Multiply-Ed (X-Ed) is a national initiative of the Center for Youth Advocacy and Networking (CYAN) and Government Watch (G-Watch | www.g-watch.org) in cooperation with various youth and student organizations and with support from Education Out Loud of the Global Partnership for Education. It aims to improve transparency, participation, and accountability in various levels of education governance, particularly in ensuring learning continuity and recovery in Senior High Schools towards a public education system that is resilient, gender-responsive, accessible, and accountable to education stakeholders, especially for marginalized learners.
G-Watch has been studying a strategic approach to enhancing public accountability, which Multiply- Ed is employing as its approach. Aside from multi-level citizen monitoring and advocacy, a critical element of being strategic in enhancing public accountability is enabling governments’ capacity to respond. It is not enough to generate demand and voice from citizens, to achieve responsive and accountable governance that leads to improved public policies and services, the governments must also have the capacity and propensity to respond to citizens' voices and demands. Fox (2014) contends that "to achieve lasting results, accountability initiatives have to be strategic: bolster enabling environments for collective action, scale up citizen engagement …and attempt to bolster governmental capacity to respond to voice."
International development partners are known for and/or are expected to be assisting governments in building their capacity for good governance. We are keen to know of and learn more about these current efforts and explore areas for further collaboration and/ or coordination.
In this light, Multiply-Ed, is hosting a roundtable discussion on “Enhancing the Governments’ Capacity to Respond to Citizen Voice and Demand” on March 26, 2024, 12:00nn - 5:00 pm in Ortigas.
Key international development partners shall be invited to the said roundtable discussion to share their ongoing initiatives and efforts to support governments in responding to citizen voices and demands, particularly in education and health, and efforts to enable civil society participation, especially in procurement and budget accountability.
During the said roundtable discussion, Multiply-Ed will also be presenting its initiatives and the highlights of its monitoring. International development partners will also be asked to give feedback on Multiply-Ed monitoring findings to explore the shared agenda.