Civic engagement plays a crucial role in promoting sustainable development, paix, bonne gouvernance, human rights and strengthening democracy. Cependant, Ethiopian civic actors have faced constraints in actively and meaningfully participating in these areas due to various challenges, including legal, political and capacity-related.
The USAID Ethiopia Civic Engagement Activity aims to strengthen Ethiopia’s social fabric. By fostering a vibrant civic environment, the initiative seeks to mitigate conflicts and empower marginalized groups.
The USAID Ethiopia Civic Engagement (ECE) activity endeavors to overcome deep-seated citizen distrust and foster inclusive dialogue, respect des droits de l'homme, and citizen-responsive governance to strengthen Ethiopia’s social fabric and advance sustainable development goals. The activity supports inclusive dialogue, droits de l'homme, and effective governance through civil society organizations and community-based actors.
The four-year activity will issue more than 50 grants to civil society organizations, universités, institutes and others to conduct research, run training, pilot novel civic engagement ideas, run advocacy campaigns and more.
ECE uses the collective impact approach, which calls for multiple organizations or entities to align their individual agendas in favor of a shared common agenda, will be used to foster multi-stakeholder civic partnerships. This approach will be activated via problem-driven iterative adaptation as a core methodology to support joint action among local system actors, deconstruct complex challenges and address root issues. Through this approach, civil society networks can co-create activities and build capacity for themselves and the sector. The ECE and its partners serve as facilitators and supporters in fostering community, connexion et confiance.
Objectifs du programme
ECE uses a collective impact approach in which civic actors identify, comprendre et déterminer des solutions aux problèmes définis par les citoyens dans le cadre d'un processus itératif. Through identified cluster-led organizations, ECE brings together a cross-section of organizations and individuals — including youth, femmes, chefs traditionnels, faith-based organizations and others — to work together to better understand the issues, determine solutions and address the causes while simultaneously building their organizational skills, courtoisie, connexion et confiance.
ECE supports 20 des clusters dans des régions clés de l'Éthiopie qui promouvront des partenariats fondés sur des problèmes et un dialogue inclusif conduisant à une meilleure gouvernance, operating out of three hubs in Addis Ababa, Dire Dawa et Dessie. Basé sur l’enquête sur les besoins et les priorités des citoyens, ECE has selected a set of initial issues for support through these clusters based on the findings from its citizen survey. For Addis Ababa and Sheger City, les problèmes sont l'eau, transparence fiscale et inflation. Pour Dire Dawa, les problèmes sont l'eau, inflation, routes et transparence fiscale. For Dessie, les sujets sont l'inflation, paix et sécurité, job opportunity and fiscal transparency.
