About CSO Effectiveness

The Civil Society Organisation (CSO) Effectiveness program works with youth and children organizations and governments to create structures and policy frameworks for engaging youth and children in development effectiveness. It seeks to:

• Establish democratic ownership of development plans by the youth
• Foster demand for transparency and accountability
• Promote partnership development in policy and program implementation with the youth and children based organization on issues ranging from policy engagement, CSO enabling environment and public finance and investments.

The programme recognizes that the legitimacy of national and regional networks and organizations is key for them to have credibility in holding states accountable hence much emphasis will be put on ensuring internal democracy including through the promotion of representativeness and diversity in networks.

The focus will be on realizing an affirmative action towards youth and children especially young women and girls on policy, program implementation and demanding accountability on Nairobi commitments on the Development Effectiveness (DE) through the application of DE principles, and democratization of the DE arena by fostering participation of youth and children centred organizations and issues.

The program covers five-year work to be undertaken by Development Effectiveness project cohort from the year 2019 to 2024. The program is designed on the basis of joint Strategy planning meetings held on February 2018 in Harare, Zimbabwe and in August 2018 in Kigali, Rwanda by all cohort members’ and as was endorsed by all network members in 2018 following the successful implementation of the first Civil Society Unit (CIVSAM) programme.

The purpose of the programme is to support structured and more representative engagements between youth and children based CSOs, regional/ sub-regional bodies and governments in the adoption and implementation of development effectiveness principles with a focus on inclusive partnerships and transparency as well as mutual accountability and the Nairobi outcome commitment on Development effectiveness of 2016 focusing on youth and children and CSO enabling Environment.

It seeks to create sustainable structures for development policy and program engagement for youth and children and create an enabling environment for democratic ownership, inclusive partnerships, demand for transparency and accountability and focus on results. The program will, in addition, invest in organizational development of the program partners with a view of strengthening them to become vibrant, democratic, efficient, effective and representative institutions and at the same time contribute to their sustainability.

More updates about CSO Effectiveness Programme are here.