attention beyond general
administration skills: proposal writing, financial
management and advocacy (including networking
and research skills). Financial management and
advocacy were seen by many commentators as the
most significant gaps.
A CEF management committee (MC) member
commented that the model was more successful in
Kenya, where capacity building of potential partners
was thought through, and a programme to address
gaps was implemented early on in CEF’s history. In
Tanzania, where this ‘paternal approach’ was not
followed, partners struggled to apply for and spend
CEF’s funds. Indeed, in Tanzania, one partner criticised
CEF for not assisting sufficiently with the application
process to access funds, and felt that funds were
therefore being ‘underutilised’. According to a coalition
member, there was also ‘a danger of leaving out good
performers who do not have good or big names and
capacity to write proposals but can perform well on
the ground. There should be a mechanism to reach
and uplift them through capacity building’.
Attention to proposal writing is linked with financial
management. Numerous respondents, especially CEF
staff, commented on the weak financial management
skills of partners and CSOs in general. Such limited
financial ability led to inadequate reporting (Malawi),
delays in funds being released from CEF (Lesotho,
Kenya and Tanzania) and trepidation by other funding
sources on the future of released funds (Lesotho). In
West Africa, a CEF accountant explained that, ‘My role
is to manage the CEF accounts and to provide
financial capacity building to the partners’. He
explained the issue and process as follows:
“The problem is that the funding mechanisms in
many of the partners are very weak. I take a very
close, personal interest in this and spend a lot of
my time working with partners on their reporting
20
12 Donor in Bangladesh, INGO representative in Mozambique and a
CEF coordinator

systems. For instance, if a report comes in, I will
go back to their offices and sit down and go
through the entire report so that they understand
very clearly what they should be doing and how it
should be done. But the problem is that many do
not have any funding policies, and do not employ
a finance person. So I think that partners should
do both of these: employ a finance person - even
part time - who has the skills and can do the
reports quickly. Also, we should help the partners
to put financial policies in place. I am trying to do
that at the moment but perhaps this should be an
explicit aim.”
This undertaking was beyond his job description and
in response to a perceived need. Not all accountants
were so motivated and many said that, whilst they did
acknowledge the lack of financial capacity, they felt
they were unable to give time to resolving this
themselves.
The third area, limited knowledge, skills and ability in
advocacy, was discussed by various respondents. In
Bangladesh, an NGO member commented, ‘We are
local NGOs. We get some donations and work locally,
but we do not understand or articulate the national
agendas for policy change.’ Knowledge of advocacy
issues, and how these tie with national plans, was
therefore a key issue. Related to this was how this
knowledge was then utilised. An INGO member said
that, ‘Civil society groups in Pakistan do not have
many skills for advocacy [and] getting them to write a
project idea and develop a campaign is very
difficult… Therefore civil society initiatives have limited
impact.’ Networking skills were felt essential to the set
of skills for advocacy, to organise around a campaign
or issue, to share information and build up momentum
but, ‘there is a big gap in engaging, managing and
running networks’.
Thus a deficit of ‘capacity’ in CSOs was observed
most significantly in financial management skills, but
also advocacy and proposal-writing proficiency. Yet
building capacity comes with challenges. In particular,
two were mentioned. The first is that capacity building
takes time. An INGO representative said that, ‘It is a
very slow process when you see just how weak all
the CSOs are. We should not rush this just for the
sake of spending money.’ The second is that capacity
building runs the risk of enforcing an external agenda
on the organisation. As a coalition member in Lesotho
commented, ‘With the donors based locally, especially
one who wants to build capacity of the coalitions,
they tend to go beyond capacity building and one
tends to lose one’s autonomy and they tend to over-influence
what you do.’
Nonetheless, the evidence suggests that capacity
building presents a key area of determination for any
support for sustaining the work of civil society (as CEF
has been doing). As such, this report recommends
that capacity building for advocacy, as understood
above, forms a key focus of the future CSEF. As an
INGO in Lesotho stated, ‘support to CSOs has to be
financial and technical’.
With this understanding in mind of the nature, roles
and challenges of civil society to engage in advocacy
activities, the next chapter investigates the
international financial realm in which civil society
operates, before examining in more detail the forms
of support that have been provided to civil society.
21
Pupils in front of the enrolment table at Kosia Primary school, Kenya.

