The target countries of this project are Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. These countries have been selected as they have some of the worlds highest Maternal Mortality Rates and Total Fertility Rates, and are included as priority countries in the World Bank’s Reproductive Health Action Plan. nEUwAID builds the capacity of 24 Reproductive Health (RH) Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in 4 sub-Saharan African countries, to advocate effectively in the “nEUw” aid environment. With their strengthened capacity these CSOs develop advocacy strategies and carry out a series of results based advocacy actions targeting EU delegations, European aid agencies and national decision-makers. By using innovative online training and discussion tools, tailor-made to suit countries with low IT-capacity, the project also improves networking and knowledge sharing amongst CSOs in the region.  If successfully implemented, this project will ensure the priority of RH in European Funding Programs and national budget allocations in the target countries. 

Main objectives and expected outcomes

• Objective 1 is to increase the knowledge among target CSOs of the European aid environment and how it affects funding for RH; new aid modalities, strategies and commitments; as well as policy making and consultation processes.
• Objective 2 is to empower CSOs to carry out advocacy actions and engage in meaningful dialogue with EU delegations, European donor agencies and national decision-makers to make RH/FP a priority in policy, programming and financial support for EU and its Member States.
• Objective 3 is to increase cooperation and knowledge sharing between the target CSOs.

Implementing strategy

One CSO per country functions as a lead organisation and receives pre-training from DSW. Following this training of trainers, the lead organisations facilitate four in-person training events to 5 other CSOs in their countries on a monthly basis. The sessions are based on the course materials provided by DSW. Additional to the in-person events, all participants will be subscribed to the online portal “nEUwAID Advocacy” which will support the 4-months educational course by providing guided learning questions, offering room for discussions on related topics and trying to answer to questions on the subject. Each month, one implementing partner will take the lead in guiding the online training portal.

By preparing the coursework as a national working group, the CSOs will motivate each other, initiate discussions and exchange ideas in an interactive learning environment. Subsequent to the online trainings, the working groups use their newly acquired knowledge from the training to develop joint advocacy strategies. These joint advocacy strategies guide the implementation of a series of results-based advocacy actions, with the aim to increase RH funding from the European governments, EU institutions and national governments.