© Christophe Da Silva pour Action contre la Faim
Right2Grow Learning Catalogue: Insights from a Five-Year Civil Society Empowerment Program
About Right2Grow
Right2Grow is a Strategic Partnership between six international non-governmental organizations and more than 20 local civil society organizations. With funding from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, (Policy Framework “Civil Society Strengthening”, grant instrument “Power of Voices Partnerships”), Right2Grow has been collaborating with communities, community-based organizations (CBOs), and civil society organizations (CSOs) in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Mali, South Sudan, and Uganda from 2021-2025.
Why Right2Grow ?
- Because there is an insufficient progress in tackling undernutrition, the main underlying cause of deaths among children under five. The world is off track to meet most of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) targets linked to hunger, food security and nutrition; Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated this situation.
- Because the major causes of undernutrition are directly or indirectly linked to unhealthy environment, including inadequate access to basic water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services. Yet billions still lack access to basic WASH services; poor and marginalized populations and women are disproportionately affected.
- Because we see lots of promising policy agendas but their ineffective implementation, lack of multi-sectoral approaches and a range of national ministries accustomed to work in “silos”.
- Because there is a weak participation of civil society in decision-making processes related to nutrition and WASH while bringing perspectives of the most vulnerable into policy processes remains a big challenge.
- Because the work of CSOs and CBOs is not enough focused on monitoring coverage, quality, inclusiveness, accountability and budgeting of government services and duties.
- Because there is limited or no information on the costing, expenditure, availability, and quality of government services, resulting in weak transparency and lack of accountability.
- Because national policy dialogues often lack in-depth knowledge and evidence of local realities and financial commitments do not meet the needs of the most vulnerable.
- And because Right2Grow believes that empowered communities and civil society organizations can be game changers for long lasting impact in the field of nutrition and WASH.
What ?
By strengthening civil society and empowering communities, Right2Grow believes that locally-led solutions can ensure children are well nourished and able to reach their full potential.
Right2Grow believes that localization and shifting the power from international stakeholders to national and local actors is the way forward. By combining technical knowledge on WASH, nutrition, multi-sectoral approaches, and budget monitoring and expenditure tracking (BMET) with local knowledge, expertise and voices of the most vulnerable, Right2Grow creates smart, community-led sustainable solutions that civil societies are confident to uptake. Right2Grow sees a world full of great intentions, expertise and wealth, which does not live up to its promises and potential. At the same time, we also see strong women, men and children in affected communities ready to voice their needs and concerns, and ready to contribute their own part of the solution. Right2Grow works to bridge the gap between these powerful women, men and children – and local and national governments as well as international institutions and foras where decisions are made.
How ?
Right2Grow believes that sustainable progress can only be achieved by working with local communities, especially with women and other marginalized groups. Right2Grow therefore invests in communities, CBOs and CSOs to collect their own data and stories about nutrition and WASH realities, and helps them hold their nearest relevant government officials to account for what is needed, planned and – often not – delivered. We help build those stories into strong evidence to convince national and international leaders and government authorities to make better choices.
The voices of local communities should be heard and represented by legitimate local civil society organizations. These local realities need to be connected to the national and international dialogues where decisions and policies are made, and where resources are allocated. Multi-sectoral interventions are essential to address each of the underlying causes of undernutrition, including improved coordination between public authorities at national and local levels. Visibility into where public investments are made, along with monitoring government commitments, are crucial first steps in cross-sector engagement.
introductive video
Testimonies
"Practical interventions, activities that other countries have done that were successful are an inspiration for other countries to implement them as well. So it's really about how can you improve your work moving forward for more impact for children in their respective countries."
"Learning is a process that enables us to capitalise on the knowledge we have acquired in the course of implementing the project. It is this knowledge that will be formalised on learning briefs that will eventually be used by the project players and even their collaborators at the level of their institutions."
"The learning briefs are documents that are pleasant to read, pleasant to use and to exploit, but they also document good practices, as well as bad practices, in order to further improve our action on the ground."
"What's really interesting is analysing failures, because in any learning process, in any intervention, it's from failures that we grow."
"Learning is a process during which we must identify, document, format, share and, above all, use the knowledge we have acquired, particularly through Right2Grow. This enables us to be more operational."
“This gives us more experience and, from there, we have more dynamism and we are encouraged to be able to capitalise on the various actions on the ground and that this will also enable us to perpetuate the actions of the advocacy groups at the level of each province.".
"Our failure should not reflect what will happen tomorrow. Or the past should not be what we build on to the future.”
THE catalogue
Right2Grow has developed a strong knowledge management strategy to facilitate learning between consortium partners, including communities and local civil society organizations, and to sustain institutional changes beyond the program. Linking & Learning (L&L) is therefore at the heart of the Right2Grow program. By learning from each country’s practices, sharing programatic knowledge with others, and applying it, we can improve our approaches, enhance impact, and optimize the program.
Over the course of 2023, countries and global teams have been working to produce Learning briefs to document, analyze and share the key learnings from activities, initiatives and approaches they are proud of, implemented since the program began. The Right2Grow Learning Catalogue aims to bring together in a single document all the learning sheets from the program’s 6 countries.
As learning is about change, “In Right2Grow, we learn how to improve our impact and the way we work“, the learning catalogue focuses on providing ready-to-use programatic learning guides on what made the implementation of our activities, approaches and initiatives successful: What were the objectives? What were the key steps in the process, the good practices, the challenges encountered, and the solutions put in place to mitigate them?
It is intended to continue, beyond Right2Grow, providing teams with an easy access to Right2Grow’s knowledge both during the program implementation and after the program ends. It is intended to inspire, while avoiding reinventing the wheel, and to enable teams to benefit from past similar experiences to continually improve their work. This catalogue is therefore a compilation of more than 40 learning guides, which have been organized into chapters to make them easier to read.
⚠️ ATTENTION: for all persons outside Action contre la Faim, please access the resources in private browsing to avoid accessibility problems.
THE Summary
Chapter 1
unleashing the power of advocacy
Putting communities at the center of advocacy
1 – Bridge4Voices advocacy approach
→ Access the training course
Methodologies serving advocacy
1 – Global budget monitoring (BMET) for advocacy
→ Access the training course
2 – Outcome Harvesting
→ Access the training course
3 – Locally-led research for advocacy and “Trio fantastico” model
4 – Barrier analysis on WASH and nutrition
Advocacy related activities
USING MEDIA AND AWARENESS RAISING FOR ADVOCACY
1 – Radio programs and plays on food rights for communities
2 – Multisectoral nutrition debates on radio and television in Mali
3 – Communication campaigns for community mobilization
4 – Training journalists on Right2Grow topics
5 – Journalists contest in Mali
6 – Using mobile journalism (MOJO) to strengthen community advocacy
Chapter 2
STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT
Community mobilization approaches
Engagement and coordination of CSOs
Private sector engagement
Chapter 3
WOMEN EMPOWERMENT AND CLIMATE SMART SOLUTIONS
1 – Women Leadership Development Program in Bangladesh
2 – Women economic empowerment through local products transformation
Chapter 4
LESSONS LEARNED FROM A 5-YEAR PROGRAM
1 – Partnership collaboration and global governance
3 – Building more equitable partnerships: localization & “Shift The Power”
4 – Learning trajectory in R2G program
5 – Strengthening collaboration of R2G partners: the example of South Sudan
6 – R2G social network: Grow platform
7 – Organizational capacity strengthening of local partners through the small grants program
