Evidence for Inclusion
Creating channels to open up community dialogue and reduce social exclusion
Project
The United Nations set an aim to end extreme poverty by 2030, but in Myanmar, Nigeria and Zimbabwe, there is still a long way to go. Around a quarter of Myanmar’s population are thought to be living below the national poverty line. Nigeria has almost 90 million of its population living in extreme poverty; and Zimbabwe’s poverty levels are rising to unprecedented levels, with more than 70% of Zimbabwean children in rural areas living in poverty.
As the effects of Covid-19 ripple across the globe, this work has become increasingly essential, notably to push for access to everyday services. The Evidence and Collaboration for Inclusive Development (ECID) programme with Christian Aid – funded by UK Aid Connect – hoped to reduce poverty, realise rights, and improve the wellbeing of the most marginalised citizens in Myanmar, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe by 2022.
Process
As part of this consortium, we’ve been working with people in positions of power in each country to engage with and react to the priorities identified by people living below the poverty line.
To do this, Radar has been supporting the collection of quality community insight, with a focus on offline communities. This included working closely with country teams to provide accessible technology channels for marginalised communities to document, gather and share insight into the challenges and solutions to poverty that emerged around them.
We deployed our central community insight platform, Radius, to train up and manage community research and reporter networks. This digital dashboard uses local mobile numbers to collate offline reports via SMS, voice and chat apps, and centralises that insight so it can be analysed and used as evidence.
Across each country, we established national telecommunications connections so that reporting was free for the communities involved, enabling them to share real-time reports, guided by central assignments and responsive feedback.
Impact
Now, 2 and a half years later, this network of community reporters across Myanmar, Nigeria and Zimbabwe, have shared first-hand accounts of challenges and solutions of social exclusion. Their reports cover issues around access to employment, education and social protection and welfare, as well as infrastructure, livelihoods and gender-based violence.
As the ECID programme draws to a close, community reporters have shared their reflections, with many reporting positive changes in their community, including the reduction of child marriages and improvement in access to vital information.
Links
Read more on ECID and find the Our True Voice stories.
Partners
ECID was funded by the UK Government through UK Aid Connect under the building civil society effectiveness thematic area.
Led by Christian Aid, the partners making up the consortium included Femnet, Frontline Aids, Global Network of Civil Society Organisations for Disaster Reduction (GNDR), Ipsos MORI, The Open University (OU), Social Development Direct, and Womankind Worldwide.