Funding for civil society is split between funds that are
given to northern INGOs that work or have partners in
the south, and discrete programme funding at the
national level. Bilateral donors fund civil society
organisations by, most commonly, giving money to
domestically based INGOs. For instance, DFID funds
ActionAid UK, Oxfam GB and Save the Children UK
through Programme Partnership Agreements (PPAs);
they in turn work with civil society in southern
countries.13 Similarly, the Norwegian Agency for
Development (NORAD) provides funds for Save the
Children Norway.
Donors also support discrete projects at the national
level, administered by country education advisors
through respective embassies. According to one
Ministry official, ‘There is no mandate of criteria for
determining which country gets how much, it is down
to [country advisor’s] discretion and is really based on
opportunism of what is happening in that context and
whether we can get involved in it.’ Similarly, a DFID
representative explained that ‘most of our work is
decentralised to the country offices and the country
programme officers who manage funds at the
country level’.
However, the climate of donor funding for both
recipient governments and CSOs is changing, due
to three simultaneous processes:
• First, discrete programme funding at the country
level is being reduced. This research indicated
that DFID, the African Development Bank, the
Swedish International Development Agency
(SIDA), the Canadian International Development
Agency (CIDA), NORAD, the United States
Agency for International Development (USAID),
22
3 Global funding
for education
The research data illustrated that donor funding for development
– and not solely education – is split between those funds
channelled to national governments and those channelled to
national civil societies. This section focuses on funding for civil
society and examines government funding only in so far as it
influences funding structures and mechanisms for civil society.
For government funding, bilateral agreements made between
donors and recipient governments constitute the majority of
support. In addition, donors also make contributions to
multilateral organisations such as the UN family and the World
Bank, which in turn support governments at the national level.
13 It is worth noting, however, that such PPAs only constitute about
3-5% of overall INGO budgets.
3.1 The international framework

the Australian Agency for International
Development (AusAID), FinAID (Finland) and the
Danish International Development Agency
(DANIDA) are all moving away from discrete
project funding because of burdensome
administration and poor cost-effectiveness
through micro-management. Of note is that such
grants have been largely focused on
infrastructure development, and provided through
national-level civil society.
• Second, concurrently, there is a growing trend
towards pooled funding (also known as basket
funding) whereby donors jointly fund common
activities. This trend is partly due to efforts to
reduce replication, streamline reporting processes
and reduce management costs by revolving the
chairing responsibilities as well as simplifying
administration. Pooled funding is one of the
recommendations of the Paris Declaration on Aid
Effectiveness (discussed further below). Yet some
organisations are against pooled funding,
including USAID and JICA (Japanese International
Cooperation Agency) because, it is claimed,
‘each dollar is traced to an activity’ and pooled
funding militates against this specificity. Instead,
some organisations offer ‘parallel funding’ also
known as ‘vertical funding’ – money for a
particular element of a programme – because
joint funding requires complicated accounting
systems.
• Third, at the same time, donor support to
governments is increasing, largely through direct
budget support (DBS). Numerous donors
(particularly DFID, the EC (European Community),
SIDA and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
but excluding USAID, the French Ministry for
Foreign Affairs and the UN agencies) are moving
towards providing greater sums of funds directly
to national governments. While there is lack of
clarity on the specific numbers of donors using
DBS, and the extent to which it is used alongside
other funding mechanisms, it is a growing trend
and increasing numbers of donors are
considering it as an aid mechanism (Warrener,
2004; Menocal and Rogerson, 2006; and
Government of the Republic of Zambia, 2004).
DBS is therefore gaining momentum as a donor
mechanism. Given the importance of this trend
for the role and function of civil society, issues
around DBS are examined in detail within the
following section.
3.2 The changing nature of donor aid
Direct budget support (DBS) involves the transfer of a
lump sum of money directly to recipient governments.
DBS is not necessarily linked to specific project
activities. It takes two forms at the recipient
government level: general budget support (GBS) and
sector budget support (SBS).
• GBS supports the government’s budget as a
whole. This money is given directly to the Ministry
of Finance, and usually does not have many
conditions attached. GBS, it is argued, ‘lowers
transaction costs, improves donor coordination
and the predictability of aid flows, enhances the
allocative efficiency of public policies and
enhances public sector performance and
accountability’ (DFID, 2003). GBS is intended to
help governments to respond to citizens’ needs
through means identified through the Poverty
Reduction Strategy (PRS) process, as discussed
in Chapter 2. In so doing, GBS ostensibly
enhances ‘government’s ownership of
development processes and accountability for
delivering agreed products’ (DFID, 2003).
