4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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The Coordination Unit Team at the Ministry of State for Adminstrative Development designed a workflow of the issuance process originated by the initiative, as it contains essential steps to achieve desired results. The following diagram illustrates the process to issue Id cards in the Your ID Your Rights initiative:
• A safe and culturally accepted environment was established for the women who did not need to travel distances to register for IDs, or deal with complicated bureaucratic procedures. The process was simplified and convenient arrangements were made to ensure that women remained within their comfort zone.
• Awareness Campaign, by communicating with citizens and women regarding national campaign details; benefits, rules, and outcomes
• Registration phase: register women who have no National ID card issued before, building complete database with all women registered in the campaign.
• Nominations phase: Check civil registry records for women to join campaign: to ensure there are records for them or in case they have no birth records , we flag them for further work.
• Targeting Phase: Prepare a list of the eligible women to issue their IDs based on the report of the Civil Status Registry, which is then distributed to the outreach partner who inform the targeted of the dates of the photo-shoot in the respective village.
• Issuance Phase: Mobile Registrars (mobile units) are sent to the villages to take photos of the targeted women to issue their ID cards. The rules and required papers are communicated to them before photo-shoot day.
• Delivery Phase: After two from the issuance phase, women receive their ID card with the assistance of the implementing partner.
Also, the following model shows different implementations models experimented:
1. SFD/ NCW Model
In this Model, a protocol is signed off between MSAD and implementing partners, and they assign project implementation to their regional offices or branches in different governorates
2. Governorate Model
In this Model, a protocol is signed off from MSAD and Governor, MSAD works directly with Governorate office, and technology centers to work on the execution plan (training for collecting data, data entry to registration applications on campaign application, then following-up with women to be photoshooted, then delivering them the ID cards), as they have outreach to women in villages as all technology centers’ employees are originally from such villages so they are reach women easily. MSAD the role of execution leadership, and monitoring as well.
3. NGO Model
This model is operationally as the MSAD-Governorate one, the difference is that UNWomen handles the financial cycle and liabilities with NGOs or women based volunteering groups.
As for the management and coordination working engine, which is used and following by the coordination unit in MSAD, in order to manage the project activities, and monitor and control any issues occurred, to reach the project planned results, this process is:
1. Initiation phase of project phase
2. Planning phase of project phase logistics and procedures
3. Execution phase
4. Monitor and control project activities, and
5. Closing the phase (target, milestone, governorate,)
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5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
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The implementation involved stakeholders were:
Initiative main strategic partners;
1. MOFA: Ministry of Foreign affairs
2. MOI: Ministry of Interior (civil state organization)
3. MSAD: Ministry of State For administrative Development
4. SFD: Social Fund of Development
5. SIS: State Information Service
6. UN Women: United Nations Entity for Gender Equity the empowerment of Women
7. UNDP: United Nations Development Programme
Outreach Implementing partners in field:
1. NCW: National Council of Women
2. Governorates (Local Units)
3. MOLD: Ministry of Local Development
4. NGOs: different NGOs in different governorates for the outreach activity
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6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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UN Women is leading the mobilization of resources to implement the citizenship initiative free of charge with a target of 2 million ID cards by 2015. The Citizenship Initiative has been funded by Spain, Austria, the EU, the USAID and the UNDP. The estimated cost per an ID card is around $3.5 which includes the outreach costs ($2.5 for the purchase of one ID application Form +$1 for the outreach costs). In addition, there are other costs related to the staffing of the Coordination Unit, the missions in rural Egypt, the development and management of the Data Base, the awareness raising tools and orientation sessions. Since 2011, UN Women mobilized approximately 2.4 million dollars. This amount can only issue around 460,000 ID cards between 2011 and 2015. More resources is needed to reach the target of 2 million ID cards by 2015.
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7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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Coordination mechanism and Implementation models: UN Women developed a coordination unit within the Ministry of State and Administrative Development to synchronized efforts and procedures between the government partners to provide mobile units to marginalized areas as well as different execution models to facilitate the issuance of ID Cards in the different governorates of Egypt.
Database and dashboard portal that includes information on the women who have registered as well as basic information on their economic and social status. It is used as a tool for managing the project, for outreach and monitoring purposes. The database also contains information on women not eligible to receive the ID cards, so that action can be taken in the future.
Public Outreach Strategy relying on door to door and face to face interaction with women and involvement of Citizenship Ambassadors Groups to communicate to the women the importance and benefits of applying for ID Cards.
Mapping study process to identify and target women with no ID cards in rural and marginalized areas as well as the best outreach implementing partner in the targeted governorates
Communication campaign and awareness raising strategy, including Public Service Announcements, social media campaign on Facebook and Twitter, jingles and songs, as well as documentaries. (Two toolkits have been developed to inform illiterate/literate women of the benefits of having their economic, political and social rights. They are composed of two parts: an activity booklet conveying messages regarding citizenship rights in a format that suits the needs of illiterate/literate women and an info-graphic video with 2D, 3D, and live shooting components.)
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8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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The progress was monitored by different means; the major ones are the numbers of outreached women, numbers of ID cards issued.
As for the working workflow implementation, and project coordination activities, the initiative were monitored by different tools:
- Project Dashboard Monitor
- Field reports
- Quarter reports
- MOMs
- Protocols and MOU signed to initiate work
- Execution planning documents for issuance phases
- Progress reports
Evaluation and controlling the progress differs from partner to another, from a functional partnership scheme to another, the project CU team implemented different scheme on that base.
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9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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- Country political and security unstable situations are critical for big national projects in such a period, we managed this by planning for testing the project by a pilot phase in Qalyoubeya governorate, chosen due to good reference and support for governorate and his technical office team. After this, we started p
- Many governmental bodies and agencies are not cooperative or responsive after the revolution, so it was not easy to plan for project execution in cooperation with different agencies’ effort. We are trying to manage this challenge by carefully choosing agencies whose management team is knowledgeable and with high interest in promoting for project objectives with their work field vision and activities
- Project budgetary amounts were underestimated for some activities at the beginning of the project implementation, and other items were not planned for, we managed this to test financial resources needed in the pilot phase on a small scale, and check results after this phase to adjust.
- The economy and the post revolution deceleration constitutes a significant challenge to the scaling up of the Initiative nationally and to the adjustments that will have to be continuously effectuated to maintain the efficiency of the process and its continued relevance. Being fully cognizant of this considerable obstacle, UN Women and UNDP have followed a number of measures designed to make the process cost effective.
- Civil State of Organization was not giving much capacity and support to the project in such country situation, being iterative in implementation helped the Coordination unit to manage accordingly
- As for the technological part, and data quality, most of implementing partners were not recognizing the importance of consolidating all women information in database and having all project activities counted in a systematic or organized manner over different tools, training was the only way to reach these points.
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