The project is a six months project on capacity building for multistakeholders in order to enable them conducting gender responsive budget advocacy. Gender responsive budget is a budgeting process that takes into account the integration of equal access and benefit for male and female from planning up to the spending of the budget allocated. The efforts to adopt those equal chance, access, and benefit has been widely known as gender mainstreaming strategy and should be run in the whole process of planning, formulating, implementing, and monitoring.

 

Gender mainstreaming is a strategy to incorporate gender analysis into the whole process of development. Gender perspective is not an objective. It is just a tool for achieving gender equality as one of the strategic goals of development. Some legal bases of mainstreaming gender issue are:

• Article 27 of the Constitution 1945 which put forward the equality of rights of male and female citizens.
• Chapter 29 of the Annex of Presidencial Decree No. 7 of the year 2005 on national development plan 2004 – 2009
• The Act No. 7/1984 on the ratification of Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CERD)
• Presidencial Instruction No. 9/2000 on the mainstreaming gender issue.

 

A budget which is formulated on the basis of gender equality is called ‘Gender Responsive Budget’ and is adopted to achieve the goal of development that is peoples’ prosperity. It has been a political mandatory and requirements for the National government and local governments to carry out the enactment of some policies on the implementation of mainstreaming gender issue. Nevertheless, referring to the research carried out by WRI in 2004-2007, those policies have not brought out the raise of living standard of marginalized peoples and vulnerable groups especially of the women.

 

It is important then, all the knowledges related to development planning, budgeting, implementation, evaluation, and verifications should incorporate gender perspective. This is the reason why WRI carries out training on gender budgeting analysis and advocacy as a learning space for multistakeholders in South Sumatra.

 

Main Objective

Enhancing the capacity of related stakeholders (executives, legislatives, NGOs, academicians, etc.) in program planning, analyzing, and formulating the budget of APBD of South Sumatera Province in Public Health sector as a spesific focus.

 

Specific Objectives

• To understand how to analyze local budget (APBD) specifically in Public Health sector using gender perspective
• To understand the way of developing programs based on gender perspective (particularly for executives)
• To agree on a common commitment to raise the budget allocation for the fiscal year 2009

 

Methodology

The project will use training as a means to enhance the capacity of stakeholders. Problem identification, analyses, and gender budgeting are some targets to be achieved through the training. It also adopts some technical methods such as games and discussions in order to help participants to understands the topics delivered in the training as well as to build their skills. Participants would also be prepared for project planning on advocacy work.

 

The methods of the training could be categorized into two simultaneous approaches i.e.:

• Learning by doing

Sharing experiences among participants would be one of the bases of learning process provided that experiences are of their own. In addition, participants could get lessons learned from failures they have had. After this session facilitator/trainer will bring about some theoretical basis of advocacy and data analyses to help participants obtain better understanding and knowledge on gender issue.

 

• Andragogy

Andragogy is an educational system in which participants and facilitator are considered as a learning unit. Participants will be the resource persons having their own experiences as the most authoritative ’teacher’ in learning process. Therefore, participatory process would be adopted most due its relevance to this method.

 

Obstacles

Though legislatives have confirmed at the beginning to join the training, some of them were absent from the training due to urgent different agenda. Among those who attended the training are Ibu Fatimah Rais, Vice Chair of DPRD which delivered her opening speech and Bapak Yuswar Hidayatullah, Executive Secretary of Forum Parlemen of Regional House of Representatives or DPRD of South Sumatera. Although both of them stated that they would always support the promotion of gender budgeting in South Sumatera in 2009, the absence of most of the confirmed legislatives have put in some uncertainties from DPRD side regarding their commitment to promote gender budgeting in South Sumatera.

 

Outcome

• Better understanding of participants about what gender budgeting is.
• Participants have knowledge and skill in gender budgeting program planning and related activities.
• Participants gain understanding in carrying out advocacy on gender budgeting.
• Participants have commitment to evolve and to monitor gender budgeting in APBD of South Sumatera Province

 

Conclusions

• The training can be seen as quite effective in terms of raising participant’s knowledge on gender responsive budget
• The project also help the participants to be able and capable in developing clearer program and follow up actions
• One training is not enough since there are some more steps that need to be carried out to strengthen the capacity of participants in analysing and advocating gender budgeting.