• SBS, conversely, is money given for particular
areas or sectors of the government budget. SBS
can be given to support education.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, recipient governments tend to
support the move to DBS. A Minister stated that, ‘The
donors’ new approach through direct budget support
is seen as a step in the right direction whereby the
government is given help but still retains the right to
do what it thinks best with the money.’ Interconnected
principles lie behind the increasing focus on DBS
provided to governments and, as a result, the
changing role of and support to civil society. In
particular, six principal issues have contributed to
the increasing use of DBS.
23

First was a shift from the view in the 1990s that the
market was the primary mechanism for social change
to the notion that the state must be responsible for
providing for the welfare of its citizens (Collinson,
2006, p. 9). This is coupled with the growing
orientation of INGOs (and some donors such as DFID)
moving away from service delivery to more rights-based
approaches, which view national governments
as duty-bearers for social service provision and
citizens as rights-holders for these services.
Second was the poor performance of aid conditionality
and results of donor-supported projects, of which
many were ‘uncoordinated, commanded limited
ownership by governments and have not generated
sustained impact’ (DFID, 2003). In addition, the
administrative costs for donors in pursuing a multitude
of agendas through projects not only had limited
effectiveness, but also placed considerable reporting
burdens on recipient governments – up to 10,000
reports per year, per country in Africa (Collinson,
2006). This operational point stimulated consideration
of how to reduce and streamline donor administration
as well as minimise excessive and onerous reporting
processes for southern bureaucracies.
Third was the broad support since the 1990s for
PRSPs and for Sector Wide Approaches (SWAps). Led
and administered by governments, PRSPs aim to
promote ownership at the national level ‘through a
participatory process involving civil society, the private
sector and other development partners’ (Collinson,
2006, p. 9). The wide participation of all society was
seen as necessary for effective, relevant and
sustainable poverty reduction that encouraged
downward accountability by making governments
subject to their citizens. However, it is important to
recall the critique of PRSPs mentioned above; that
while they aimed to broaden the political space of civil
society, they in fact do the opposite by closing the
doors on issues such as industrial, trade and fiscal
policy, privatisation and financial liberalisation as well
as domestic investment and land reform.
Fourth was the wide commitment to the MDGs for
poverty reduction and agreement to the principles of
the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) to guide action for meeting
these targets through donor harmonisation and
alignment with national plans realised through PRSPs.
As articulated in the Paris Declaration of Aid
Effectiveness 2005, donor harmonisation aimed to
reduce replication and diversity in aid flows, ensure
aid flows and target areas were dictated by the
national plans of partner countries and encourage
partner countries to increase participation of civil
society in development planning and monitoring
(OECD, 2005). Sharing agendas and pooling funding,
as well as aligning with national plans, was seen to
increase synergy between donors at the same time
as supporting national plans, tying with point one
above. Whilst largely an operational issue, this also
linked with an ‘increased demand for accountability
and for monitoring instruments to measure progress’
(DFID, 2003).
Fifth, donor commitments to achieving the MDGs
bound them to pledge significant aid increases, most
recently at the G8 Summit in 2005. Increases are
projected to rise by approximately $50 billion per year
until 2010 (Collinson, 2006). However, it is worth
noting that ActionAid finds that only 50% of aid is
‘real’; the rest is ‘phantom’, including debt relief
double-counted as aid, poorly targeted aid, ‘tied’ aid
(requiring recipients to use donor country
expertise/companies), and overpriced and ineffective
technical assistance (ActionAid, 2005). Similarly, the
OECD reports that increased official percentages of
aid flows to Africa since 2005 – of 32% – are
misleading because of the unprecedented reduction
of Nigeria’s debt by $18 billion. Moreover, excluding
Nigeria, bilateral aid to Africa from OECD member
countries fell 1.2% in real terms in 2005, and aid to
Africa from all sources, including multilateral
institutions such as the World Bank, fell by 2.1%.
OECD also argues that debt relief and emergency
humanitarian aid, as opposed to development aid
intended to help countries gain a permanent exit from
poverty, accounted for all the increase in aid to sub-
Saharan Africa since 2002 (Beattie, 2006).
