Strengthening Democratic Governance in Pakistan (SDGP)

Democratic governance for ADO's part of the contribution refers to:

peasants and workers education, mobilization and facilitation to participate in local decision making, especially with respect to development planning and implementation of different projects of service providers, especially of health, education, livestock and dairy development, etc., and
enabling environment for their participation in electoral process as voters' and as candidates.

ADO has been part of a five years program of South Asia Partnership-Pakistan, which is known as Strengthening Democratic Governance in Pakistan (SDGP). In this program, ADO carried out a number of programs and events at the village, union council and district level in which peasants and workers, political workers, political representatives, local administration and service providers worked together in order to improve governance and make local systems open and accountable.This program was great success in terms of people's motivation to organize local tribunals and assemblies. In these events, they discussed matters of concern with the service providers and political leadership and therefore got many services properly functional at the end of the day.They even participated in the meetings of their concerned union councils in order to understand how system works and to provide their input in local planning.

Under SDGP, ADO formed 100 Peasants and Workers Groups (PWGs). These groups continued to formally liaise with the local service providers between 2005 and 2010. They continue to exist even after the SDGP was concluded in 2010. It is also important to note that ADO got women 8,000 registered as citizens and more than 3,000 as voters.