Your search

LASER synthesis papers aim to help donors and other stakeholders better understand why and how to approach investment climate reform programming differently. The papers reflect emerging best practice and lessons learnt on what works and what does not work in doing development differently. The papers have been peer-reviewed by experts in the field including senior advisers at DFID, World Bank, IFC and the Donor Committee for Enterprise Development (amongst others).

This paper tracks the efforts of an Asia Foundation team and local stakeholders as they worked to support improvements in the solid waste management sector in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The team worked in a flexible way with a range of partners, and with particular focus on understanding the incentives and politics affecting service delivery. While reform of the sector remains in progress, steps have been taken to introduce more competition and better public sector management of solid waste...

Recognising that aid and development programming takes place in complex contexts, Mercy Corps is increasingly seeking to understand how best to manage programs which iterate, adapt and respond to the consistently evolving settings in which we work. This brief Practice Paper provides some examples of what adaptive management looks like in practice on the Prospects youth employment program in Liberia. It does not seek to function as a manual or set of guidelines, but simply provides some...

Recognising that aid and development programming takes place in complex contexts, Mercy Corps is increasingly seeking to understand how best to manage programs which iterate, adapt and respond to the consistently evolving settings in which we work. This brief Practice Paper provides some examples of what adaptive management looks like in practice on the Prospects youth employment program in Liberia. It does not seek to function as a manual or set of guidelines, but simply provides some...

This case study describes how LASER has gone about enabling systemic change and sustainable uptake of reforms that address complex institutional problems in Kenya, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somaliland and Uganda. In each of these countries LASER has designed-in a sustainable approach from the start based on: (i) local ownership and leadership of reforms based on developing country (rather than donor) priorities; (ii) use of country (rather than donor programme) systems; and (iii) an...

We are piloting a new approach to identifying and supporting our partners.  This breaks with convention in many ways in order to improve impact. Our approach is summarized in the Introduction to SAVI’s way of working. We have broken our approach down into key components – depicted in the form of our ‘knowledge tree’ –...

Governance reform is about government and citizens working together in more responsive, inclusive and accountable ways for the benefit of citizens. More responsive, inclusive and accountable attitudes and behaviour on the part of government and non-government stakeholders are the critical factors which lead to meaningful reform processes, and replicate and sustain reforms beyond the lifetime...

SAVI as a programme does not directly work with state governments – but we work in close conjunction with sister programmes who are supporting state governments on governance and sector reforms. SAVI supports non-government and SHoA partners to play their part in promoting more responsive, inclusive and accountable state governance delivering better services for citizens....

SAVI supports citizen engagement in governance through a facilitated partnership approach, in contrast to the usual approach of grants to civil society organisations (CSOs). The overall aim is to facilitate and support working relationships and processes of reform that are home-grown, self-sustaining and, after initial engagement, not dependent on external support. Our way of working...

SAVI’s theory of change is a simple, practical guide that staff and partners use to plan and to monitor change – as well as to reflect on and enhance their own effectiveness. It sets out broad stages of attitude and behaviour change over time to facilitate effective citizen engagement in governance processes, systems and structures....

Thinking and acting politically is central to the SAVI programme. We support staff and partners to analyse the power relations that shape change in their state, and to use this knowledge to inform their decision-making. This includes decisions made by SAVI state teams relating to the issues and partners they engage with and support, and...

SAVI aims to facilitate replicable and sustainable processes of citizen engagement in governance. The programme in each state is locally defined, flexible and adaptive, and results are not predictable in advance. Standardised monitoring tools are not applicable, and consequently we have evolved our tools and frameworks during the programme through processes of learning by doing....

SAVI state teams provide support to CS groups to become more effective agents of citizens’ voice and public accountability, through a variety of mutually reinforcing interventions. These include: hands-on support to demonstration civil society Advocacy Partnerships (APs) facilitating working partnerships between civil society APs, SHoAs, and the media brokering working relationships between all of these...

We promote attention to gender equality and social inclusion in all of our engagement with CS groups, the media and SHoAs, and in all of the issues and processes they work on. In all the states we work in, we also support partners to focus on some issues and form some partnerships and networks which...

The overall aim of SAVI engagement with the media is for media representation of citizens’ interests to become normal, and play its part in helping state governments to be more responsive, inclusive and accountable to their citizens. Media partners – individual media personnel and selected media houses – are supported to be more effective agents...

The overall aim of SAVI engagement with SHoAs is to promote lasting reforms that are not dependent on external funding and which promote an increasingly more responsive and accountable relationship between Nigerian state governments and their citizens. SHoAs are supported to be more effective agents of citizen voice and public accountability, demanding better performance from...

Effective public service delivery begins with knowing whether the services offered are working as intended. We launched a system to enable citizen input on the delivery of public services.