Sixth, concurrent with the above processes was the
changing view of the role of NGOs, as discussed in
Chapter 2. Broadly, this involved a shift from service
delivery to advocacy. Shifts in funding streams to
CSOs were also associated with shifts in their
perceived role.
24

Pooled funding and DBS come together in multi-donor
budget support (MDBS), as explained by a bilateral
representative:
“The MDBS mechanism represents a departure
from projectised funding to programmatic support.
By design, programmes funded under the MDBS
system are developed by the government of
Ghana and only endorsed by the contributing
countries to the fund. A development partners’
forum has been established, which meets once
every month to monitor the use of funds and to
contribute to policy direction.”
As an example of MDBS, the Fast-Track Initiative (FTI)
is a multi-donor platform that supports low-income
countries to develop quality education plans and then
to raise funds to implement them, either by endorsing
the plans so that in-country donors support them or
by offering direct support when in-country donors are
not sufficient. By April 2006, 20 countries had their
education plans endorsed; by October 2008, it is
planned that another 40 will have had their plans for
primary completion endorsed. Whilst the FTI has had
considerable success, some critics argue that it is too
narrowly focused on primary schooling rather than the
EFA targets, that there is an estimated shortfall of
about £500 million for plans submitted and that,
because it channels all funds to governments, there is
little scope for independent scrutiny or monitoring by
civil society. This last argument is that, for EFA to be
achieved, all of society needs to be involved in
education and not just the government; thus the FTI
only tackles part of the problem.
This critique of FTI signals a number of inherent
contradictions and tensions with DBS that have
implications for the role and support given to civil
society. As Beall (2005) argues, DBS strengthens the
hand of central governments in policy formation while
the last decade of development has been
encouraging the devolution of power through
decentralisation processes. Associated with this, there
is little evidence of increased central funds finding
their way to local governments. Moreover, DBS
concentrates the overall power and influence with
donors at the country level. In the words of an INGO
member, ‘There is now a grotesque contradiction
where donors are more powerful than ever before
and that diminishes governance and democracy.’ DBS
has increased upward accountability of governments
towards donors rather than downwards to citizens.
Additionally, there is little evidence of coordinated
donor attention to engage or support civil society as
with DBS (Collinson, 2006). As one INGO in Kenya
put it, ‘DBS is discriminatory to CSOs’. DBS means
there is less opportunity for civil society to engage
directly with donors at the country level.
DBS has not led to any significant changes in the role
of civil society in policy dialogue or democratisation
processes, even though a multilateral donor in
Tanzania claimed that, ‘it is a condition of [our]
funding for general budget support that CSOs are
involved in a full way in dialogue at the national level.
NGOs have been involved in the preparation and
conduct of the education sector review’. Evidence
suggests that the opposite is the case and, if
anything, it has been accompanied by an increased
mutual suspicion and mistrust of NGOs as they
scrutinise government performance. Thus, the rhetoric
of increased civil society participation through wider
political space encouraged by DBS (and PRSPs) has
not been met in practice. As an INGO member stated,
‘Donors’ assumption is that civil society is involved in
the PRSPs, but even this participation is often
unsatisfactory. Civil society is also excluded from
other important donor-government relationships that
are fundamentally important in shaping policy.’
Tightened government control is also evidenced by
increasingly stringent NGO policies in Tanzania,
Malawi and Uganda. Consequently, DBS cannot create
improved accountability if those conditions do not
already exist (Collinson, 2006).
DBS therefore seems to encourage CSOs to align
their activities with national plans, and ignores whether
they agree with them or not, whether they are
advocating for issues left out of such plans and
whether they have actually been involved in the
design of these plans. It is in this context that the
GCE’s Real World Strategies (RWS) initiative plays an
important role. Seen as key to the GCE goal of
ensuring that governments and international
institutions keep the promises to deliver EFA by 2015,
25

RWS aims to increase the capacity of civil society to
articulate community demands and to make
recommendations for the allocation of resources,
policies and management systems to make schools
work. The first phase – 2003 to 2005 – focused on
building civil society capacity in the south to intervene
effectively in education policy, while the second phase
– 2006 to 2010 – will focus less on capacity building
inputs and more on advocacy outputs by aligning
closer with key GCE activities including the Global
Action Week, the publication of School Reports, an
Education Watch Initiative and transnational advocacy
on specific policy-relevant themes.
