“To promote democracy by enhancing people’s participation in the decisions affecting the development of the country and of their communities” (CIVNET) 1. Contextual Overview CIVNET is a non governmental civil society organisation that is non partisan and fully committed to working at grassroots level. It has focused its institutional energies and vision on educating and raising the consciousness of the people of Zimbabwe about the importance of holding government at all levels accountable to the people, requiring them to be able to effectively participate and have their voices and concerns heard at community, municipal, district, provincial and national level. In order for the citizenry to participate some basic requirements are necessary – these include fundamental issues such as personal empowerment and confidence in order to tackle the challenges, strategic outward looking vision to ensure that the benefits of the action plan are in the interests of the community and not individual interests, how to hold those in positions of leadership accountable and responsible, preferably in a non conflictual way, to deliver on the promises and undertakings they have made to the community and where necessary to socially mobilise community members to take responsible and constructive action for issues that face their communities. CIVNET has been active since 1996 when it formed part of a broad coalition of 6 non governmental organisations which included the Africa Community Publishing and Development Trust, The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe, the Legal Resources Foundation and Edwina Spicer Productions. The Network’s primary objective was to encourage and promote democratic principles by providing wide spread voter education nationally. This was to counter voter apathy and simultaneously to contribute to democratic strengthenening and democratic consolidation within Zimbabwe, given the threats and challenges that were emerging in the society. The premise on which the education programme was based was that through participation citizens would actively involve themselves in the life of the nation, safeguarding the fundamental principles of democracy and ensuring that the elected leadership are held accountable and responsible to the population. The population however in the instance was defined by CIVNET to be communities in the rural areas, farming communities and mining sectors. The rationale being that numerous NGOs and civil society organisations focused their activities on the urban and peri urban areas and that in essence the rural areas had been overlooked, despite the fact that Zimbabwe is predominantly an agrarian economy with the majority of its voters located in the rural areas. The CIVNET coalition of NGOs sought to cover as much of the rural areas as they could given the financial resources provided by1 various bi lateral donors in Zimbabwe and their human capacity. Although the coalition was made up of 6 non governmental organisations, in addition they sought out progressive partners to assist them with what was a mammoth task given the increasing threatening environment in which they operated. The primary CIVNET members include: The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe ZimRights Legal Resources Foundation Zimbabwe Council of Churches African Community Publishing & Development Trust Edwina Spicer Productions 1 The Royal Swedish Embassy, the Royal Danish Embassy, the US Embassy, the British Embassy and the Royal Netherlands Embassy. THE CIVIC EDUCATION NETWORK TRUST (CIVNET)) IN ZIMBABWE – Sida EVALUATION 2008:51 5