Women's Empowerment and Good Governance Through - amarc

Best Experiences for an Action Research Process 116
That is how it became possible for all of the population not organized within the participative
process to become involved. This facilitated various proposals that were included in the Budget
and the discussion of projects with a gender and generational focus.
For example, in the district of Jayanca, in the department of Lambayeque, the Instigating
Committee for Advocacy made up of the Asociación de Jóvenes Jayanca Vivo, Radio Vino and
Radio San Sebastián de Chepen, in alliance with the women’s representative of the technical
team of the Participatory Budget, Aida Medina, managed to get the project for the construction
and setting up of a cultural centre included in the 2008 budget.
This example shows the advocacy work carried out by the Instigating Committee, since the
initiative had not been taken into account earlier on, during the workshops on the participatory
budget, when a group of youth presented it for the first time. However, after allying themselves
with the women’s representative in the technical team and seeking out dialogue with councillor
Maria Sime, they managed to get the technical team to revise the project and in the end it
received support.
The work of the organizations did not stop with the inclusion of proposals. Work was done
with the organizations so that they would elaborate monitoring plans for the approved initiatives
that should be implemented the following year. Plans were also drawn up for monitoring
the implementation o the budget approved in previous years, as well as the accountabilityof
financial reporting which, according to Peruvian law, authorities must do at least twice a year.
The achievement has thus been that in some cases these projects have been taken on as
public policy inputs at a local level and that it has even been possible to advance communication
policies for access to public information through citizen participation and transparency
mechanisms set up by local governments in the areas where the project have been implemented.
Some people have been sensitized to the need for implementing these mechanisms
and have solicited the support of radios and the CNR to take on this work.
An advance in public policies with gender equity has thus been achieved. At the regional level
in Piura, for example, there is a Regional Coalition for Gender Equity , MREG, which has been
set up since 2003, Diverse institutions have been working on the issue of gender for several
years but their work had not been well articulated nor was there the necessary synergy to