DBS therefore throws up a number of contradictions
and challenges for civil society. Paradoxically, because
of increased donor support to governments, donors
are looking to civil society to be more involved with
the government, to monitor government spending and
to engage in education planning as a check and
balance. One researcher said:
“In many African countries, donors want to spread
the risk and are working on collaboration not only
with other donors but also civil society as well
as the state. The route of bilateral agreements
concentrates the risk for them. So I think they
are keen to work with civil society and this
involves an element of advocacy work.”
Donors’ direct association with advocacy work is,
however, problematic. One donor commented that
their hesitancy to support advocacy directly was
because it was difficult to measure and therefore to
justify in terms of expenditure. A researcher suggested
that funding civil society advocacy provides donors
with a particular dilemma because:
“There is always a danger that if you support
advocacy work they might end up pointing the
finger back at the donors. This could create a
conflict of interest for donors who might be
supporting government in one thing which is then
criticised by civil society it is also supporting. I
think donors want to generally avoid this situation
and keep a good relationship with government.”
Haki Elimu provides a good example of this. According
to a consultant they were strongly supported by a
range of donors, but when the government reacted
negatively:
“Haki Elimu were so intense that they were linked
to from a distance – no one wanted to get too
close to them because they were really full on. In
the end, when it came to their problems with the
government, they had few friends in Tanzania. Even
UNICEF who worked on the Rights of the Child
and supported Haki Elimu on the Right to
Education didn’t want to be associated with them
– they just gave them money in the end and didn’t
want to work too closely to them. It’s all political,
that’s the issue.”
Indeed, several donors commented that ‘development
is not about being benevolent and for the benefit of
human kind; it is political and promotes political
agendas’. Consequently there seemed to be a general
resistance to allowing the potential for negative
feedback that could jeopardise their relations with
recipient governments. At the same time, it was with
the view of civil society as a government watchdog
that, ‘donors are beginning to think that they should
be giving funds to civil society over and above what
they are giving to the government’ (bilateral donor).
One result is that, in the words of one donor, ‘the jury
is still out’ as to whether DBS is an effective funding
mechanism for social development. Another is the
attention that falls on Local Funds: funding
mechanisms for civil society that aim to incorporate
both civil society agendas and donor agendas for civil
society.
3.3 Local Funds:
from the shadows into the spotlight
‘Local Fund’ is a term that homogenises the evolution
of Social Funds and Challenge Funds into a collective
label. This section looks briefly at each of these before
examining Local Funds in detail.
Social Funds
Social Funds were initially established by the World
Bank in response to the shocks that accompanied
crisis and adjustment in the 1980s. The emphasis of
26

Social Funds then shifted from emergency relief and
safety nets for society to more general development
programmes concerned with community-driven
development. Social Funds ‘channel resources,
according to pre-determined eligibility criteria, to
small-scale projects for poor and vulnerable groups,
and are implemented by public and private agencies’
(World Bank, 1998, pp. 3-4). Institutionally and
organisationally distinct from government sectoral
policies and services, Social Funds are administered
by a central administrative entity, often a unit that is
semi-autonomous from the government. They are
intended to ‘take quick, effective and targeted actions
to reach poor and vulnerable groups’ and ‘aim to
stimulate participatory development initiatives by
providing small-scale financing to local NGOs,
community groups, small firms and entrepreneurs’
(Fumo et al., 2000, p. 11).
Social Funds aim to provide small-scale funding in
response to demand from local groups but with a set
menu of eligible and ineligible projects. They insist on
co-financing from beneficiaries to ensure projects are
responding to demand. They are often tied to national
plans and policies and processes of government
decentralisation and are largely concerned with social
service provision (Fumo et al., 2000; Braathen, 2003;
Wiseman, 2004).
Social Funds exist in over 50 countries, primarily in
Latin America and Africa. World Bank contributions
between 2000 and 2005 totalled $3.5 billion, with
other donors contributing an additional $5.5 billion.
