“Evaluation Report, Federation Capacity Building and Social Mobilization Project, November/December 2006”

Background

The projected started in January 2003 and is running until 31 December 2007. It is unique both in its development approach as well as in the cooperation among the stakeholders. The project is aiming at increasing the capacity of 260 Union Federations (local self managed association of rural landless) as democratic and effective community based organizations so that they will thus be capable to support effectively the social development of their groups and act as social change agents in their local communities. The stakeholders, RDRS and four Scandinavian partners (the lead agency DanChurchAid, Norwegian Church Aid, FinnChurchAid and Church of Sweden) have joined in a consortium to ensure funding, management and sharing of lessons learned. Funding sources are from the European Commission and from stakeholders own funding sources.

Purpose/objective

The objectives of the evaluation are to:
- provide stakeholders within the European Commission, RDRS and the consortium members with relevant and sufficient information to make informed judgement about performance of the project;
- document major lessons learned;
- provide practical recommendations for follow-up action for RDRS, the Federations and the Consortium members - including RDRS strategies and policies for supporting and strengthening the Federations in the future.

Methodology

Four week in Bangladesh, where the consultants prepared and implemented the evaluation together with RDRS. It included briefing, desk study of relevant documents, field data collection in the districts, meetings, focus groups interviews, validation, analysis and de-briefing. There is a fine balance between quantitative and qualitative data and information.

Key findings

The report concludes that the project has been very successful in strengthening the capacity of the federations to ensure good governance, hereunder adequate representation and active involvement of women. The findings are structured in way which assesses the relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, impact and sustainability of the project, which is very useful for learning and further action purposes.
Most important are:
- Federations are democratic; governed by policies, rules and audits; there are internal democracy, representation and participation of rural poor women; memberships have increased and two fifths of the leaders are women.
- 140 federations of targeted 200 are legally registered with relevant government agency. The remaining 60 have tendered their registration request.
- Capacity measures have increased management performance e.g. management of meetings, record keeping, financial management and audits.
- Physical facilities are impressive - 221 out of 260 have well managed community centres, surrounding compounds, grain storage and trees.
- Folk songs and theatre groups in 29 Upazillas as well as social mobilisation events have created a tremendous education and awareness level for people in the communities e.g. on HIV and AIDS, health, voter education, human rights and disaster preparedness.
- Communication systems are improved. This has enhanced networking between federations and has given a modest income opportunity for them.
- 576 federation leaders contested in the last UP (Union Parishad) local election, and 222 were elected (44% women and 56% men) - which is remarkable.
Despite these remarkable achievements , there are of course room for future improvements: RDRS is probably too close to the federations and this might hamper their strategic goal of reaching 395 federations by 2010, and RDRS could also look more into performance and qualitative monitoring systems based on participative principles - just to mention some.

Recommendations

- If federations want, RDRS should consider involving federations as local grass roots partners in implementation of its future programme.
- Plan and implement economic autonomy and empowerment of the federations as this will support the ongoing institutional development and thus long-term sustainability.
- Focus on the C grade and lower end of B grade on the capacity continuum.
- Federations primarily have a implementation - and organizational role. Coordination committees at Upazilla and District level have an advocacy and networking role. Do not nix these two roles up!
- The future holds two challenges for the federations: a) the federations must sustain as democratic CBOs to support their disadvantaged members and the wider community, and b) in order to be effective in this endeavour, the federations must sustain themselves institutionally - hence strike a fine balance between institutional, programme, process and financial sustainability.

Comments from the organisation

The evaluation is an important tool for the forthcoming EC application for extending the project.