of funding to ZEC, and the need to channel foreign funding through ZEC by organisations that intended to conduct voter education. Commendably, the voter education conducted by various electoral stakeholders was more visible and more comprehensive than in previous elections cycle. There were also deliberate efforts to convey voter education messages in local languages as well as targeting specific groups such as women, the youth, and People with Disabilities (PWDs). ZESN and its CSOs partners conducted vibrant voter education campaigns and information dissemination to the electorate using methodologies such as road shows, use of popular artists, video skits, door to door campaigns, billboards, pitching information kiosks at public places such as churches and shopping centres, radio and television (TV) programmes, print media adverts and social media. These methodologies contributed to increased access to CVE by various categories of voters. 8.1 ZEC Voter Education ZEC voter education for the 2018 harmonised election was informed by a ZEC 5 year Voter Education Strategy developed in March 2016. The strategy was premised on the importance of using a multi- media, a multi-sectoral approach and the importance of making it continuous as opposed to previous years where it was done periodically. Hence, ZEC provided early accreditation to over 79 organisations to complement its efforts. Prior to the 2018 elections, ZEC organised workshops to develop voter education materials and messages, and invited input into the process from CSOs such as ZESN, Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe (WCoZ), the National Association of Youth Organisations (NAYO), the Youth Empowerment and Transformation Trust (YETT), the National Association of Societies for the Care of the Handicapped (NASCOH), and the Election Resource Centre (ERC). This resulted in the creation of innovative voter mobilization strategies that were used by the Commission. ZEC used a plethora of strategies for its voter education campaign and this included the deployment of four mobile voter educators per ward nationwide, roadshows, door to door, radio and TV programmes, radio adverts, jingles, newspaper adverts and print and dissemination of pamphlets, flyers and posters, t/shirts, caps, hats bags and billboards with voter education messaging. In terms of messaging, ZEC focused mainly on providing information on the nature of BVR, the requirements for registration as a voter, inspection of the voters’ roll and voter information on voting, voting processes, assisted voters, voters’ rights, the polling station set up and locations and peace and secrecy of the vote, dates and times of key electoral processes. ZEC also focused on mobilising women, the youth, and marginalised groups such as PWDS. 50 | P a g e