KEBETKACHE- Finance for Development The KEBETKACHE Women Development and Resource Centre is among the Actors to implement the F4D SP in Nigeria, contributing to the Outcome on Increased Citizens Voice. The desired change is to achieve women#s active role in governance and in holding government accountable in budgetary and fiscal issues. To this end, community leadership has strong influence. Women need to influence the community leadership to gain support for women inclusiveness and participation in local governance.

Some activities have been planned to achieve these desired objectives mentioned above. KEBETKACHE will map existing community women groups in all the project states. This will be done through scheduled visits to states and communities. Meetings will be held with identified women leaders, and key informants in target states. Kebetkache will also access information on existing women groups from other CSO partners working on the project in the various states. Kebetkache targets to map 100 community women groups across the project states.  The exercise will identify the existence of the organization, registration status, leaders, mission, activities, impact over the years and capacity gaps/needs. This activity will be conducted during the 1st half of the project.

There will also be a Gender Context Analysis, which will be conducted in the project target states and produce reports. The aim of the exercise is to provide context for the quantitative and qualitative content analyses of gender roles that are to be included and address by the project. This is necessary to support feminist claims, predict effects on target audiences, identify areas to effect changes in behavior, mindset, address stereotypes. The exercise will highlight historical context, belief systems and currentgender status in the target project location.

It is necessary to consult with the Community Gatekeepers on Gender, to do this consultations will held in 8 LGAs in each of the target states.  Each ofthe consultation forums will last for one day and will be held with Chiefs, community Development Committee officials, religious leaders, Youths and Women leaders; opinion leaders influencers within identified communities.

To empower communities, there is need for exchange visits to Link Communities withrelevant Platforms. Community members will be linked up with existing relevant platforms for citizen#s participation and engagement with the government. Existing platforms will be identified during the mapping exercise and linkages will be created betweenthe project beneficiaries and these platforms. These linkages will be created in the form of training, mobilization, exchange visits, peer review, cross movement dialogue as well as solidarity meetings, or collaboration with Kebetkache with other CSO partners during the course of the project. Some of these platforms are networks and coalitions that are focusedon addressing transparency issues with budgetary and fiscal issues. Exchange visits and cross movement dialogue will be held for trained women andmen to discuss, plan engagement, share knowledge, experience, information, strategies and ideas. Each engagement forum with platforms will last for one day.

Capacity building is identified as one of the core activity for the F4D. Under the training1500persons (1000 women <(>&<)> 500 Men) drawn from the various project locations will be trained on Community Needs Assessment, Sustainable Livelihoods Assessments,  shadow budgeting, Lobby and Advocacy and Influencing. The participants will be selected from theidentified and mapped communities in the four target states. 200 women and 200 men will be trained in the first year of the project; 400 women and 150 men will be trained in the second and 400 women and 150 men third project years project respectively. Therefore,a total of 600 women and men will be trained within the first year of the project. This will be broken down into 50 persons per training in 12 training sessions, each lasting two days.

There will be Advocacy Initiatives to create necessarylinkages. This will entail local actions and initiatives undertaken by trained groups to promote transparency and hold government accountable on issues of budgeting, taxation and other fiscal issues. The project will provide support for the groups to mobilizeand initiate their actions. There will be varied actions based on the interest and audience the groups seek to engage with. Examples of actions are interactive sessions with policy makers or local government officials; advocacy meetings with electedofficials or any identified stakeholder; radio discussion; radio jingle; production of stickers; mass action or direct engagement; town hall meetings; public enlightenment; rally; monitoring of budget implementation. Groups will be encouraged to be pro-active.