SDDirect's expertise

At SDDirect we take stock of gender policy within an institution, and support its adoption or delivery, by providing skills and experience to build capacity and commitment for gender mainstreaming; monitoring interventions; and progressively adapting strategies for promoting gender equality to locally specific contexts, as well as the changing global environment.

In addition to providing input at policy and institutional levels, we regularly bring a gender perspective to the design, evaluation and review of development programmes, including multi-donor processes at the national level. All our consultants have grounding in gender theory; knowledge of key gender planning frameworks; and the ability to carry out basic gender and social analysis. We also have consultants with particular expertise in gender and specific measures to analyse gender roles, eliminate gender inequality and promote women’s empowerment.

Recent Case Studies

Participatory gender and rights audit of DanChurchAid

In the autumn of 2009, SDDirect's Alice Kerr-Wilson and Francis Watkins, with rights specialist, Clare Ferguson and communications specialist, Gayatri Persad, conducted a Participatory Gender and Rights Audit of DanChurchAid to examine the extent to which gender and rights had been considered and integrated into the organisation's internal systems and processes.

DFID - Africa Gender Equality Action Plan (2009)

SDDirect's Lucy Earle worked with independent consultant, Pat Holden, to provide support for the UK Department for International Development's (DFID) Africa Division to develop its Gender Equality Action Plan. A communications document outlining their commitments was published in September 2009 and is available for download from our site.

ESSPIN- Education Sector Support Programme in Nigeria

It is estimated that there are between 7 to 9 million children in Nigeria who are out of school. Social Development Direct, as a core partner in the Education Sector Support Programme in Nigeria (ESSPIN), is helping to change this through technical assistance provided directly to state and federal governments. ESSPIN is one of the UK government's largest international development programmes and will support quality basic education reform over a six-year period.

Strengthening the Poverty Impact of the Paris Declaration

From May 2007, SDDirect worked with Oxford Policy Management (lead) and workingtogether ltd in an assignment identifying evidence of linkages between Paris Declaration dimensions of country ownership, alignment, harmonisation, managing for results and mutual accountability and the cross cutting social themes of human rights, gender and social exclusion.

Gender training for DFID Western Balkans

SDDirect designed and carried out a tailor-made training session on gender for DFID staff in the Western Balkans team.

Social exclusion and gender inequality in Nigeria

This assessment looked at the extent to which social exclusion and gender inequality affect development programmes in Nigeria.