Back to Earth: Towards Future Campaigning

Background

Wahana Lingkungan Hidup Indonesia or the Indonesian Forum for Environment, more popularly known as Walhi, was established in 1980 by several NGOs concerned with the state of Indonesia's environment. At present, Walhi is a forum consisting of 445 organizations, mainly NGOs, and Regional Executive Offices in 25 provinces. Walhi is the oldest, largest, and most influential environmental organisation in Indonesia. Walhi has been a partner organisation of the Rainforest Foundation since 2003, with funds received from Norad. This evaluation is jointly funded by the Rainforest Foundation (through Norad) and Walhi's other main donors.
The current evaluation takes off from the recommendations of an evaluation conducted in 2003 and Walhi's responses to those in the course of the four-year period following the previous evaluation. The title of the current Evaluation, "Back to Earth", attempts to summarize the key theme of the recommendations from the new Evaluation report which encourages Walhi to address concrete challenges facing the network in order to move forward.

In view of the results of the 2003 impact evaluation, and in the interest of assessing the progress Walhi has made since then, a team of external evaluators was assembled to conduct an evaluation of Walhi's work over the past four years (2003-2007). This evaluation uses the 2003 impact evaluation as a point of departure, providing a thorough independent analysis of how Walhi has worked towards the objectives set in its programs and campaigns over the past four years, and determines the relationships between and among the key components of Walhi as an organization

Purpose/objective

As outlined in the Terms of Reference for this assignment, the evaluation aims to:
1. Assess how far WALHI has succeeded in achieving its objectives through various programs;
2. Identify various institutional and managerial problems that is influential for WALHI accomplishing its objectives; and
3. Provide inputs to WALHI's organizational model, institutional and managerial development.

Moving beyond the scope of the previous evaluation that focused primarily on WALHI's programmes, this evaluation also assesses WALHI's institutional systems, the political constellation that has influenced WALHI's performance, and the direction it is moving in.

Methodology

The methods used in conducting this evaluation were individual interviews, Focus Group Discussions, and documentation analysis. In-depth interviews were conducted with more than 100 individuals and/or organizations, both internal as well as external to WALHI. 9 regions of Indonesia were visited and a debriefing session was held to discuss findings with WALHI.

Key findings

In a general sense, WALHI remains widely credible among other stakeholders and actors interviewed for the Evaluation. The past four years have witnessed the same traditional strategies adopted by WALHI in promoting its campaigns and advocacy as largely seen in the past 27 years. WALHI continues to mobilize communities at the local level and their supporters in the capital to bring the issues and plight of communities involved in environmental cases to the attention of policy makers and the public in general. WALHI's inability or unwillingness to choose to be more focused and strategic in its campaign themes has been raised before in the previous evaluation. While on the one hand there is a perceived urgent need for WALHI to be more clear, focused, selective, and strategic in its campaign themes, on the other hand, owing to its grassroots base, WALHI is often one of the first organizations who hear about different problems faced by different communities throughout the country. While consistency in its "purity" may be considered a key strength of WALHI, many respondents articulated their desire for WALHI to provide more solid technical support to complement its "political positions", in view of the changing political landscape and the real need to suffice the basic needs of the ever-growing population in Indonesia.

At the international level, WALHI's participation in the Friends of the Earth (FoE) network provides a potentially strong support mechanism for its work within Indonesia and bringing its campaigns and issues to international attention. FoE supports WALHI's media efforts abroad, facilitates access to relevant international organizations and institutions, links with relevant networks, and provides necessary information and analysis when needed.

Despite the absence of a clear Human Resources policy on recruitment and hiring of staff, the matching of professional and academic background of the staff with their positions in the national executive office is good. Campaign Managers have adequate basic background in campaigning. WALHI is essentially a huge volunteers' network with a relatively small secretariat whose staff does enjoy salaries, albeit at nominal levels. Considering this, the Evaluation Team observed that WALHI's donors are in fact getting very good value for money.

Recommendations

Campaign Focus: Option 1: Choose Specific Campaign Themes
WALHI could choose fewer campaign themes. These campaign themes need to be strategic, well-focused, and supported throughout the organization as mandated by the National Assembly, or
Option 2: Keep Campaign Focus Broad and Grassroots-driven
The implications of this option are that WALHI:
1. has to be prepared that it may not achieve a lot of tangible successes;
2. be prepared not to to follow up all the way in each and every case;
3. does not enter the arena of solution seeking; and furthermore
4. it should not expect to be understood or be taken seriously by everyone; and lastly
5. will have less access to funds.

Technical Capacity and Competence: The Evaluation Team recommends that WALHI appoints a responsible person at the management level to shape a more explicit human resources policy for the national executive office and the regional offices.

Comments from the organisation

Rainforest Foundation Norway is very satisfied with the evaluation report and thinks it gives an adequate analysis of some of the most relevant challenges that WALHI is facing.