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Format D
Planning Phase Proposal
Integrated Women’s Empowerment - Sustaining Change for Generations
‘’ Replication of the Integrated Women’s Empowerment Model in Cotton Areas of Gujarat,
Maharashtra and Rajasthan’
IKEA Foundation reference:
2011.052/UND/IN
Integrated Women’s Empowerment - Sustaining Change
for Generations
Partner : Project Title, Ref.
Amount requested from IKEA
Foundation
Applicant organisation
Address
Contact person(s)
Phone and e-mail
Geographic coverage
Timeframe
Beneficiaries
Replication of the Integrated Women’s Empowerment
Model in Cotton Areas of Gujarat, Maharashtra and
Rajasthan
100,000 Euro
United Nations Development Programme
55, Lodi Estate, New Delhi -110003
Caitlin Wiesen, Country Director, UNDP and
Prema Gera, Head-Poverty Unit, UNDP
Caitlin Wiesen
+91 11 46532317
caitlin.wiesen@undp.org
Prema Gera
+91 11 46532363
prema.gera@undp.org
10,016 villages covering seven districts across the states of
Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan, India
Project duration
3 ½ months
Project start date
July 1st 2011
Project completion date
September 15th 2011
Women, especially those belonging to socially marginalised
groups who will be the primary beneficiaries once the final
project is approved.
Project teams and other state level stakeholders will benefit
with the development of a realistic project document that
encompassess all needs and response strategies.
The planning phase excercise will enable UNDP design the
most appropriate scale and strategies required for the project
implementation.
A.
A.1
Which aspects are to be considered in the planning phase?
Why carry out this planning phase?
Format D – Planning Phase Proposal, June 2011
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Over the past years, poverty reduction through the empowerment of women has taken centre
stage within India’s development agenda. Advancements to date indicate that empowered women
and girls have a transformative role to play in improving the lives of their children, households and
society at large. UNDP works on projects and initiatives that have a transformational and
lasting impact on women and families for generations to come. To this end, in 2009, the
UNDP and IKEA Foundation jointly agreed to test the impact of a women’s social, economic and
political empowerment pilot in 500 poorest villages, reaching out to 50,000 women of Uttar
Pradesh. The UNDP project built on child rights processes initiated by UNICEF between 2000-2007
in the same 500 villages supported by the IKEA Foundation.
Based on positive outcomes of the women’s empowerment pilot and successes to date in
addressing cyclic poverty, subjugation and disempowerment- which is often the primary reason
why children are forced into child labor, a Concept Note-Format A was submitted to the IKEA
Foundation, proposing a project strategy for women’s empowerment through replication of the
Uttar Pradesh women’s empowerment pilot across approximately 10,016 villages covering seven
districts of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan. As in the past, the replication of the women’s
empowerment approach builds on child rights processes already initiated by UNICEF and Save the
Children in the aforesaid districts. The envisaged UNDP project will thus complement IKEA
Foundation’s support to child rights by dovetailing women’s empowerment - thereby adding the
element of sustainability and lasting change to the work undertaken.
This strategy focuses on the following components:
Social Empowerment:
• Deepening women’s social mobilisation processes initiated by UNICEF / Save the Children
through strengthening of self-managed groups and their leadership.
• Integration of women’s empowerment with specialised work with men and youth leading to
marked community acceptance of women as change agents.
Economic Empowerment:
• Mark significant increase in women’s participation in and control over production, labor and
markets resulting in sustainable increase in household incomes.
Political and Legal Empowerment:
• Create a cadre of women elected leaders, para legal workers and SHG leaders who improve
service delivery, accountability and women’s access to government programs and justice
institutions
Based on the aforesaid strategies, the next steps entail preparation of a detailed Project Proposal
(Format B) and Budget and Financial Plan (Format C) as is a requirement of the IKEA Foundation. To
this end, a Planning Phase will be carried out to harness a detailed situational analysis, an interim
baseline and problem assessments through a wide range of primary and secondary tools which
include among others in-depth interactions with women, local, state and national stakeholders to
*define those Key Performing Indicators that will have transformative and lasting impacts on
women’s condition and position and thereby their children, households and communities. Based on
major issues emerging, under the planning phase, the project objectives/outputs, key performance
indicators, impacts, strategy approaches and budgets will be detailed. All these will be in
accordance with Format B and C and as per submission guidelines of the IKEA Foundation.
Format D – Planning Phase Proposal, June 2011
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A.2
Planning Phase Activities
Step I: Situation analysis & Interim Baseline
Field level Primary and Secondary Data Collection: This will help to establish the frame conditions
at national, state, district and village level that influence the status and
empowerment/disempowerment of women. Information collation will be based on secondary data
(government and civil society reports) further validated and triangulated through field based
PRA/RRAs and primary data collection based on a small sample. Data collection will be collated on
all aspects of women’s empowerment - social, economic, political and legal and will present the
specific starting picture for all states- Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Gujarat viz women and especially
in the selected project districts.
