Gender Justice logoThe project aims to strengthen the practice of the partners of the Embassy of Ireland, Pretoria (in South Africa and Zimbabwe) though establishing a collaborative relationship between the partners and the CSA&G. The project stems from a need among partners to have more opportunities to reflect on and adapt their practice and to explore and understand different ways of approaching and using evidence.

The outcome for the project is for partners’ practices related to gender equality and social justice to be strengthened. Closely related to the overall outcome, the following have been set as project outputs:

  1. Increased critical engagement by partners with multiple forms of evidence; partners will increasingly read, understand, criticise, and use different forms of evidence around their practice;
  2. Increased and strengthened collaboration between partners;
  3. A meta view of trends around gender in/equality as understood by the CSA&G and the partners themselves to better inform partners’ understanding of GBV and gender equality.

The engagement between the CSA&G and the Embassy’s partners will span 5 years, in which time ongoing platforms and interventions will enable the partners to undertake their work more effectively, critically, and efficiently. This strategic collaboration will make use of three different but interlinked components, namely three reflective partner forums per year; an online repository; and an evidence strand which blends theory and practice.

The three strands, or components, are aimed toward constant interaction with and reflection on the partners’ practices in terms of the conceptualisation of their work, the critical and innovative analysis of evidence in the context of their social justice work, and their strategic advocacy in the communities in which they work.

The three strands are:

  1. Partner forums where partners are able to critically and collectively reflect on challenges in their practice and engage with new forms of evidence and trends.
  2. A partner repository that enables partners to constantly interact with one another as well as with relevant information and evidence. The repository will be hosted online and provide partners with, among other things, access to webinars, newly released research in the area of social justice, and a boutique request service that allows partners to specifically request the CSA&G to assist with desk research on a particular topic.
  3. An evidence-based strand that focusses on innovative ways to approach evidence gathering, analysing, and engaging with data in the area of GBV and gender inequality. Within this strand partners are encouraged and enabled, by the CSA&G, to critically reflect on current practices and think of alternative ways to approach various aspects of evidence gathering and analysing. Finally, the CSA&G will also initiate research projects with a focus on GBV and social justice to further expand this strand and support the partners.

The collaboration will work towards a “strengthened enabling environment in South Africa, Zimbabwe and regionally to promote inclusive development, gender equality and human rights.” While the first year of the project will focus, primarily, on engagement with those partners whose work is situated within the field of social justice, GBV, and gender in/equality, other Embassy partners will be included in the four years to follow. As the project is adaptive in its nature, close monitoring and assessment will follow every year, ensuring that the deliverables are appropriate and speak to the developing relationship between and the emergent needs of partners.

You can visit the Just Gender evidence repository here.