Eurasia Foundation’s Community Engagement and Accountability Initiative was a grassroots approach to increase openness at the local and national levels. Designed in response to community needs and based on EF’s experience supporting civil society capacity development, this program provided organizations with the training and governance skills needed to address their organizational challenges and exercise greater influence on local decision-making. With this initiative, EF helped organization leaders be more accountable to their constituents.

The program’s three interactive online courses aimed to strengthen CSOs’ capacity to engage citizens and develop long-term community trust and involvement by facilitating productive dialogues, sustaining long-term partnerships, and providing the tools to design effective projects that reflect community needs. The online courses adopted a framework centered on amplifying the voices of the least powerful constituents.

After completing the remote coursework and exercises, CSO leaders implemented outreach campaigns that incorporated the strategies they learned, including meeting with constituents in a participatory design or co-creation process to respond to constituent-identified needs.

EF continued to coach both participating organizations and their constituents as they collaborated to implement their campaigns for transparency.

To establish a continual learning loop, the program fostered international networks of CSOs and identified and shared best practices among them. Select civil society leaders participated in a multi-day workshop in Georgia to continue learning about community organizations in other environments and establish relationships with their international counterparts.

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EF supported the creation of several tools to help with stakeholder mapping and analysis, developed an outreach and communications strategy, and guided lobbying efforts. EF also provided strategic guidance on the creation of campaign content including brochures, videos, and online communication tools. As a result, ACRLI and local stakeholders in Jordan were able to propose concrete legislative changes, including a proposal to introduce specialized bankruptcy courts, while stakeholders in Egypt successfully launched a campaign around the need for a robust legal framework for bankruptcy.

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From 2011 to 2014, EBL made legal representation more readily available for vulnerable populations in Central Asia, especially rural women, at-risk youth, and persons with disabilities. In each country, hub non-governmental organizations provided training and consultation to a broad network of grassroots organizations, community leaders, and governmental officials. The program offered pro bono legal services and supported the establishment of legal clinics at universities as well as government-sponsored legal aid centers. Through a small grants program, EBL spearheaded public awareness campaigns on access to justice issues such as violence against women and children.

EBL produced significant results in increasing citizens’ demand for justice in rural areas and in raising the practical knowledge of government representatives responsible for the protection of vulnerable groups. EBL also raised the visibility and profile of access to justice issues on the national reform agendas of each country, resulting in tangible expansion and improvement in the quality of legal services for citizens in need in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. The program worked to bring national legislation and practices across the three countries in line with international standards. EBL provided commentary on new legal aid legislation in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan and offered actionable steps to the government of Kyrgyzstan to improve compliance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Through EBL, more than 1,700 civil society leaders and government representatives received training and support. In addition, EBL supported nearly 550 court cases on behalf of vulnerable people and held over 40,000 legal consultations across the region.

To learn about the impact of EBL’s work, watch this video:

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