Thank you very much for your question.
I think I mentioned one or two ways how to assure, or at least to find ways and means to assure, that the funds reach the civil society organizations. Governments put their financial support in one or two baskets, for example, the multi-donor trust fund. For small women's groups, it's very difficult actually to reach that fund for so many reasons.
First of all, the multi-donor trust fund, for example, was set out or based on the JAM, the joint assessment mission. Actually the JAM didn't mention gender equality. They didn't have really clear gender equality specifics to assure that some part or division or percentage of that fund would be allocated to women. This is one of the things. Gender mainstreaming and gender equality were not mentioned.
The other thing is that the format of the multi-donor trust fund was very complicated for small women's groups. I remember one of my colleagues saying that three professors needed to sit down to fill in those forms. They are very complicated. So small organizations with limited capacity will not be able to apply for the multi-donor trust fund. So it ended up with the UN agencies, and the civil society organizations also have a lot of problems with UN agencies.
What I suggest is that donors, even through the multi-donor trust fund or the support that comes from government or international organizations, consult the civil society organizations. I don't know how, but maybe if we set up a consultation forum between donors and civil society organizations and make sure that small women's organizations are represented in that forum to mention their concerns, we will be able to set up a good mechanism and tools for this.
Another question is that I don't know how donors monitor and evaluate the influence or outcome of the money. How do they do that, if they don't have a relationship with the grassroots level?
Those are three suggestions that I think might be helpful. Yes, I agree with you that maybe consultations and exchanges of experiences among Canadian women parliamentarians and parliamentarians from Sudan might also be helpful and useful.