How can donors fund land governance initiatives through an inclusive process?

Whether you work for a donor agency, NGO, or civil society organization, the first answer you might provide is, “include a variety of stakeholders in the process of making funding decisions.” While this is an important principle to start with, how do we know which stakeholders to consult, what capacities the NGO initiatives have already built in the country that could be further funded,  and how successful were they? That’s when information & data become crucial for inclusivity. 

We will learn from donors' insights about their challenges and struggles in financing land governance programs in an inclusive way, as well as what they would need in order to become more inclusive.

Funders may inform their decision making process with data, while also gathering information about the needs and challenges of the communities they serve, which in turn guides their future funding decisions. In this webinar, we posit that this circular approach of using data to better inform their activities lead to increased openness and transparency, and potentially to more inclusive decisions.

The webinar will:

• Hear from donors about their experience and challenges in making grants more inclusive. What are instruments or collaborations that can help them? 

• Give insights in measuring inclusiveness: when is grant making inclusive enough?

• Ask and discuss questions on how donors can use data-driven information to inform their decisions in financing land governance investments. 

The webinar will address the following questions:

• What could help donors to make grants more inclusive? (What are instruments that can help?)

• How can we measure inclusiveness, when is grant making inclusive enough? (What are good results?)

• How can donors and recipients operating in vulnerable countries engage in the information ecosystem? What are the risks of documenting too openly about donors and grant recipients? 

The webinar will take place in English, French, Spanish, and Bahasa. 

About the Webinar Series

Strong land governance, underpinned by a democratic, open and accessible information ecosystem, is crucial in managing land in a gender just, conflict-free and sustainable manner. This works best when local communities and rights-holders are placed at the center of planning and decision-making, are able to define their own priorities and pursue them in meaningful and self-determined ways. Both ENDS and the Land Portal Foundation initiated the Whose Land? –  Inclusive pathways to land governance webinar series in 2022, which aims to provide a platform for different stakeholders engaged in land governance to exchange on the importance of inclusivity and meaningful participation of all relevant actors in both formal and informal land governance processes.

The main objective of this webinar series is to facilitate sharing and exchange around the topic of inclusion in land governance initiatives, to exchange among civil society organizations and with external actors on what inclusivity in land governance means in practice, and to explore how inclusivity can be better embedded in the programming and policies of those aiming to advance people-centered land governance.