But not in Niger. CARE Niger’s partners call our training program—the one where they learn about human resources, financial management and strategic planning--“charm school”, and they credit it with helping them revolutionize their effectiveness. In fact, they think it’s part of the reason they’ve been able to get the government to start implementing its laws on pastoralist rights.
The PROGRESS project, funded by CARE Denmark from 2013 to 2016 for $3.5 million, works with local partners the Billital Maroobé Network (RBM), the Association to Revitalize Herding (AREN), and DEMI-E to change the way government is accountable to pastoralists in the Sahel.
What has changed?
- New Laws support pastoralism: Niger passed 2 new policies designed to implement the 2010 pastoralism law and maximize the benefits to pastoralists
- Judges have changed their approach: As one judge told us, “Before, we thought that pastoralists didn’t have any land. Now we understand that even if they don’t have individual property, they do have the priority right to use land that is protected by the law.”
- More representative civil society: AREN has diversified its local membership to include more kinds of pastoralists and think about different pastoralist systems.
- New activities in partnership: The CSO partners have strengthened their networks and found funding to launch new activities on the ground, such as “Wells for Peace”—a pilot project that is now the basis for an entire national campaign on community-based water management—or Milky Way, which works in partnership with the private sector to increase the sale and processing of local milk producers.
- Unified approach: The PROGRESS partners now have common advocacy objectives and are working together towards a single goal rather than having a diffused approach.
- Stronger CSOs: Partners have improved their financial skills, HR capacities, and governance strategies. For example, now all of the partners are using common tools from PROGRESS to hold themselves accountable to their members.
- Local to global influence: The campaign “Save our Pastoral Land” that PROGRESS partners are running uses local voices to influence national and global policies to protect pastoralist rights.
What are the key strategies?
- Align your strategies: The project started by working to create a common vision, based on the intersection of partners’ priorities. This allowed partners to work together more coherently and have a stronger, unified advocacy presence, as well as jointly implement projects.
- Stick to your principles: The project anchored all of its activities in 4 key partnership principles: (i) mutual trust; (ii) respecting partners’ unique identities; (iii) sharing power equally; (iv) equal risk taking and mutual accountability.
- Focus on the nuts and bolts: CARE Niger worked with local partners to shore up the basic operations and give partners tools to establish more legitimacy to represent local voices of their membership base. That made the advocacy activities more credible and successful.
- Be accountable: In addition to holding themselves accountable to their members, each year, local partners complete a satisfaction survey that allows them to rate CARE’s performance in terms of impact, value add, and governance. This gives CARE feedback to improve our own operations and partnership approaches.
- Prioritize learning: The partnerships put learning at the center of their goals, and created spaces for innovation and learning both in partnership and in advocacy.
Want to learn more?
Check out the project’s 2017 learning document (in French).