
Irish Aid
Irish Aid is the Government of Ireland's official international development aid programme
Irish Aid
Every day you are part of Ireland’s efforts to tackle poverty, inequality, discrimination, conflict and climate change worldwide. Through Ireland’s overseas development programme, Irish Aid, the Irish people contribute a small portion of their taxes to support development and humanitarian work carried out by organisations like us at Oxfam Ireland.
Ireland's Civil Society Partnership Programme (ICSP 2023 - 2027)
The goal of this programme is that communities can live free from poverty, violence and discrimination. We will engage directly with 226,000 people, to help communities realise their rights, exercise leadership and build resilience.
We don't turn our backs when a crisis has passed. We work with communities to respond with humanitarian aid in response to disaster or conflict, and we stick around, helping communities to rebuild by providing development aid..
The programme will deliver across four impact areas which are;
- food and income security,
- rights, protection and accountability,
- enhanced humanitarian action and local leadership,
- a humanitarian-development-peace approach.
Our project here will directly reach 37,970 women, youth and other vulnerable people. They are from mining and pastoralist communities, living under extreme poverty and facing severe labour rights violations.
Our work will focus on governance and accountability for;
- effective service delivery,
- promotion of women’s rights,
- enhanced local capacity for effective disaster preparedness and response,
- improved income and food security.
Our project here will reach 67,500 people directly from 15,000 households in some of the poorest communities.
We will partner with the government, as well as national and local non-governmental organisations to;
- improve access to services for those who have experienced gender based violence,
- increase the part women and girls play in decision making,
- promote gender equality,
- promote resilient livelihoods.
Our project here will reach 18,900 people directly. These people include women, youth and people living with disabilities from communities which are prone to climate shocks and natural disasters.
We will partner with local non-governmental organisations to help vulnerable communities to;
- move away from food insecurity,
- get to a place of resilience, where they are less dependent on humanitarian aid,
- address gender based violence,
- realise their rights.
Our project here will reach 15,600 people directly from vulnerable households. These include households headed by women, elderly people and even children.
We will work with partners to;
- promote local humanitarian leadership,
- anticipate crises so that communities can act quickly,
- improve agriculture and food systems,
- promote women’s leadership,
- promote economic empowerment,
- end violence against women and girls.
Our project here will reach 34,800 people directly, especially women and youth from pastoralist communities. These communities are affected by frequent droughts. They also experience high levels of food insecurity, conflict and gender inequalities.
We will work with local partners to support the needs of these communities across the themes of;
- water,
- sustainable livelihoods,
- peace building.
Our project here will directly reach 24,000 people in communities most affected by armed conflicts.
With our partners we will work to;
- deliver a strategy to contribute to peace, stability, poverty reduction and the protection of civilians,
- provide support to communities to help them overcome crises and challenges.
Our project here will directly reach 27,000 returnees (people who left as refugees, but are returning), internally displaced persons and host communities.
We will work with partners to help people in these conflict-affected communities.
With our partners, we will help to ensure that people, especially women and youth, will have improved resilience from disasters under the themes of;
- integrated food security,
- climate resilience,
- gender,
- good governance,
- peace building interventions.
History Of Irish Aid Support
PG2 built on the successes, experiences and cross-learning from PGI. We have focused in delivering on three core objectives:
- Increased economic empowerment for women and youth. We worked with partners, women and youth to increase employment opportunities, access to productive markets and business capital, farming and business skills and personal agency and leadership ability. More broadly, the programme aims to encourage the adoption of pro-poor policy and budget allocation at local and national levels.
- Greater gender equality. We worked with partners to decrease gender-based violence (GBV) in communities by providing capacity building to GBV service providers, raising local awareness towards behavioural and attitudinal change while also increasing women's leadership and participation across all levels and improving the policy and legislative framework pertaining to gender equality.
- Increased access to essential health services through holding duty bearers to account. We worked through partners with poor and marginalised people to improve local health facilities by providing capacity building to duty bearers; government officials, district health care officers and healthcare personnel, lobbying on supply chain and responsiveness of local providers and advocating for universal health care and increased budgetary support for health. Malawi is the only country to work on this objective.
Through our PGII programme in Tanzania, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Uganda and Malawi we have engaged 39 implementing partners and reached an average of 75,000 people annually from 2017-2022, with economic empowerment activities for women and youth to increase levels of income, ownership of productive assets and access to employment, capital, training, markets, and technologies. We also contributed to greater gender equality, for example, by reaching 7M people with a campaign about gender-based violence (GBV) in 2022, to help increase awareness and understanding of the causes and consequence of GBV. In Malawi we worked to increase access to universal healthcare, and in all PGII countries, our influencing work sought to ensure that national legislative frameworks were in place and implemented to support pro-poor development.
The Irish Aid (IA)/Oxfam Ireland (OIE) funded development programme operated in 5 countries in East, Central and Southern Africa: Tanzania, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Malawi, and South Africa. The purpose of the programme is to improve quality of life and wellbeing of targeted communities due to better and more secure livelihoods, greater gender equality, access to appropriate services and a reduction in the burden of HIV/AIDS. The programme has 3 outcomes streams: women and men realize their right to secure and sustainable livelihoods; women and girls gain power over their lives and live free from violence; and the incidence and impact of HIV/AIDS is reduced.
We worked across micro, meso and macro levels to promote the empowerment of women and girls in a manner that addressed immediate and pressing needs while also challenging deep-rooted, generational gender inequality. We recorded significant success across all three levels including:
- Changing legislation – in Tanzania, we facilitated 3,000 women to engage with the 2013/14 constitutional review process in. 11 out of the 12 issues advocated by the women were included in the draft constitution. This provided a basis for review of existing laws and the creation of new laws that benefit women and end discrimination.
- Access to Resources - in Rwanda we worked with micro-finance institutions (MFI) to make €253,250 available to small holder farmers to enable them to engage in new enterprises.
- Changing beliefs and behaviours - in Zimbabwe the percentage of women seeking legal and paralegal support after experiencing GBV and other harmful social practice increase by 7% during the first two years of the programme from 24% to 31%.
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