I have been home for a few days now, but I am still in awe of civil society in Myanmar.

When I lived there until five years ago, I was involved with an INGO that worked with small grants and mentoring for community based organizations. Other INGOs were inspired by the work that proved possible ‘under the radar’ at grassroots level. I witnessed the development of a…

When we were talking about facilitating the last learning event in the Ethiopia Social Accountability Program phase 2 (ESAP2), we noticed that more and more stakeholders are gradually taking an interest because the program is producing real service improvement results. How to bring relatively new stakeholders on board with those who have already been involved with Social Accountability for two years or more? This workshop needed to help old…

Tomorrow, we are hosting a meeting with over 100 Executive Directors of NGOs in Ethiopia. The NGOs are grantees and their sub-partners of the Ethiopia Social Accountability Programme 2 (World Bank multi donor trust fund of about 25 million USD). The Executive Directors’ Day (EDD) will discuss Social Accountability now and in…

When we were updating the Gender Responsive Budget tool (GRB) for ESAP2 partners it struck me again how fundamental the combination of gender analysis and influencing budgets is for an inclusive and…