Mid-term evaluation of Save the Children Norway’s Country Strategy 2006-2009 in Ethiopia

Background
Save the Children Norway-Ethiopia has a practice of undertaking midterm evaluations to gauge the progress of the implementation of programs and the trend in achieving the results it has set in the strategy plan. Besides SCNE seeks to draw lessons from the process of the implementation and adjust its plan for the remaining period of the plan. Pursuant to this SCNE has done similar evaluation at the end of 2003 for the strategy period 2002-2005 and have got useful lessons that helped to review the plan and improved implementation. The lessons drawn then were also used as inputs for developing the 2006-2009 strategy plan.  

Purpose/objective
The purpose of the midterm evaluation was To learn the progress of the program implementation with reference to the set 4 year plan. To what degree the programme is in line to wards achieving the set results and objectives in terms of quality, relevance and impact on children’s lives

Methodology
The consultant held discussions with selected partners. Ten partners represented from each strategic objective were contacted. The discussion with each partner took one day divided in two parts. The first half day was spent on clarifying and creating common understanding on the objective of the project and figuring the intended outcome of the project.  The second half day was used to identify the indicators in a participation of partners’ staff. Moreover discussion with program staff and management of SCNE was conducted. A reference group was set up where three directors of partner organizations in its analysis.  

Key findings
Regarding the over all growth of the program portfolio the evaluation findings has indicted that :
The programme budget has increased by 261% in Birr terms to 76,103,650 Birr since the last evaluation, with 39 projects and 26 partners. The country programme has been remarkably successful in fundraising, with 50.6% of the budget now covered by grants, largely in education and violence & abuse.

In terms of achievements of each strategic objective highlights of the evaluation findings were the following: 
Education:
The most striking achievement of the programme is the success in taking the alternative basic education programme to scale, with 222,759 children enrolled in Amhara region, contributing 6% of the region’s Gross Enrolment Rate.
Violence & child abuse:
The HTP project has succeeded in virtually eradicating female genital mutilation and early marriage in two pilot woredas, as well as supporting practitioners to abandon their practice. The key to success has been the peer pressure method of radio listening groups. This project is now ready to go to scale.
HIV/AIDS:
The programme is providing material support for over 14,000 Orphans and Vulnerable Children, assisting them to go to school.
CRC: Rights based programming is being incorporated throughout the programme, but the equity and non-discrimination component needs to be strengthened.

Recommendations
The evaluator came up with a range of recommendations; a couple of the recommendations are the following (please refer the report for the details):
• Save the Children Norway in Ethiopia should reposition itself for the next strategy period as a “learning organization”, building on its success in piloting and scaling up innovation and using the competitive advantage of an unusually high proportion of untied core funding.
• The success in scaling up basic education should be followed by scaling up interventions against harmful traditional
practices. Pilots in quality education, inclusive education and early childhood development should be rigorously pursued and assessed until they too are ready for scale-up.
• Measure impact better, particularly in relation to OVCs development and school performance, and in relation to the
success of income generation projects in providing resources for OVC care.