The situation analysis will help establish an interim baseline that will capture the current status in
terms of women’s economic and social condition both within the household and in the larger public
domain. It will provide critical and current information on key aspects about women in the proposed
project area such as their income sources, the range of economic activities they are engaged in, the
type and level of existing skills and knowledge, the range of assets that they and their families
possess, the extent of their mobility, the property regime in the area which influences women’s
access or lack of it to ownership of land and other assets and resources and their role in decision
making within the household and the extent of freedoms enjoyed and rights exercised by the
women including barriers faced by them within the household and in their interaction with larger
society and economy. The situation analysis will also help establish the baseline in terms of the
access of women to government schemes and programmes, to legal rights and entitlements, basic
services related to health, drinking water and sanitation, to markets, to public decision making
bodies such as institutions of local self governance and to institutions of justice. It will also capture
current state of women’s leadership in social and political domains and both the opportunities and
barriers they face.
In summary, the situation analysis and the interim baseline will form the foundation for the steps
that follow below.
Field level Immediate and Root Causes: It is clear that in order to find lasting solutions to
issues of women’s disempowerment, it is critical to address the root causes of problems.
Thus under the planning phase, parimary and secondary research will bring out the main
causes of disempowerment, rights violations or subjugation in all 3 states Rajasthan, Maharashtra
and Gujarat. This will present a comprehensive picture of causal factors and will feed into the
problem analysis and strategy solutions. For example in the proposed districts in Maharashtra, the
linkages between the agriculture crisis, farmer suicides (mostly men) and its impact on inter and
intra household dynamics especially on women and children will be studied. Similarly, in Rajasthan
the linkage between harsh agro-climatic realities coupled with low levels of development and
employment leading to mass migration to cotton areas and elsewhere will be studied. In Gujarat,
the root causes of why economic progress has not improved the adverse sex ratio or gender gap will
be studied.
Field Based analysis of Gender and Power: will document any systematic or systemic patterns of
discrimination within households and the public domain based on gender issues. This will enable
UNDP to define women’s condition as well as their position beginning from childhood onwards and
its manifestations in terms of power and intra household vulnerabilities in the project locations.
Differential access of boys and girls / men and women to education, health, employment, food and
mobility will also be studied under this component.
Format D – Planning Phase Proposal, June 2011
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Field level Institutional Framework Analysis: This will highlight current interventions by
Governmental, civil society, community based organizations and Self Help Groups and will enable
UNDP to spell out the current scope of interventions already underway on women’s empowerment
in the project districts. This will set the stage for detailing roles/responsibility and forging
partnerships to leverage from current field innovations. Secondly it will also enable UNDP to plan
strategy solutions for women and their families that transforms their lives, brings them out of the
traditional mores and gives them an opportunity to experience personal freedom, a greater sense of
gender equality and participation in public spaces in a way they and their mothers and
grandmothers have not done before. It is envisaged that the right strategy option will put women’s
development trajectory on a sustainable course.
Field level Sectoral Assessments: The most beneficial and fruitful sectors for intervention with
highest potential for success and benefits for women across all domains of empowerment- social,
economic, political and legal will be detailed. This would include sectors where large numbers of
the poor women are already engaged and where there is need and opportunity to strengthen them.
It could also include emerging sectors where entry barriers are low and women can achieve gains
within the project timeframe.
In totality, the entire situational analysis and interim baseline will serve as a means of clearly
defining the starting picture, refining project strategies and entry points, validating the Key
performance Indicators and envisaged impacts. The situational analysis will also serve as the main
foundation to plan the most appropriate strategies that will lead to lasting change in the project
districts.
Step II: Project design / strategy formulation
360 Degree Stakeholder Analysis Workshop/Meetings: in order to build buy in and harness opinions
of all knowledge holders, stakeholder analysis will document opinions and interests of all major
stakeholder groups in Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra. They will be asked to prioritise
problems and solutions through a rating based system.
Field Based Appreciative Enquiry: 1 given that the project strategy is based on transformation in the
condition and position of women, the use of Appreciative Inquiry (AI) Technique will elicit positive
’vision’ statements and will define the best case scenario of change possible and action steps to the
same across all domains. Usage of AI as a visioning technique will enable the planning and strategy
formulation process to work on the principal of best possible results, resource maximization and
optimum utilization of resources and results. This process will enable defining of the optimum
results matrix.
Field Based Risk & Exit Assessments: assimilated though the situational analysis, stakeholder
assessments, problem analysis, this will highlight the key internal and external risks that will need to
be addressed through counter-measures during the project cycle to ensure sustainable exit.
