Status: Completed Start Date: Mar 2003 End Date: Dec 2003 Geographic Coverage: District Turbat, Balochistan District Hyderabad, Sindh District Peshawar, KPK District Multan, Punjab Focus Area: Gender and Development (Early Recovery/Rehabilitation) SDG Goal: 5 Achieve Gender Equality and Empower all Women and Girls Implementing Partner: SPO Other National NGOs Funding Partner: –
Strengthening Participatory Organization (SPO) implemented a nine-month long women focused intervention in 2003 under USAID funded Gender Equality Project.
Gender equality and women empowerment are the core elements to realize human rights and achieve sustainable development outcomes. In this regard, devolution of power and decentralization plan was introduced by the government which had resulted in increased women representation in all tiers of local body system to 33 percent (out of the total).
With the overarching goal to empower women population of the project area through capacity building and linkage development of women councilors, SPO reached out to 400 women in major districts of all four provinces. The project was envisioned to equip women councilors with skills to access institutional mechanisms and knowledge of women development issues.
Social mobilization and capacity building are two major streams that SPO has always capitalized on. Jointly SPO trained 400 women councilors in the key areas of communication, resource mobilization, data collection and analysis, and action planning skills.
Similarly, under GEP amongst the most successful civil society engagement interventions was the ‘Resource Mela’. Resource Mela was basically conceptualized to provide a platform for women councilors to engage directly and build liaison with stakeholders representing sectors of Education, Economic Empowerment, Health, Legal Rights and Violence Against Women & Girls. These women councilors were also connected with major stakeholders such as then National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW) and then Ministry of Social Welfare and Women Development.
These councilors developed linkages with line departments and other civil society organizations, which later supported them in specific action planning based on women related issues in development schemes at district level. Being the coordinator for four networks, SPO linked the women councilors with the Gender and Governance Network (Multan), BASHM-Turbat Gender Resource Centre (Turbat), Gender Voice (Peshawar) and G-Net (Hyderabad) for technical backstopping.
The organization has always followed integrated approaches to development process, consequently, the outcomes and lessons learnt from GEP pilot implementation were shared at various forums such as local government authorities, gender core group networks, and Political Participation sessions of Development Planning and Management (DPM) module under SPO’s Capacity Building programs.
