cecilia@ceciliamilesi.com
Expertise
Areas of Expertise
In this section we summarise Cecilia’s expertise and areas where she provides advice and support:
En esta sección, detallamos la expertise y áreas de trabajo en las que Cecilia puede brindar asesoramiento y apoyo:
Themes
- Human Rights and Conflict Transformation- transitions to peace
- Partnering with Global South Actors: legitimacy and effectiveness
- Community leadership, security and bottom-up governance
- Youth mobilisation, inclusion and active participation
- Activism and decentralisation towards impact
- BRICS and Global South engagement in governance and development/ peacebuilding
- International Cooperation. Global aid and peace policies. Influencing donors’ agenda
- Innovation supporting effectiveness
- Arts for social transformation and intercultural communication
- Planning, Monitoring, evaluation and learning
- Action-research: participatory programming and policy influencing
Complex Processes
- Dialogue among divided groups: Promoting joint collaboration towards increased equity, inclusion and political impact
- National, regional and global consultations: design and support of consultative processes to affect policy-making and cultural change
- Creating, implementing and evaluating bottom-up governance and participatory initiatives addressing root causes
- Management of complex and multi-stakeholders initiatives
- Scaling-up start-up projects
- Analysis and inclusion of local actors and cultures into programming as a means to ensure just and sustainable impact
- Building strong and horizontal partnerships at global-local levels
- Planning and learning in complexity and crisis contexts
- Integrating action- research and creativity into global-local programmes
- Supporting visionary leadership
- Generating and sustaining organisational change initiatives
- Streamlining processes, systems, skills and capabilities in order to enhance effectiveness
- Capacity Building of diverse actors/ teams
- Sound mutual accountability processes.
Methods
- Systemic and reflective analysis well integrated into project-cycle (action-reflection)
- Holistic conflict analysis and participatory mapping
- Scenario, operational and strategic planning in contexts of uncertainty and crisis
- Participatory approach to planning, evaluation and learning (action-research, theory of change, rapid-learning, joint analysis, etc.)
- Transformative mediation and multi-cultural mentoring
- Dialogical Team-building
- Organisational, governance and capabilities assessments
- Quantitative methods: surveys (closed and open-ended questions), SPSS, quantitative analysis, visual presentation of data.
- Qualitative methods: stories of change/ storytelling, appreciate inquiry, river of change, theatre of the oppressed, interactive dynamics for group reflection, focus groups, in-depth interviews, mapping and matrixes and other creative tools.
- Capacity to undertake sound analysis also using specific software.
- Inspiration
Services
Devising and facilitating complex processes involving multiple stakeholders
- Philippines: facilitating planning and learning session involving representatives from armed group, youth, women, business, indigenous people and donors, all supporting the implementation of the peace agreement between the government and the MNLF (Mindanao, Philippines).
- Latino- America: facilitating regional processes -involving all Amnesty offices, Directors and Board Members- and aiming at increased joint regional impact.
Participatory design, implementation and learning from complex programmes
- Some examples include: “Navegar.Sur” Programme (funded by the Interamerican Development Bank), Escuela Latino America de Actoria Social Juvenil (funded by AVINA, Ashoka, Nokia), Decentralisation of Amnesty International decision-making and regional human rights work (funded by millions of individual members), “Derechos Direitos” Programme (funded by the European Union), learning strategy from Conciliation Resources’ multi-country programme on governance in conflict contexts (DFID, UK).
Research, Evaluation and Learning
- Baseline Report Oxfam, ECSN-BRICSAM programme; shared ideas to integrate findings into project cycle and innovative learning approach including ToC and process tracing (7 countries)
- Governance and Transparency Fund, DFID-KPMG Learning Strategy, Most Significant Results case studies (4 regions/ 10 countries-contexts)
- National Participatory Research on youth, equality and empowerment involving dozens of grassroots organisations (more than 10 states)
Creation and piloting- training in the use of tools and methodologies
- Piloting and improving the use of the “Governance Assessment tool” to measure board’s effectiveness at country level. Amnesty International
- Partners Peacebuilding and Organisational Capabilities Learning Tool. Conciliation Resources.
Organisational change and Partnership building
- Use of diverse tools and approaches to create and sustain organisational development processes aiming at increasing effectiveness and learning.
- Created strong consortiums and partnership agreements with representation of diverse countries and regions.
Accompaniment of new leaders and start-ups projects
- As founder of an NGO and trained mediator and mentor, I can accompany other leaders.
- Devising replicable participatory methodologies to increase equity and inclusion: starting-up, piloting and replicating models regionally.
Participatory and Creative Conflict, power and Context Analysis
- Multiple examples in every process/ programme I led or supported; emphasis of sound integration with action-learning and decision-making cycle.
Tailored trainings/ courses
- Theory of Changes and participatory planning (including agreement logical framework’s indicators and evaluation methods)
- Course on creative tools for peacebuilding programming and Global South engagement in international peacebuilding, Global South Unit for Mediation, BRICS Policy Center