However, although Social Funds have been around
since the late 1980s and had significant sums fed into
them, they have had both limited visibility and
questionable success. Social Fund programmes are
implemented in parallel with government programmes,
not always with the knowledge or involvement of
government. The result is the undermining of the
overall coordination of investment efforts and
weakening of local government structures through
duplication. As Social Funds operate through local
organisations, they encourage privatisation and
diminish public responsibility. Additionally, given that
many governments lack information about Social
Funds, they undermine the capacity of governments
at the central level to plan and implement
programmes (Dossani, 2002).
Where they are known about, Social Funds encourage
governments to reduce their budgetary allocations to
those areas where Social Funds are operating (Fumo
et al., 2000; DFID, 2003). And while ostensibly
demand-driven from the community, local politicians
drive the decisions on project choices (Fumo et al.,
2000). For example, TASAF (Tanzania Social Action
Fund) Steering Committees are made up of key local
government officials and local councillors, and projects
emanating from them are often found to be based in
these members’ villages (Braathen, 2003). Social
Funds are therefore often appropriated by political
notables and encourage political clientelism. At the
same time, by having set eligibility criteria, community
choice is severely limited (Fumo et al., 2000). The
concern with service delivery means that, on the one
hand, requests for infrastructure have been the fastest
to identify, screen and implement and, on the other,
private firms and service-oriented NGOs benefit the
most (Dossani, 2002, p. 6).
Thus contrary to the World Bank claims that Social
Funds reach the poor, have a positive impact on
community facilities and households, and provide
cost-effective and sustainable programmes (World
Bank, 2001), critics such as Tendler argue that ‘apart
from the claim of fast disbursement of credits…
[Social Funds] point in the opposite direction; as
donor-driven, supply-driven, not very decentralizing
or participatory devices. The Social Funds produce no
visible pro-poor sustainable impacts’ (Braathen, 2004,
p. 7). On balance, Social Funds have been neither an
overwhelming success nor a complete failure.
Challenge Funds
Challenge Funds have their origins in northern
countries, especially the United States and the United
Kingdom. Challenge Funds seek efficiency and elicit
innovation by requiring applicants to compete for
resources through a tendering process. In Europe they
are associated with community-led and area-based
development strategies, such as urban regeneration.
A key feature of Challenge Funds is that they are
particularly oriented towards the partnership principle:
27

encouraging collaborative working between the grant-making
body and the applicant. Examples are the
Lifelong Learning Challenge Fund in Canada,
developed to fill critical gaps in the skilled labour trade
market by attracting matched funding from private and
public participants for the development of online
programmes for the automotive, health food services
and manufacturing sectors (Independent Learning
Centre, 2005). Another is the City Challenge Fund set
up by the Government of India as an incentive-based
grant facility to support reform of municipal
management and local economic reform. It does this
by providing incentives to large urban areas to
undertake institutional, structural and fiscal changes
necessary to catalyse improved service delivery
systems that are sustainable, address poverty and
enhance local economic performance (GHK, 2005).
Within the donor context, DFID also has a suite of four
types of Challenge Fund: the Business Linkage
Challenge Fund (BLCF), the Financial Deepening
Challenge Fund (FDCF), the Mini Challenge Fund
(MCF) and the Civil Society Challenge Fund (CSCF).
The last of these
was set up in 2000
to provide funding
for projects outside
its bilateral
commitments, and
to replace its Joint
Funding Scheme
(JFS). Accessible
through DFID
headquarters in the
UK, NGOs can apply
for 50% of funding
required to carry out
a project and for
further monies at the
end of the funding
period to carry on
the project. Beyond
discrete projects,
the CSCF aims to
increase the voice
of the poor and
marginalised, and develop their skills to influence
the policy decision-makers that affect their lives
(Beall, 2005).
Coming together as Local Funds
Social Funds and Challenge Funds come together
under the broad term of ‘Local Funds’, the nature of
which shares common features of both. Beall offers
the following definition:
“Local funds are both financing instruments and
funding agencies created to disburse resources
for local development. They are a response to
local needs and demands and encourage
addressing these through local partnerships. The
objective of these funds is usually to reduce risk
and to enhance the livelihood opportunities of
disadvantaged people through development
initiatives that remove barriers to voice, the
realisation of rights and delivery and accountability
on the part of a broad range of local governance
institutions.” (Beall, 2005, p. 6)
28
Kailahun Children's Club, for children formerly associated with fighting forces, Sierra Leone.
Gar Powell Evans/ Save the Children

2013 07-cef-sustaining-civil-society-advocacy processed

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