Asia REF Annual Learning Agenda Report – Year 2

The Asia Religious and Ethnic Freedom (Asia REF) project started in October 2021 with the support of USAID and is being implemented by a consortium of five partners: Freedom House, Search for Common Ground, Pact, Internews, and the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative. Asia REF works to expand international religious freedom in select countries across South and Central Asia and the Asia-Pacific region by working with local partners and diaspora organizations. The project includes capacity strengthening opportunities for local partners to advance the freedom of religion and conscience within their countries, address their immediate needs, and develop and access relevant resources. To date, the project has been active in nine countries across Asia and has collaborated with 26 local organizations.

Given the complex and fluid operating environment and the highly politicized and sensitive group dynamics in the region, the Asia REF project is anchored in flexible, complexity, and conflict-aware collaborating, learning, and adapting principles that are well-resourced and integrated throughout the program. Ongoing reflection and evidence-based decision making is championed by award leadership in partnership with the Asia REF Learning team through regular dialogues with local partners, iterative reviews of program data, and the integration of feedback from the field into project design and implementation. The learning agenda is focused on ensuring localization, capacity building of local actors, and identifying effective program implementation approaches to address international religious freedom challenges in Asia. The learning questions were finalized in December 2022 through a consultative process, including recommendations from the 2022 Asia REF Annual Learning Event and situational analysis.

This report provides data and insights from 12 ongoing projects and one completed in 2023. These are supported by the results of research, workshops, and other activities from the second year’s learning agenda, analyzed against each learning question. The findings are not comprehensive; they serve as a preliminary reflection that intended to guide adaptive management and evidence-based project implementation. Additionally, in line with USAID’s view that the Learning agenda also intends to create behavioral change to strengthen the use of evidence to improve organizational effectiveness, this project also tracks how activities from the learning agenda help in creating and using evidence, and whether they are influencing staff attitudes and behaviors towards learning. Part of this effort, the Asia REF project strives to establish a supportive and safe environment for the consortium and local partners for continuous reflection and learning.