Others: Knowledge Management Strategy
To ensure a clear link between strategic planning for the new project in Gujarat, Maharashtra and
Rajasthan and strategic practice demonstrated in Uttar Pradesh, a common knowledge
management strategy will be developed to support (i) sharpening the knowledge sharing focus
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Gender research indicates that project designs that are overly problem-oriented lead to designing of
strategies addressing the specific problem often missing out on innovative situations. Appreciative Inquiry
addresses this by identifying the root cause of the solution rather than root cause of the problem. (Odell 2002)
Format D – Planning Phase Proposal, June 2011
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within operational projects (ii) promoting internal mechanisms for knowledge capture and sharing
(iii) strengthening external knowledge partnerships to develop & disseminate knowledge and (iv)
scaling up staff development to improve technical skills and manage knowledge.
Step III: Outcome- Output-Activity Planning and Project Management
Participatory Logical Framework Workshop: This will be a critical step to define and validate Key
Performance Indicators, spell out verifiable indicators and annual targets the the LFA exercise will
be undertaken in a participatory manner through a workshop to define SMARTER2 objectives and
outputs that will feed into the Annual Work plans/ project budgets.
Mapping SMART alliances : This process will define the project execution and closing/handing over
strategies including human resource deployment, the range and types of partners and expertise
required, implementation modalities and management arrangement, agreement on system and
financial compliances and monitoring schedules. It will also map alliances that will be forged to
leverage project gains to a sustainable and noteworthy level.
A.3
Methodology and expected outputs
Methodology
Situational Analysis & Interim Baseline
 Primary & Secondary data collection &
collation
 Immediate and Root Causes
 Analysis of Gender and Power
 Institutional Framework Analysis
 Sectoral Assessments
Project design / strategy formulation

360 degree stakeholder analysis

Appreciative Enquiry
Outcome- Output-Activity Planning and
Project Execution

Logical Framework Analysis

Mapping SMART alliances and
management
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Expected Output
o
o
o
o
o
Researched database available with the
project.
Interim Baseline available
PRA/RRA profiles available
Detailing of the problem tree
Detailing of major findings emerging from
immediate and root cause, gender & power,
institutional framework and sectoral analysis.
Aforsaid will feed into detailing of the context national, state, district and village and the problem
analysis.
o
Long list of stakeholder priorities and position
vis-à-vis multiple dimensions of women’s
empowerment
o
Identification of vision and ideal project
roadmap capturing best possible change
management solutions
o
Summary of risk analysis and exit strategy
Aforsaid will feed into detailing the project
objective, outputs, the project strategy / action
plan and sustainability plan.
o
Detailing of key performance indicators based
on interim baseline, impact indicators and
annual targets
o
Detailing of management arrangements &
M&E plan
SMARTER- Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-Bound + Enjoyable & Rewarding
Format D – Planning Phase Proposal, June 2011
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o
Detailing of annual and consolidated budgets
The final outcome of the planning phase will be submission of a detailed project proposal and
budget as per IKEA Foundation’s Format B and C covering all components for funding (for subdeliverables see section A 3 ). The final Format B and Format C will be submitted to IKEA
Foundation by September 15th 2011.
The planning phase will incorporate an interim baseline study which will be completed by 15th
September 2011. The final and consolidated Baseline study will be completed within six months
after sanction of the project proposal.
A.4
Composition of study team
UNDP will constitute an expert team within UNDP to steer and guide the planning phase and recruit
a technical agency to carry out the planning phase activities across all the 3 states. Team members
will have substantial and demonstrated experience and expertise in designing and implementing
projects on women’s empowerment, project planning, participatory tools, quantitative and
qualitative research, preparation of LFA’s and harnessing project frames through multi-stakeholder
processes. The technical agency will represent subject matter competence in social, economic,
political and legal dimensions of women’s empowerment as also the ability to analyse, synthesise
and visualise processes into a project proposal and budget.
The technical agency will be backstopped by dedicated UNDP staff to ensure timeliness and quality
of output. UNDP will be finally accountable to the IKEA Foundation on proposal submission as per
approved format and within the timeline.
A.5
Budget summary
Activities
1. Conducting Field Level Situation Analysis & Interim
Baseline3 in 3 states
2: Project design / strategy formulation including:
 Stakeholder Analysis Workshop
 Field level appreciate enquiry and risk & exit
assessments
 Detailing a knowledge management strategy
3 Activity Planning and Project Management including :
 LFA planning workshop
 Detailing of implementation modalities and alliances
Recovery Cost (7 % of total budget for item 1-3)
Total
3
Total costs, Euro
59,400
24,740
9,320
6,540
100,000
As part of the planning phase, an interim baseline will be prepared drawing from field interviews, primary
data collection & government reports. This will feed into the Logical Framework of the project proposal. Upon
approval of the project proposal, a complete baseline study founded on a detailed sampling framework
(minimum 30% beneficiaries) will be initiated in all 3 states to detail situation on indicators/ sub-indicators
across all approved KPI’s for tracking progress and reporting on deliverables.
Format D – Planning Phase Proposal, June 2011
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Format D – Planning Phase Proposal, June 2011