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Maverick Citizen: iKhaya eLitsha Hub — pathways to food security and dignity

In this article by the Daily Maverick Citizen, it's noted how community-led change and local action are too often stifled by the dominant accountability models. "New models of social accountability, built on trust, redistribution and horizontality rather than the usual bureaucratic checks and balances, are desperately needed," they say. In March 2020, when the president announced that South Africa would be going into a lockdown, a lot of uncertainty ensued. At the time I had just started working for a non-profit organisation that deals with sexual and reproductive health for adolescent girls and young women in the Klipfontein District. By [...]

2021-03-25T11:05:37+00:0025th March 2021|

Our Strategy Update: What We’re Going to Do in 2021

In late 2019, we developed a new global strategy for the 2020-2023 period. The strategy outlined why we care about accountability, what we have learned from almost 9 years of work on these issues, where we are going and how we’ll get there. The strategy was matched with a 2020-2023 operational plan and a budget for this work (here.)  Adapting to COVID-19 And then everything changed...as COVID-19 fundamentally transformed global politics, economics and societies; and dramatically altered accountability dynamics everywhere. The pandemic has highlighted the deep-set challenges of corruption within healthcare systems; and the policy responses have demonstrated how critical [...]

2021-01-14T18:46:32+00:0014th January 2021|

Meet the graduates from our first virtual Accountability Incubator

As 2020 took a different turn, so did our programs. Our Accountability Incubator program was moved online as we welcomed our very first virtual cohort of accountapreneurs from Uganda and Kenya. Read about the impact they are making below and  join us for a live pitch session next Tuesday as the accountapreneurs introduce their work over the past year. By Tirelo Makwela The Accountability  Incubator is our flagship program for young civil society leaders to build sustainable and effective tools for accountability, participation and open government. The Incubator provides a non-prescriptive, supportive environment for creative, enterprising individuals with innovative ideas [...]

2021-01-13T20:39:46+00:0013th January 2021|

Five Ideas We Heard from 1,000+ Young Open Government Reformers

By Katie Fuhs and Blair Glencorse   Governance cannot be open unless it is open for everyone. This means it needs to include women, indigenous groups, members of the LGBTQIA+ community and many others. Youth cross-cuts all of these groups, and young people are even playing a critical role in pushing for a more transparent, fair and equitable response and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Young people have always been willing to challenge the status-quo but have historically had difficulty ensuring that their voices and ideas are included in policymaking  processes. But with massive demographic shifts around the world, enhanced [...]

2020-12-07T19:49:32+00:004th December 2020|

Creating better racial equity policies for development organizations

ONE and Accountability Lab recently convened a panel discussion to reflect on structural inequities in the development sector. Designed as a safe space for partners and colleagues to delve into the ways that the sector contributes to racial inequality, the webinar unearthed some hard truths around how international development organizations may begin to right some of the sector’s wrongs.  What could racial equity look like in international development? This is the question the webinar posed, along with an invitation to participants to move the global conversation around racism and inequality forward through tangible action items for the sector. The [...]

2020-10-21T10:41:46+00:0021st October 2020|

We need to talk about Racial Inequity: Advice for convening difficult conversations

By Cheri-Leigh Erasmus As renewed protests around racial equity continue in the USA, and all over the world, the development sector finds itself taking stock of its own practices and how organizations and practitioners may perpetuate unequal systems through their work. Through an ongoing Learning Exchange made possible by OSF’s Economic Justice Program, a group of team members from Accountability Lab and the ONECampaign have recognized this as an important learning moment that challenges organizations to engage in difficult conversations and, more importantly, take action. Although this work on racial equity was not initially part of the exchange, the moment [...]

2020-10-21T10:28:13+00:0021st October 2020|

Elevating Local Knowledge for Sustainable Impact

By Sheena Adams and Nyema Richards Walking around Monrovia, Liberia it’s hard to escape Hipco music. From supermarkets and dress shops to small, battered radios attached to motorcycle taxis, the music floats all over the city. The genre combines Liberian Pidgin-English, called kolokwa, with high-BPM dance rhythms and also touches of reggae, hip hop and RnB. Dating back to the Liberian Civil War, it’s also a genre that tackles socio-political issues in the country, and is a means for young people to express themselves in a relatable, viral way. As a campaign tool, Hipco has proven to be a powerful vehicle for change. Arguably [...]

2020-08-14T11:16:39+00:0014th August 2020|

The Value of Translocal Networks

Written by Director for Growth and Operations, Jean Scrimgeour   The Accountability Lab (AL) started to demonstrate how governance can work for people by supporting creative solutions for accountability. Nine years later, the Lab has developed into a network of 9 country teams, 5 additional country partners and almost 110 team members. But AL is not, nor was it ever intended to be, an international non-government organisation (INGO).   Instead, we see ourselves as a translocal network, a collective of local organisations that have a shared purpose and understanding about the challenges we face and what we believe are the creative [...]

2024-03-12T07:40:19+00:0011th August 2020|

Exploring social norms with Tufts University

Accountability Lab is excited to announce our collaboration with the Corruption, Justice & Legitimacy Program (CJL) at The Fletcher School at Tufts University. CJL’s Social Norms and Corruption project will be working with our flagship program - Integrity Icon - to understand how best to effectively monitor and evaluate change in social norms related to corruption.  Integrity Icon “names and fames” honest government officials, building coalitions for integrity among the winners and inspiring the next generation of public servants. The Corruption, Justice and Legitimacy Program (CJL) is a research-to-practice initiative committed to improving the effectiveness of anti-corruption programming in contexts of endemic [...]

2020-07-07T22:16:02+00:007th July 2020|

How We’re Using WhatsApp at the Lab

With 1.5 billion users in 180 countries, WhatsApp is a hard platform to ignore, especially for a global organization. We've long used multiple digital channels to communicate with our audiences during the various stages of our programs, with Whatsapp becoming a particularly powerful tool this year. Our mission at AL is to make governance work for people and this work involves supporting active citizens far and wide, especially in remote parts of the countries where we operate where access to reliable information and technology can be difficult.  WhatsApp is proving to be an essential tool for how we can reach [...]

2020-04-28T00:00:00+00:0028th April 2020|
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