This report outlines four best practices recommended by the Women’s Legal Rights Initiative (WLR) legal specialists for the design and implementation of a women’s legal rights initiative. The recommended practices are illustrated with examples from organizations in the WLR focus countries and regions: Guatemala, Albania and Southern Africa. Using a variety of methods, each of these organizations has successfully implemented an element of one of the four best practices presented.

This annual report of the Women's Legal Rights Initiative (WLR) discusses best practices and reviews lessons learned, approaches, and activities that offer ideas about what works best in a given situation -- or how not to do something. This third annual report takes a broader perspective on best practices and lessons learned than previous reports did. It still focuses on WLR country program activities but considers the process used for developing the activity within each of the project's intermediate results, the need for and benefit of sound monitoring and evaluation plans, including indicators and data collection, and strategies for project management.

Project title: Women in development IQC

Programa estandares e investigacion educativa | Inversion social: personas mas sanas y con mejor nivel de educacion | Task order 03

This qualitative report of the USAID Girls' Education Activity (GEA) focuses on the results of project activities in Guatemala, Morocco, and Peru. The report is divided into four sections: Section I outlines the GEA's goals, contrasts the major tactics of each country program, and describes the multi-sectoral approach underlying all three programs; Section II presents the report's design and analytical framework; Section III describes each country's initiatives to improve girls' access to and retention in primary schools and analyzes the degree of systemic change achieved in each country's respective environment; Section IV examines the efforts of all the country programs and synthesizes their experiences into a set of observations on success factors in implementing girls' education reform.

This document reports on the outcomes of the "Economic Opportunities and Labor Conditions for Women: Perspectives from Latin America" conference, which took place in September 2002 in Panama City. At the conference, 21 participants representing grantee organizations, local NGOs, and USAID discussed the achievements and obstacles faced by WID office NGO Small Grants Program projects in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, which aim to improve working conditions for women by, for example, raising awareness about local labor laws and promoting national laws to protect workers. The purpose of the conference was to provide a forum to share lessons learned and discuss pressing issues that affect NGOs working in this area.

This Spanish-language document reports on the outcomes of the "Economic Opportunities and Labor Conditions for Women: Perspectives from Latin America" conference, which took place in September 2002 in Panama City. At the conference, 21 participants representing grantee organizations, local NGOs, and USAID discussed the achievements and obstacles faced by WID office NGO Small Grants Program projects in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, which aim to improve working conditions for women by, for example, raising awareness about local labor laws and promoting national laws to protect workers. The purpose of the conference was to provide a forum to share lessons learned and discuss pressing issues that affect NGOs working in this area.

Active learning programs are those designed to encourage the participation of students, community members, and school staff in managing the school. This document summarizes a study of the effects on female students of participation in such active learning programs in multi-grade schools in isolated rural areas where, because of the limited size of the student body, a teacher for each grade of primary school is impractical. The programs studied include Nueva Escuela Unitaria in Guatemala, Escuela Modelo in Nicaragua, and the Multigrade Demonstration Schools Project in the Philippines.

Women's legal rights initiative (WLR) | Task order under the Women in Development IQC | Cover title: Training workshop at the Judicial School for Justices of the Peace and Magistrates, June 8-10, 2006

MEDIR (Proyecto medicion de indicadores y resultados=Research, monitoring & evaluation, and policy dialogue activities)

This report is part of a series of publications that address the gender dimensions within four areas of USAID/Guatemala's Strategic Objective 5, "Improved Natural Resources Management and Biodiversity Conservation," (1) Economic activities; (2) Sustainable use of natural resources; (3) Policy, laws, and regulations analysis; and (4) Strengthening of local NGOs. This publication deals with the third area -- policy, laws, and regulations analysis -- and analyzes human settlements and forest concessions policy with a particular focus on non-timber forest products. Two components of the gender analysis of the human settlements policy have been translated into English to give non-Spanish speakers some idea of the gender analysis undertaken.

This report summarizes the Guatemalan Domestic Violence Law with Gender and Multicultural Perspectives activity, which was implemented by the Women's Legal Rights Initiative (WLR) between December 2003 and June 2004. The report covers the study's objectives, implementation, results, lessons learned, and best practices. The activity was divided into three phases: phase I laid the foundation for inter-institutional relationships and terms of cooperation; phase II involved developing the baseline for designing the training strategy to implement the domestic violence law; phase III executed the training sessions, which were attended by 117 prosecutors from across Guatemala.

This report presents the findings and recommendations from two assessment and analysis trips to Guatemala, which were conducted by a team from the USAID Women’s Legal Rights Initiative to begin the process of designing women's rights activities for the Guatemala Mission. The Women’s Legal Rights Initiative team identified a number of emerging areas for cooperation and assistance; these include the development and implementation of a program that concentrates on developing a curriculum on gender and the law, designing a graduate-level diploma program on gender and the law, and supporting advocacy and awareness campaigns.

