Guidelines for Evidence Generation against Demands by Citizens By: Laila Rubab Jaskani

Brief Guidelines for EVA supported DAF/CGs in Evidence Creation against

Demands at various tiers of Policy Advocacy:

Demands creation is classically associated with “evidence generation” for gauging the immediate

effects of interventions. Necessarily, there is need of evidence generation against the demands

generation for further advocacy at different tiers further for the impact evaluation objectives.

Following are the basic steps in demands generation for evidence based advocacy:

1) Prioritization of demands for specific and focused advocacy initiatives

2) Issue profiling against the demands intended for submission at DAF

3) Evidences collection against the demands intended for submission at DAF

4) Advocacy Action Planning on the demands at different tiers

5) Consultative and interface meetings with policy makers

6) Follow-up actions with policy makers

7) Monitoring of implementation(if actions have been taken up)

Principles for Demands Submission and Action:

Followings principles or yardsticks may be helpful for effective advocacy and evidences

generation:

1) Each identified and prioritized demand must have associated causal factors with

evidences

For example, Lack of vaccines available at BHU Lodhana is identified issue and there is no

evidence based validity of this issue unless we have some preliminary information on the issue,

sources of issue identification, frequency of occurrence of issue, nature of issue relevant with

which sort of vaccines, if there are procurement issues for vaccines, verification of stock

availability of vaccines at the BHU level, staff negligence or procurement issues etc.

2) Once the demands is voiced at the DAF then we needs to collect the feedback from

government functionaries on the issue(if the relevant government representatives are

available at the DAF meeting)

3) If in case there is no government functionary at the DAF meeting then there is need of

consultative meeting between DAF and government counterparts on the issue.

4) Bearing in the mined, there must have “indicators for monitoring standards” (for

example, what is ideal or standards stock capacity of vaccines for each BHU and if the

situation is varied then we may have evidence) against the issues or demands on which

interface meeting will be conducted.

5) We need to identify what are the issues or demands which required immediate action

and other required longer term

Categorization of demands with Evidence Creation:

Whereas, there must have consent of all members of CGs and DAF on the prioritized

categorization of demands for mutual interest of all community members and joint interventions

by the members of CGs and DAF. There is liability on the CGs’ Coordinator to involve all CGs

members during the issue profiling and evidence creation. Following is the categorization of

demands at different tiers;

o Issues identified by the CGs; CGs need to identify issues against the standards

parameters committed by the government. This may be helpful in evidence creation for

evidence based advocacy.

o Issues converted into Demands after issues prioritization process; there may have many

and many issues which needs to be addressed immediately. Therefore, it is important to

prioritize the issues which are affecting groups of people including women and children.

Once the issues are prioritized then this may be converted into demands for the mutual

interest of common citizens.

o Issues voiced at the DAF; members of CGs or CGs representative(coordinators) should

voiced those demands which have associated concrete evidences

o Prioritized Issues referred to CGs for evidences collection; If issues or the voiced

demands lacks the “evidences “then issues or the demands will be referred to CGs for

evidences collection. This may be incorporated into and be part of the advocacy action

planning

o Prioritized Issues referred to DAF for advocacy action; Advocacy action plan will be

develop mutually with the support of members of DAF/CGs in the DAF meeting for

follow-up actions and advocacy at different tiers

Modalities and Trends of Technical Backstopping and support by EVA-BHN Team

EVA-BHN district level and Provincial level team will be supporting to the members of CGs and

DAFs in evidences creation, follow-ups action and advocacy on the demands generated at the

DAF.EVA-BHN team may provide support on the following yardsticks;

o Support in developing advocacy action plan with division of responsibility

o Support in evidence creation

o Support in preparing advocacy letter

o Support in Linkages development and networking

o Facilitation in engaging with district level decision makers and provincial level policy

makers

Note: CGs may please record their demands on the prescribed format of issue profiling and DAFs

may please to record demands on issues prioritization matrix for advocacy action planning.