The project team ensured that key stakeholders were widely consulted and informed of the importance and necessity of developing a Gender and Social Inclusion Assessment Framework (CEGIS) that will ensure that these aspects are better considered in proposals to be submitted to climate funds and more specifically to the GCF. After several individual meetings with stakeholders and online discussions with the GWP team, a robust CEGIS was finalized and subsequently used to assess CAR's priority pipeline projects. The evaluation report showed that, out of 14 project ideas evaluated, none had sufficiently considered gender and social inclusion according to the GCF principles
The result of this evaluation was significant for the NDA, as it revealed that none of the existing proposals considered gender and social inclusion according to the GCF principles – an evident potential obstacle which may obstruct the approval process of the proposals by the GCF. This result was very impressive for the NDA , which requested a workshop that was not initially planned by the project, to present the CEGIS and the result of the assessment to all stakeholders, to ensure ownership of the framework and to validate the assessment report. Thirty-eight experts (including 10 women) from the public, CSO, private and other sectors now have the capacity to evaluate each future project idea using the CEGIS presented on March 15, 2024 in Bangui, where they gained an understanding of the framework and tested it in working group sessions. The workshop was highly relevant, as it ensured ownership of the CEGIS by key stakeholders in the climate sector and increased the approval chances of future projects by the GCF.