Report of the Review (2007-2009) and Appraisal (proposed phase 2010-2012) of Manusher Jonno Foundation

The Project

Manusher Jonno Foundation (MJF) originated in 2002 as a local funding mechanism (then Manusher Jonno) to support work in the area of human rights, and became an independent Trust in 2006. The overall objective of MJF was to create within Bangladesh an institutional leader in human rights and governance programming with the capacity to garner international support. Norway, together with DFID, has supported MJF since 2007. The ultimate goal of MJF is to make women, men and children more able to achieve their civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights and to improve their security and well-being. MJF currently funds 123 national (and some international) partner NGOs. The individual partner projects are organized under major programmatic themes: 1. rights of marginalized populations; 2. violence against women; 3. child protection; 4. workers' rights; 5. access to justice; 6. Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). Two other program themes, governance and capacity building are seen as cross cutting. With its network of partners, MJF is able to maintain a national presence throughout all the regions of Bangladesh.

Interesting Findings

• MJF has successfully met all targets and to date has funded and supported 160 projects of which 123 are on-going projects, which have been carefully selected from an astonishingly high number of applications (4000) across ten funding. The number of projects is expected to increase to 155 by December 2007.

• The Consultant strongly recognizes that during the present phase of its operation and programme implementation MJF has rightly addressed its mission goals and its progress both in qualitative and quantitative terms is on the right track. The Consultant is also convinced that MJF has developed an approach that can improve the lives of the ultra-poor and excluded populations in a systematic way towards mainstreaming them in the pace and process of dignity and development.

• MJF through the programme of its Partner Organizations has achieved significant impacts at the household and structural levels. Evidences suggest that one of the major impacts includes the integration of excluded and marginalized peoples into the economic "mainstream". The magnitude of these impacts is difficult to estimate, although MJF has sought to accumulate a measure of impacts from the individual partners. These include:11,132 families received around 9,120 acres of khas land; more than 200 Adivasi (plain land ethnic group) recovered more than 400 acres of land that had been mortgaged; more than 17,000 excluded and marginalized received new livelihood opportunities; and more than 140,000 people received access to social protection benefits of service providers (e.g. health care and education).

• The Violence against Women programmatic theme is the most extensive one for MJF in terms of outreach and beneficiary population. This programme funds 20 NGO projects directly (and 75 partners indirectly), operating in 45 Districts and 179 Upazillas. MJF data base reveal that 40 percent of the targeted 1.6 million women beneficiaries have participated in project activities related to domestic violence prevention.

• MJF has inherited human resources and financial management systems from CARE that have provided a solid foundation on which to build on. MJ has developed a financial system which is transparent with the right checks and balances. The activities of Finance Section are divided into grant management and operational fund management. Financial assessment of the potential applicants is handled by MJF finance section and the local counterpart of Deloitte and Touché. All audit reports have given a clear indication of effective and transparent financial management system of MJ.

• In coming years MJF has to be strategic to address some key challenges. Such challenges are: increasing the proportion of projects which deliver sustainable impacts for poor people; identifying and prioritizing focus areas and issues which will generate impact at higher level and leverage broader, regional or national impacts; achieving systematic, sustainable and structural change in institutions necessary to deliver rights and services to poor people; and ensuring that results achieved are documented at project and theme level as a basis for lesson learning and continuing to improve project design.