Project title: Girls' education monitoring system (GEMS)

Programa estandares e investigacion educativa | Inversion social: personas mas sanas y con mejor nivel de educacion | Orden de trabajo no. GEW-1-03-02-00020-00

This report is the product of a consultancy to offer guidance to the team monitoring the USAID/Guatemala Strategic Objective 5 to help it incorporate gender indicators in its monitoring plan. The report contains a description of the consultancy, an analysis of indicators generated with a gender focus, and some specific suggestions for indicators to be included in the overall monitoring and evaluation system. The report also offers recommendations to ensure that the incorporation of a gender focus is successful and has a strong impact.

The following report summarizes the experiences and lessons learned from twelve Girls’ Education Activity (GEA) project initiatives in the three participating countries -- Guatemala, Morocco, and Peru -- to increase the overall school participation and completion rates of girls in primary school. These projects reflect the diversity of major initiatives that GEA facilitated in partner countries, but they do not reflect the totality of project activities in host countries. For a more comprehensive examination of overall project activities, see the companion report, Description and Analysis of the USAID Girls’ Education Activity in Guatemala, Morocco, and Peru: Qualitative Report.

This report is part of a series of publications that address the gender dimensions within four areas of USAID/Guatemala's Strategic Objective 5, "Improved Natural Resources Management and Biodiversity Conservation," (1) Economic activities; (2) Sustainable use of natural resources; (3) Policy, laws, and regulations analysis; and (4) Strengthening of local NGOs. This publication is the English translation of a training manual on implementing a gender equity approach in Guatemala's land-legalization process. The annexes contain the original training manual in Spanish as well as the study on land tenure and gender (also in Spanish) that served as the basis for this training manual.

This manual, written in Spanish, covers litigation strategies with a gender perspective. The purpose of this module to help lawyers and other public defenders in Guatemala identify the key concepts needed to enrich defense strategies in cases of women accused of wrongful acts. Chapter one covers gender and criminal justice and includes a discussion of gender-based violence. Chapter two focuses on defense strategies.

Project title: Girls' education monitoring system (GEMS)

This manual on domestic violence, written in Spanish, was put together by community paralegals in Villa Nueva, Guatemala. It includes sections on definitions of domestic violence generally, women and domestic violence, the problem in Guatemala, steps women should take to address domestic violence, a discussion of legal strategies and resources for women, and a bibliography.

This presentation describes the various factors leading to early marriage in three contexts -- in Bangladesh, among Guatemala's Mayan population, and among the Hmong and Dao minorities in Vietnam -- and the implications for programs aiming to delay marriage in these different contexts (for instance, in Bangladesh, dowry price rises with age). In addition, it explains that a lack of opportunities and social isolation are important common correlates of early marriage among disadvantaged ethnic minorities in Asia and Latin America.

Programa estandares e investigacion educativa | Inversion social: personas mas sanas y con mejor nivel de educacion | Task order 03

This report aims to contribute to the design of the USAID/Guatemala environment strategic objective and to improve the work being done in the Peten on community conservation and gender. The report offers a series of recommendations intended to stimulate discussion among stakeholders, especially personnel in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, who are working closely with USAID/Guatemala on the environment strategic objective. These recommendations focus on the institutionalization of gender and gender-sensitive strategies in Maya Biosphere Reserve objectives.

MEDIR (Proyecto medicion de indicadores y resultados=Research, monitoring & evaluation, and policy dialogue activities)

This report is part of a series of publications that address the gender dimensions within four areas of USAID/Guatemala's Strategic Objective 5, "Improved Natural Resources Management and Biodiversity Conservation". The report is divided into two parts; Report A addresses technical assistance to the staffs of USAID's strategic partners in Atitlán, and Report B deals with technical assistance to civil society organizations in Atitlán. Consultants provided training to the staffs of NGOs and to community leaders in three regions -- Atitlán, Polochic/Motagua, and Petén; the two reports on the Atitlán training serve as the main text of this document.

This is the final report of the Women's Legal Rights Initiative (WLR). The WLR worked to advance the legal, civil, property, and human rights of women in 10 developing countries:  Albania, Benin, Guatemala, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, and Swaziland.  It was implemented from 2002 to 2007 by Chemonics International in partnership with the Centre for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA), MetaMetrics, Inc., and Partners of the Americas.

Task order no. 2

Project title: Girls' education monitoring system (GEMS)

This guide builds on examples and lessons learned from the mid-term evaluation of the Parks in Peril (PIP) Project. It suggests ways that PIP project personnel can easily, efficiently, and equitably integrate gender into their work, providing six steps for them to conduct a gender analysis with little, if any, additional time and resources. The guide is meant for use by PIP project personnel and their partners, as well as by others working in community conservation.