USAID Celebrates Successful Advocacy Strengthening Program

August 30, 2005

Press Release

USAID Tanzania's highly successful Tanzania Advocacy Partnership Program (TAPP), its largest Democracy and Governance Program, will mark almost three years of activities and achievements at closing ceremonies this Friday, September 2 at the Dar es Salaam Conference Center.

Begun in February 2002 and implemented in Tanzania by the American development agency Pact, the USAID project began with only a handful of advocacy partners but now includes 42 organizations including NGOs, business associations and faith based organizations. TAPP has been instrumental in strengthening the capacity of these 42 Tanzanian civil society organizations (CSOs) to engage in advocacy activities involving a diversity of sectors and constituencies including the rights of women, children, the disabled, pastoralists, small businesses, people living with HIV and AIDS and other marginalized groups.

Key to the success of the project was a series of annual capacity building assessments in which organizational progress of the participating CSOs was measured against eight areas: financial management, governance, management, sustainability, advocacy, external relations, human resource management and service delivery. Based on an initial assessment, the CSOs developed internal capacity building plans that were addressed with Pact throughout the year through tailored trainings, mentoring and peer education activities.

TAPP also encouraged creative alliance building between civil society and the media: USAID funded training and travel opportunities for over 75 media representatives to learn about the important work undertaken by Tanzanian CSOs. Locations visited included Makete, Manyara, Arusha, Zanzibar, Tabora, and Coast, where the media gathered story material to report on the ways that advocacy organizations work with the communities to address social issues at the local level. Some of the stories that were published as a direct result of TAPP focused on people living with HIV/AIDS, vulnerable children and orphans, Female Genital Mutilation, land use around game parks and non-government organizations' (NGO) engagement in the Tanzanian Poverty Reduction Strategy process. The linking of journalists and community-based advocates was a great success and important issues and stories were discussed and made public as a result of this project. One of the TAPP organizations, Women Wake Up, continues to be con tacted by journalists as a reliable source for information about female genital mutilation.

The Shangalia/Celebrate NGOs campaign to promote the positive work and messages of Tanzanian NGO's was developed under the Tanzania Advocacy Patnership Program. These messages, developed after conducting focus groups to discern the public's opinion about NGOS, are now posted either on billboards or posters throughout the entire country.

TAPP provided subgrants for advocacy campaigns promoting, for example, women's leadership in government, legislation about the NGO Bill and Disabilities Act, NGO efforts in natural resource management, to produce advocacy tools such as PUMUA, a film about the justice system and vulnerable children, and civic education on poverty reduction (MKUKUTA), to name a few.

TAPP advocacy efforts helped to ensure the passage in May 2005 of an amendment that will increase substantially the percentage of women in Zanzibar in municipal and district government decision-making positions.

PRINMAT (Private Nurses and Midwives Association of Tanzania) successfully lobbied the Ministry of Health and the Tanzanian Midwives Council to change policies affecting the registration of midwives. In March 2005, the Council passed new regulations which greatly improved the working environment for midwives and was a monumental recognition by government of the role that private midwives can play in improving the reproductive health of women. In Moshi alone, the number of midwives providing full service to pregnant women increased from one to eight in the first four months of the new regulations.

"The advocacy efforts of Tanzanian civil society have greatly improved over the past few years. We are seeing more CSOs taking a stand and leading grass roots as well as national level advocacy campaigns which are being more widely reported by the media. Also, the government appears to be responding more favorably to civil society policy recommendations," said Dan Craun-Selka, Pact's Tanzania Director.

Another major TAPP success was the writing and production of the Legislative Roadmap: A Guide for Civil Society Organizations in Tanzania. This booklet, published in Kiswahili and English, describes how laws and policies are created in Tanzania and the role of citizens and civil society to influence change. These booklets have been used in schools, government offices and even refugee camps to provide basic civic education on the rights of citizens to participate in government. The ruling party in Tanzania has used the document in its constituency-level civic education outreach programs. It was also featured on television and in major daily newspapers. USAID's Africa Bureau recognized The Roadmap as being one of its key successes in Democracy and Governance on the African continent in 2004, and fifteen thousand copies of the booklets were printed and distributed throughout the country. The TAPP activity also helped create the Media Guide: Handbook for Tanzanian Civil Society Organizations . This book was used to train NGO representatives and explains how to most effectively engage the media for advocacy work.

Though the TAPP activity officially concludes on September 30, 2005, USAID/Tanzania will continue to support and build the capacity of Tanzanian advocacy organizations throughout all of its activities in Democracy and Governance including Education, Health and HIV/AIDS, Environment and Natural Resources Management, and Economic Growth. Working in conjunction with government partners, USAID will continue to acknowledge that much of the positive change and increased accountability generated in Tanzania is a result of the dynamic work of countless local advocacy groups and organizations. Congratulations on work well done!