Actions for Democracy and Local Governance (ADLG) is a dully registered national nongovernment organisation (NGO) advocating for active citizens participation, local democracy and governance in Tanzania. The establishment of ADLG was highly motivated by the readings of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Tanzania’s local governance structure and practices, politics, elections and respective political decisions that affect welfare and livelihood of rural, poor and marginalized Tanzanians.

ADLG has been implementing governance programme in 6 districts of Shinyanga Region (now split into Shinyanga, Simiyu and Geita) since 2011. A core component of the programme has been the capacity-building of 408 Community animators through training sessions and on-going mentoring and coaching. The approach of the programme has been non-issue specific, meaning that the animators are supported to develop a broad range of skills and access various types of information and they themselves, along with their community, decide what issues they would like to follow up and take action on.

ADLG also facilitates open dialogues at village and district levels (as part of local activism and advocacy) within these communities with interest of bringing issues raised during trainings and mentoring sessions to the attention of “policy makers” at Local Government level.

ADLG is an active member of Agriculture Non-state Actors Forum (ANSAF) and Policy Forum; these are the most active and reputable CSO national networks in Tanzania. ADLG joined these networks to get connected to national level advocacy and also skilfully connect issues raised at local government level to these national level efforts. ADLG is also working with ANSAF in Social Accountability Monitoring System which is really starting to gain momentum in Sengerema and Bariadi districts.

ADLG works with Hakielimu in facilitating radio dialogues particularly on education issues in one district as a pilot project. Here the animation goes to another level where we facilitate dialogues within the community (as usual) but these dialogues continue through a community radio available at the district.

Interventions:

Political and Civil Participation of Youth

We believe that the voices and the energies of young people are vital for the development of our society! This is a flagship of ADLG where we work to promote youth political and civic participation by enhancing capacities of young people to engage in democracy discourse, sharpen their abilities to voice and polish their skills to negotiate and reduce fear. We offer special trainings for youths on leadership skills and governance and accountability.

Media and Civic Education

This program focuses on research and surveys on democracy and Local governance, ADLG. This program also develops advocacy and learning materials including newsletters, radio/TV spots and other visual and digital communication technologies.

This program works with journalists in many creative ways to inform the public for the growth of public debates and dialogues. ADLG seek to establish a strategic mechanism for people to access information through community radio.

Election and Voter Education

ADLG encourage men and women to participate in election process, young people are in particular supported to understand and participate meaningfully in democracy processes, we offer training in “Representation and Peoples Democracy” which includes: elections, electoral systems, significance of voting, democratic principles and various practices. ADLG facilitates trainings for election observers/poll watchers; we encourage CSOs to use a guide for election observers which we produced in 2010.

Political and Civil Participation of women

This program works more with existing Community Groups/Producer groups which were formed for various purposes including those concerned with savings and credit facility. ADLG enhances the capacities and facilitates dialogues in the areas of democratic governance, women’s human rights, transparency, and accountability within these groups as we seek to support women to have equal say in meetings, dialogues, fora at villages and at district levels.  ADLG also seek to train and mentor women who wish to become effective leaders.

Leadership and Local empowerment

This is basically working at Local Government level, especially at villager and Ward level. We facilitate a process of critical thinking and identification of governance issues affecting communities while seeking viable Collective Actions. In the process, we offer ‘mentoring’ as villagers galvanize reforms in their villages. This program is aiming at stimulating the mandatory village assemblies to take place in a more democratic and required proper manner. ADLG also offers the skills necessary for communication, conflict resolution, and encourages constructive dialogues to take place.