The Sone Sie programme promotes inclusive, accountable and fair governance in Myanmar to underpin a more democratic, prosperous, and peaceful country.
We support processes that enable locally-led coalitions of civil society, private sector and government to coalesce around tangible real-life issues and create sustainable change. Our focus for this lifecycle is on natural resource management in areas such as land, extractives and forestry.
The impact of our politically informed approach has proven results both in terms of formal laws and procedures and societal attitudes and behaviours – how things actually get done.
Approach
The role of the programme is a credible facilitator and broker that responds to the needs of the community. Sone Sie’s politically skilled project team is directly involved in ‘incubation’ processes within sectors; they are readily available to stakeholders, able to identify gaps using analysis, open spaces to encourage wider involvement and bring technical expertise in support of coalition interests.
Over the nine years of the programme, Sone Sie has demonstrated success and value for money by bringing together a wide range of actors who would not normally associate, and demonstrating significant results in changes to policy and practice that have significantly impacted the lives of people in Myanmar.
Quality of Results
Civil society organisations are showing a progressive sense of shared understanding and engagement in policy decisions and are undertaking collective action to address issues. National organisations are being equipped with the skills and strategies to build capacity for constructive social change. Successful project processes are being disseminated throughout Myanmar and integrated into harmonised donor approaches in the country.
Sone Sie (under its former name Pyoe Pin) won the British Expertise Award for ‘Outstanding International Development Project in a Fragile State’ in 2015, and was shortlisted for the Bond Collaboration Award in 2017. It has also been positively showcased by ODI in their report “Politically Smart, Locally Led Development”.
- October 2011 to December 2016: 6,197,236 beneficiaries have been supported to have choice and control over their own development (3,079,447 male, 3,117,789 female).
- 26 formal civil society networks plus many other informal networks are currently partnering with the programme across all four thematic areas. The 26 formal networks include 766 organisations and have demonstrated significant results. Many of these networks are unlikely to have developed without Sone Sie input.
- Sone Sie has a strong track record in supporting inclusive, consultative processes between civil society, parliament and government actors to deliver fundamental law and policy reforms. This includes important areas such as Land, Education, Forestry, HIV, Legal Aid and Freedom of Association. It has played an integral part in the participatory design and enactment of ground-breaking state-level laws such as Freshwater Fisheries in Rakhine.