Good Practice

Combating forced labour and trafficking of Indonesia migrant workers (Phase II) - Final Evaluation

Project documentation | 24 October 2017
Contact(s): CO-Jakarta
Good Practice Description

Linking migrant support with economic empowerment: Of particular value in the project has been the ground-breaking delivery strategy that links developing a range of rights based support mechanisms, both at home and overseas, with economic empowerment efforts in the sending communities. Working with migrant workers and their families on for instance financial education directly supports migrant workers to better manage finances when they are overseas, but also helps migrant communities to address the poverty that is such a large factor in why people migrate in the first place. This more holistic approach also helped the project to look more widely at the alternative ways of addressing migrant worker problems.

Leveraging partner resources: The priority given to institutional development over direct support is the correct strategy for ILO to utilise if it is to assist its partners to gain capacities to assist and support migrant domestic workers. ILO has consistently applied the principle that initial funding (at least to government agencies) is only provided to leverage funding so that the agencies can manage and implement their own programs. Coupling this with technical assistance and advice based on ILO's own mandates and expertise is also good practice. This approach is as appropriate at the close of the project as it was at its commencement.

Backstopping: The use of a backstopping system in a project that has not been particularly well resourced in terms of the number of staff it possesses has brought very positive benefits for ILO. As well as providing additional staff resources at busy times, this also encourages a more holistic approach to management of projects by helping to encourage specialist expertise within the ILO Jakarta office which is available to different projects. A good example is the synergies developed in the areas of gender & HIV, in which the specialist staff in these areas have played a significant role in supporting activities in these cross-cutting areas in the project.

Gender and HIV mainstreaming: ILO's work on mainstreaming gender and HIV issues within capacity building and training efforts is good practice and has proven effective in helping organisations to internalise these important cross-cutting issues and to build them into their own programming efforts. Gender audit as a voluntary tool for organisations is an excellent methodology (and again has had good response).
Awareness raising: While more undoubtedly needs to be done to advocate to destination governments on the issues facing migrant workers, the work on this at the national level in Indonesia through CFLTIMW Phase II has been very good practice. The project has been able to invest considerable effort and resources to present consistent messages to the media and to be innovative in how this is done. Radio talk shows have been particularly effective. Both public and official awareness of migrant worker rights and issues have grown immensely through the period of the project and the lessons learned from this experience will prove of great use in extending media work more consistently into the local, rural and more remote areas (with the likelihood of radio and road-show work being more effective in these locations).

Community support: Recognising that work to improve situations for migrant workers requires supporting the sending communities is the basis of a good development strategy. It recognises the root causes of why migrants go overseas and helps to strengthen community resilience to poverty and economic disempowerment. It provides the basis for better understanding of migrant worker issues within the community and better community support for those that have problems. It lays the ground for community or community based organisation (CBO) advocacy, particularly to local levels of government. It also lays the ground for much better utilisation of migrant worker remittances and funds they might retain after returning to Indonesia. The involvement of NGOs to provide support in this important area is particularly appropriate and can be highly effective.

Supplementary funding for gender and HIV/AIDS: The use of supplementary funds (through both regional and nationally focused projects) to mainstream gender and HIV/AIDS issues as they relate to migrant workers has been well managed and successful. It has effectively allowed the use of specialist expertise with appropriately scaled resources to provide programme impetus that CFLTIMW was not specifically resourced or designed to provide. This shows that ILO and its partners have been able to benefit from well-structured learning experiences that will stand the organisation in good stead as it looks forward to designing new activities and projects to support migrant workers in the future, so that gender and HIV/AIDS perspectives can be integrated and mainstreamed.
Supplementary funding potential for other programme areas: If used well supplementary funding can be of significant value in developing other programme areas in addition to gender and HIV/AIDS. One of the main advantages is that it allows the staff of the main programme to continue with their own management and implementation tasks, while new programme areas are being developed. Essentially this is a form of extended (or perhaps organic) programme design as it allows partners to consider new initiatives over a longer period of time than a normal design process would allow.

Solid training methodologies: Notwithstanding the need to develop consistent approaches to training needs analysis and training evaluation, ILO's approach to training of master trainers, helping them to train trainers and then providing facilitation in initial step-down training is good practice. It quite quickly and efficiently builds a significant body of skilled trainers, and bodes well for building the much larger programs of support for migrant workers that will be needed in the future.