CARITAS NORWAY – ZAMBIA COUNTRY PARTNERSHIP PROGRAMME

Background

The programme is focusing on three thematic areas, democracy and good governance, gender and hiv/aids, with the aim of making people aware about their human rights and civic responsibilities. Through organising of development steering committees at different levels, people shall be able to take charge over their own development. Popular participation is brought about through a number of groups, co-operatives etc.

The programme has a focus on grassroots communities in three dioceses in Northern Zambia (Mpika, Kasama and Mansa) as well as a national focus through Caritas Zambia. It is considered important to increase the capacity of the different levels to identify and carry out advocacy and lobbying issues and to establish links between the different level, in particular from grassroots toward district or national level.

Purpose/objective

The main purpose of the mid term evaluation was "to learn and contribute towards improving the performance of the Programme and recommend a workable way of ensuring the sustainability of the Programme beyond 2007."

Methodology

The methodology was informed by: (a) the need to make the process highly participatory; and (b) the need to achieve a reasonable coverage of the beneficiaries of the program activities and facilitators, in order to obtain sufficient insight into program implementation process including engagement with various stakeholders involved in similar activities.

Key findings

PROGRAMME FOUNDATION PROCESS
­ The highly participatory approach through a series of consultative meetings and field visits involving intended partners in identifying community needs and priorities, and in determining the scope (coverage) of the programme.
­ In terms of institutional basis, the strategy of building upon existing local church/community structures in establishing the implementation framework consisting of steering committees at all levels and including village-based functional groups in selecting participants and mobilising communities for initial meetings was aimed at ensuring sustainability of programme activities and outputs beyond 2007.
­ A consultative process was also adopted in determining the final content of the programme
­ The establishing and strengthening of linkages/networking with relevant institutions and organisations (GRZ, civil society, church), not only provided opportunity for experience/information sharing, but also ensured collaborative work improving livelihoods at community level.

PROGRESS IN PROGRAMME IMPLEMENTATION
­ Activity planning and budgeting are done using a bottom-up approach.
­ The programme utilises both internal and external expertise to implement activities at the different levels.
­ At field level, HIV/AIDS and livelihood related activities have predominated, while governance related activities have tended to predominate at national level. Gender has been the least emphasized.

­ In terms of the pace of progress in programme implementation, the three Dioceses are at different paces of progress, suggesting that they have different capacity needs.

Recommendations

Management and structural issues
­ Provide special support to Kasama.
­ Consideration should be given to standardization in terms of name or designation of the outcome of the restructuring or merging of the Departments of Development, Justice and Peace, to promote a shared identify.
­ Harmonise requirements on professional qualifications of Programme staff.
­ Develop, disseminate widely and implement a written sustainability strategy.
­ Encourage and strengthen dialogue with GRZ and other collaborating organisations on moral issues relating to methods of preventing the spread of HIV and AIDS
­ Address the issue of allowances to workshop participants, volunteers, and professionals.
­ Design and implement an M&E system with indicators that are sensitive to all cross cutting issues; and strengthen capacity/skills in M&E to facilitate application of the system.
­ Consider providing bicycles to facilitators/volunteers at Parish level.
­ Strengthen grassroots level lobbying and advocacy.

Programmatic issues
­ Conduct a comprehensive Training Needs Assessment (TNA).
­ Provide training in gender analysis and mainstreaming to programme staff, in line with Caritas Norway's emphasises on qualitative participation of women.
­ Promote mainstreaming of cross cutting issues through development and preparation of Mainstreaming Manual with guidelines and checklists on each thematic area.
­ The IEC materials relating to all four thematic areas of focus that are in English should be translated into local languages.
­ Reporting format should be harmonised and follow the Logical Framework.
­ In terms of meeting immediate daily practical needs of participants, the programme should explore ways of linking communities to other organisations.

Comments from the organisation

Caritas Norway finds in general the conclusions and recommendations valid. The report does not really understand the type of crisis and refocusing Kasama Archdiocese went trogh during the time of the evaluation. It is not correct as stated somewhere in the report that the programme just had started. However, the problems in Kasama reduced the impact of the programme there, and have been seriously dealt with.

Caritas Norway agrees that something should be done in the understanding of gender, even though the picture is not as bleak as the report indicates.

Three months after the presentation of the final evaluation report, the same consultants hosted a planning workshop for the partners on processes and outputs with a focus on how to implant the recommendations and to establish sustainability plans.