 

Recommendations

• Referred to the results of the training, it still needed intensive additional assistances for executives to develop gender responsive program to be put into budget planning of the fiscal year 2009.
• There should be other parties such as NGOs and executives to give assistance and to run advocacy work for legislatives in order that they would have strong commitment to issue gender responsive programs and regulations

 

Review of Activities

• Training on gender budgeting was conducted on 12 – 14 of August 2008, at Hotel Quality Palembang, Sumatera Selatan.
• Collaborates with local partner Puspa Indonesia which responsible to carry out organinizing activities such as inviting participants and organising seminar as well as being involved in the training as participants. The collaboration was also a part of capacity building for local partner in gender budgeting.
• It was expected that the number of participants would be 30 along the training, but in fact in the first day there were 31 and then it went down until 23 participants in the last day. The reason was possibly their own agenda and daily routines.
• The change that could be seen is the enhanced knowledge and skill in developing gender responsive budgeting program as well as in advocacy on gender budgeting which is expected to be carried out further by participants themselves.
• The challenges – rather than obstacles – are the lowering number of participants during training and that gender responsive budget is not implemented yet in the local b udget (APBD) of the South Sumatera Province.
• The training gained results of enhancing executives’ understanding about gender responsive budget and their commitment to implement the gender responsive budget in the fiscal year of 2009.

 

Project Evaluation & Effectiveness – Results of Project

• Most of the objectives were achieved in line to the designed targets. This can be seen from the time schedule, material delivered, participation, knowledge and designing plan of action activities prepared by participants who demonstrated better capacity after the training.
• The positive outcomes are the commitment of the executives to develop gender responsive programs; on the other side, NGOs and academicians showed that they will monitor the whole process of gender responsive budgeting in South Sumatera. However, it still needs to hold further trainings to strengthen their capacity in certain monitoring methods

 

Analyse the linkages between set out goals to achieve

Some objectives which have been achieved through the project in South Sumatera are:

1. Identification of women health related problems i.e.:

• Culture: Lack of knowledge on public health and lack of peoples participation in health issue;
• Lack of budget allocation
• Poor coordination among sectors
• Lack of access to poor infrastructure
• Poor infrastructures
• Lack of promotion

2. There is a commitment from the executives and legislatives to include gender responsive program focusing on women reproductive health into the local budget (APBD) of South Sumatera

3. Provides assistance and capacity building for stakeholders (executives, legislatives, NGOs, and academicians) through seminars, FGD, discussions, and training on gender perspective

Outcomes and Impact

The main result of training is that participants gained the capacity and ability to develop gender responsive program planning, while the impact of the whole program can not be seen yet in the running period. The plan of action program resulted from participants could only be verified in the coming year when its impact been evaluated from the evidence of how large the budget allocated for women reproduction health and how effective the problems of this issue will be settled.

 

To the extent possible measure achievement of results in quantitative and qualitative terms
Quantitatively there are 143 peoples involved for the six months period of the project. At least those 143 peoples from various stakeholders have gained knowledge on gender budgeting particularly on the issue of women reproductive health. It was expected that this process will be running well until it gets commitments from stakeholders to raise the budget of women reproductive health issue in APBD of South Sumatera.

 

Analyse factors that affected performance as well as unintended effects, both positive and negative
The issue of gender budgeting is quite knew for the multi stakeholders participants, namely the executives, legislatives, or Non Government Organizations. The participation of executives and legislatives is another considerable factor to the performance of the project.

 

The unintended factor that positively affected is the good willingness of participants to learn about gender budgeting. On the other hand, unpredicted work agenda of the legislative has affected to the dynamic of the project. Though time frame has been discussed with legislatives prior to the project, there were only few participants from legislatives which could participate in the whole process. It possibly resulted in a difference in absorbing the knowledge about gender budgeting and women reproductive health in comparison to executive and civilians who follow the whole process.

 

Discuss the relative contributions of stakeholders to achievement of results

• Participants have the capability to be involved in gender budgeting advocacy.
• Participants have willingness to learn and to enhance their knowledge on gender budgeting, especially in relation to the reproductive health issue.
• Participants, particularly executives, demonstrated good willingness and capability to develop gender responsive program
• There was a commitment from multi stakeholders to implement gender budgeting in the South Sumatera province
• NGOs and academicians have commitment to be involved in monitoring process of South Sumatera

 

Conclusions include next steps and recommendations

• There is an intensive assistance for executives and legislatives to determine program planning that they have planned to do in accordance with targets which have been set out.
• There is an intensive monitoring to the legislative body to see whether they implement their commitment to include gender budgeting in the fiscal year of 2009 in South Sumatra. This task should be on the NGOs’ part by put together a clear mechanism for legislatives and civil society in South Sumatera. This activity can be done through setting up initial meetings with legislatives. Responsible NGOs can implement the work with other NGOs, academicians, or with other civil society organizations in South Sumatera under the coordination of WCC Palembang.

 

Action Plan

• Carry out further training to deliver advanced analyses and development of gender budgeting program
• Carry out further training which involve more stakeholders with different issues and stand points to be mutually strengthened with the existing one in achieving better impact to the reproductive program. Education, work labour, etc. are other issues that can be addressed.
• Conduct meetings and discussions with executives and legislatives to support the promotion of gender budgeting in South Sumatera in 2009. This part can be done by a coalition of NGOs and civil societies in South Sumatera. ***